Tour This Classic Palm Beach Manse That Draws a Chicago Couple to Florida Every Winter

If ever there were a compelling reason to decamp to Palm Beach, Florida, each November and stay until early spring, this is it: "She didn’t think she could make it through any more Chicago winters."

Designer Phoebe Howard is speaking of the Windy City woman who reached out to her after noticing the designer's work in her three books. Howard's signature spaces—cheerful and airy, replete with blue accents—were just what she wanted for the home she and her husband were building in Palm Beach. "She was craving sun, light, and fresh air," the designer says.

Howard knows the charms of Florida well. She lives in Jacksonville, where she and her interior-designer husband, James Michael Howard, launched their first Mrs. Howard design shop in 1996. Today, they run a mini empire of boutiques in the South, including their more modern stores, Max & Company. They also design an eponymous line of upholstered furnishings and case goods: Mr. and Mrs. Howard for Sherrill Furniture.

For the Chicago couple's winter getaway, Howard consulted with architect Roger Patton Janssen for the exterior and her husband for the interiors. The clients had purchased a property that was once part of an 1890s homestead, within an enclave of homes that are among the oldest in Palm Beach. Janssen devised a clean-lined take on Spanish and Mediterranean styles, distilling the essence of the great Florida homes of the past—including those by such Palm Beach icons as Addison Mizner and Marion Sims Wyeth—while paring down the ornate detail for a more contemporary approach. The resulting streamlined shell proved a refreshingly blank slate for Howard. She quickly divined the couple's disparate tastes—she likes simplicity, and he likes powerful art—by talking and shopping together with them early in the project. ("I’m a good listener," Howard says.)

The husband, working with art adviser Abigail Asher, energetically set out to assemble a small contemporary collection for the home; the pieces include works by Richard Serra, Sarah Crowner, and Jonas Wood. For Howard, the design challenge became how to devise spaces that complemented the art without distraction. She selected simple furnishings but often played with scale: oversize cocktail tables anchor rooms firmly, while closely patterned fabrics play against bolder ones, creating a sense of dynamism and verve.

After agreeing to a high-contrast palette of crisp navy and white, the client came for a Florida visit and circled back with her designer. "She said, 'I want the colors you see in Palm Beach,'" Howard says. "'The flora, the sea, the sky, the clothes that people are wearing.'" Howard responded by stirring a range of corals, pale blues, and citrusy greens into the mix.

In the end, Howard fashioned a happy winter home for her snowbirds. As soon as they arrive here in late fall and shed their coats, they fling open the doors and let the Florida breezes waft through the house. In balmy Palm Beach, they can spend entire days in their open-air loggia, all while the snow piles up in a wintry, windy city some 1,300 miles—and a world—away.

This story appears in the February 2019 issue of Veranda. Subscribe