In the bright light of a Texas morning, a grand house has a way of springing to life in the shadows and silhouettes that form around objects of stucco, stone, tile, and glass. Early this century, architects in Dallas - examining the way the sun swept across the southern landscape - began capturing this wealth of light with a style they borrowed from thousands of miles away. They understood that Texas was similar in climate and latitude to the Mediterranean, so much that they began designing Tuscan-style villas on the Dallas plains. It was a good idea then, and an even better one now. The Neiman Marcus / Southern Accents Anniversary House was designed and built with the romance of the Mediterranean in mind.
It is a new house, all 9000 square feet of it, rising gracefully in a series of pavilions and wings on a carefully landscaped corner lot on Strait Lane, one of Dallas' most prestigious address. But it has the look and feel of an old, classical estate of the 1920s. "This house was designed to look like an older home that was added onto over the years." says Southern Accents Editor Katherine Pearson. "And the style and materials used , including stone and stucco, are there to make the most of the depth that the sun brings in Texas. You would not build a house like this in a climate that is gray and gloomy.
Working closely as a team, architect Larry E. Boerder and builder Bob Thompson have created a masterpiece that makes the most of indoor and outdoor spaces, from a lime-stone loggia to the spacious and comfortable great room that will undoubtedly become a central gathering spot in this house. The great room under-scores all that is right in this marriage of classical architecture and elegant interior design. It has a 22-foot-high, oak-beamed ceiling, yet it has been brought down to scale by adjoining wings that are typical of Mediterranean villas, and further by Dallas interior designer Neal Stewart's careful choice of subdued colors and inviting fabrics and furniture that can be interchanged depending on the occasion.
"Often in new construction, you'll see 14- to 20-foot ceilings that are there for show, but they're not well-proportioned," says Pearson. The great room in this house is very large but feels comfortable, with chairs that can be pulled up for various seating groups. This is a major entertaining room, but it is not pretentious. It is welcoming."
It is also the center of a crisscrossing axis of light and sight. Unobstructed views cross paths through the great room on all sides, to the four corners of the house. And another line of sight begins with the front door, straight through the foyer to the pool and pavilion in the garden.
Versatility is also a common theme, beginning with the library, which can be closed off from the remainder of the house and connects privately to the master bedroom suite. The same versatility is evident in the dining room, where the choice of tables, chairs, and a sofa can accommodate different entertaining functions. "We tried to create a room that could be more than a dining room," says Stewart. "It's a room where you can have several people over for cocktails or tea or scale down for just two people at dinner." For larger gatherings, a round table follows a trend toward informality, where there is no head of the table. High-back chairs complement the table.
But the core of every house, it seems, is the kitchen. "Everybody ends up there anyway,"says Pearson. And because of that, the kitchen and adjoining family/breakfast room are just as well furnished as the other rooms. Seating in the family room is turned at an angle so there are great views of both the fireplace inside and the loggia and gardens outside.
Equal attention was paid to the bedrooms, where extra square footage follows a decade-long trend. "Nobody apologizes anymore for making their bedrooms a spacious retreat," says Pearson. The master bedroom suite is a home within a home, with two separate dressing areas, cherry cabinets, and leather countertops. The master bath is luxuriously outfitted with a series of barrel arches in the ceiling that divide his and her vanities over a limestone floor.
The same attention to detail that characterizes the master suite is carried throughout the house and into the garden, where water jets can be turned on above the pool, offering a soothing, steady rhythm of sound that can be heard from one end of the house to the other. And Stewart's choice of soft colors works well with a fine contemporary art collection chosen by Neiman Marcus, which also provided exquisite dinnerware and tabletop accessories for the house.
"The final perception is one of quality," says Stewart. "In an old home, you have diversity. We tried to re-create that with materials that might extend from the 1920s or '30s."
Architecture
There are good reasons the classical language has endured and flowered again and again in American domestic architecture, be it Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, or the variations often described as Mediterranean. It is ageless. It has serenity. And, though guided by rules, it proves quite adaptable.
Just how adaptable can be seen in the elevations and plan developed by architect Larry E. Boerder for the Anniversary House in Dallas. Inspired by Italian villas notable for their tower forms and often rambling character, the principal facade is anchored by a strong, vertical pavilion with wings extending asymmetrically to each side, producing an image both stately and animated.
