House Beautiful
Interior Designer Phoebe Howard | Writer Kathryn O’Shea-Evans | Photographer Noe Dewitt | Producer Robert Rufino
Golden Girl
Cats are notoriously picky — it’s part of their personal brand. So when designer Phoebe Howard flung open the doors of this 1891 Victorian to find countless feral felines, she took it as a good omen. The home’s scalloped shingles and ornate gabled roofs had cast a spell over the neighbors, Julie and Brian Simmons, who then hired Howard to save the building — by turning it into their guesthouse.
The cats were the least of it. The “Duck’s Nest,” as the second-oldest house in Palm Beach is called, “just had become so run-down—but it’s protected by the historical society, so you weren’t allowed to tear it down and start over,” says Howard. Years of termite and water damage had torn through the structure, and the existing foundation was hair-raising: made of stacked bricks and a 25” wide tree stump. But with the help of two architects, Meghan Ford Taylor of Seabreeze Building and Roger Janssen of Dailey Janssen Architects, Howard persevered and was able to revamp the place to make it suitable for a new generation.
Frothy accents—meant to mirror the architectural flourishes of the exterior—dot every room: a blue-and-white-checked wallpaper covers the ceiling of an all-blue kitchen. And Howard picked up a set of wicker fish on a fishing line at the Paris Flea Market, the retrofitted it with electrical wiring to turn it into a dining room chandelier.
“We knew we wanted it to feel old and cranky and have and old look, but not be falling-down cranky, so it’s filled with a lot of vintage furniture,”
says Howard, who sourced nearly every item in the the house secondhand. Low ceilings were vaulted and outfitted with caned paneling, and an old screened porch was converted to a more functional, but no less restorative, air-conditioned sunroom.
The home’s original stained-glass windows inspired a retro, candy-color palette that suits the old soul of the home. “This is kind of the opposite of a peaceful, calm space. But it does, at the same time, transport you somewhere—back in time somehow,” says Howard. “It just makes you feel good when you go in there.”
