The grand homes of Palm Beach, many built in the Jay Gatsby era, seem as though they should be examples of the finest craftsmanship, constructed with venerable materials. But according to architect Richard Sammons, surprisingly, the opposite is true: “Many look good but are as flimsy as stage sets.”
Such a disconnect between appearance and reality is precisely what he and architect Anne Fairfax, his wife and business partner, hoped to avoid when they planned Il Cortile, a lush new home on Everglades Island.
The house, which has views of Lake Worth Lagoon, was designed together with the homeowner, interior designer Betsy Shiverick. Having torn down an undistinguished 1948 house on the plot, Shiverick and her husband, Paul, an investor, dreamed of creating a graceful structure that would do justice to both the site and the city’s fabled history.
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“We wanted it to be as solid as it is beautiful,” she says. The airy U-shaped five-bedroom home is Italianate in style, Mediterranean in feeling, and thoroughly substantial, despite the fact that it opens on all sides to harness the breeze. “It’s full of strength and authenticity,” adds Shiverick, who spent the first 20 years of her professional life on Wall Street as a currency trader.
The couple didn’t want the residence to seem too formal, she says, preferring “a real Florida house, done to reflect the way we live, which includes our dogs.” The couple’s two cocker spaniels, Holly and Thistle, love to dive into the pool, shake themselves off, and bound onto the loggia’s sofas through the large arched casement doors that are almost always open. In anticipation, Shiverick drapes the furniture in colorful textiles: “If you can’t find a way to have dogs in your life, to me, it’s no fun.”
The home’s focal point is a 30-foot-square, chevron brick–paved inner courtyard—or a cortile, as they say in Italian. It is bordered on one side by a garden, ripe with bougainvillea and palms, and on the other by archways leading into a loggia and the living room beyond.
The couple entertains frequently, and the space can handle up to 40, seated at tables surrounding the fountain; Mozart or Verdi wafts through the air.
“It is so peaceful and intimate,” Shiverick says. The 13,000 bricks used for the courtyard and driveway were painstakingly cut lengthwise, a process that took more than four months.
Inside, the large but not ostentatious-size rooms are awash in rich color—and patterns that are elegant yet playful. Shiverick is not a fan of white-on-white or quiet neutrals; she prefers saturated hues of green and red (though she does love a white-slipcovered sofa, provided it is adorned with vivid vintage-textile throw pillows).
In the homes she decorates for clients and in her own abodes—Fairfax & Sammons also helped the couple renovate an 1854 captain’s house overlooking the Long Island Sound in Southport, Connecticut—her goal is to lend a venerable narrative of age and place through antiques and heirloom-quality objets.
To Shiverick, almost any room can be made more meaningful and human with a good Persian carpet—“the more threadbare, the better.” A home that has a history, she says, is a home that “will always be alive.”
This story appears in the February 2019 issue of Veranda. Subscribe