"We envisioned the house as an original formal block with deep, arched arcades that had been added to over time," says Boerder. "We were thus able to use pavilions and extensions to animate the exterior and create interesting interior spaces. With a large house like this, the pavilions are important to give it a more appealing scale." The commanding front pavilion contains the dining room on the main level and a bedroom above. The master bedroom, its adjoining bath, the porte cochere, and the garage were all designed around the central mass as additions.
A loose plan may seem effortless, but it isn't. "Doing a symmetrical plan is actually easier," says Boerder. "In a design like this, you draw a line through the middle of each elevation and work toward a good balance. There are certain rules to help, but success relies on the designer's intuition."
This evolved layout also responds to characteristics of the site. The front tower favors the corner of the lot, making the most of the exposure. The garage wing extends parallel to the side street, assuring privacy for a highly developed outside living space at the rear.
The barrel-tile roof with deep eaves and exposed rafter ends carries the Italian classical theme, its lightly articulated overhangs contrasting with weighty stuccoed walls. These substantial materials, stucco masonry produces shadow and substance you don't find in the foam panel versions of Stucco," Boerder explains.
The entrance is not through the dominant pavilion, as might be expected, but under the first of three arches on one side. "I wanted this key pavilion to have a certain scale and proportion set by the engaged columns and entablature," Boerder says. "When you try to make something like this an entry, other kinds of demands compromise the design." This location also reinforces the idea of the central block as the original house.
Open the arched glass-and-wood doors and the classical ordering of the interior unfolds. Rather than just rooms after rooms, so often encountered today, there is a strong hierarchy of spaces with axial perspectives. The dominant one is immediately encountered. Along the unobstructed foyer, the view passes through arched openings to the pool, and ends in the pavilion, which dominates the rear garden. The Italian villa always includes rich interplay between house and setting, a concept fully realized here.
True to style, the ceiling of this 22-foot-high space is rendered in a strong pattern of beams and smaller purlins. In the grand 21-by-34-foot room, which is immediately to the right of the hall, the same ceiling slopes at an angle down its long sides. This device, inspired by an Addison Mizner house in Palm Beach, is used here to shape the space and temper the height. A specially designed and carved stone fireplace visually anchors the room, while two pairs of French doors with arched transoms frame the garden views beyond.
The full-depth entry hall and the living room to its side are connected front and back with openings that establish cross-axial connections. In the front, the line of sight extends from the dining room to the library. At the back, it runs from the family room to the master bedroom. Thus, there is an easy flow between spaces.
"I like putting a great living room and a master bedroom/library combination next to each other with clear passages at either end," Boerder says. "It makes a pleasant transition to the bedroom, and the library at the front can be used as an extension of either the bedroom or the great room." Here, too, interplay between house and site is at work: The library and master bath look out onto a courtyard.
Opposite the master wing, the dining room with its own fireplace and grand full-length window opens off the entry hall at the front. To the rear is a more intimately scaled family living area, a combination breakfast room and family room that flows into the kitchen. "This room measures 19 by 28 feet with exposed beam ceilings at 11 feet, the minimum for the house," Boerder points out. "If you make this kind of room too large, people don't like to be in there."
The most magical feature of the Italian villa is the open-air room called the loggia, and this house features one that brings all the architectural and emotional energy of the design to a climax. With its groin vault ceiling, arched openings supported by pairs of limestone columns, deeply textured limestone walls, and a floor of honed stone pavers, the loggia pulls the garden into the house and extends living areas outdoors. Equipped with a fireplace and directly accessible from principal rooms, it embodies the villa ideal.
Care taken by the architect to dynamically integrate all elements of the house extends to the main stairway. To keep the foyer open, Boerder set the curved stairway with its classical Roman crossrailing into a semicircular alcove off to the side of the hall. On the second floor, this generous space brings light and visual connections to a floor that has three bedrooms. Further distinguishing this level is the bedroom at the top of the tower with a higher ceiling, and, beyond a rear stairway that leads down to the family room, the media room that is located over the four-car garage.
Throughout, the house features what Boerder describes as stripped classical details. Good proportions and timeless design allow rooms to accept a diverse range of furnishings.