In this episode of Celebrity Homes, Architectural Digest goes inside Tommy Hilfiger’s house. The iconic fashion designer’s abode has it all, from views of NYC skyline and a full-size tennis court to a Turkish-themed screening room and a dining room with a gothic revival oak table and Moroccan-upholstered leather chairs.
Tommy and Dee Hilfiger‘s castle sits atop a high hill in Greenwich, Connecticut, with views stretching all the way to the Long Island Sound. In fact, from Tommy’s third-floor office, in what was once the billiard room, the quintessential American designer can even see New York City.
“The immediate landscape is very rural—we feel like we’re in the English countryside—yet the city is so close,” says Tommy, who is sitting in the home’s wood-paneled entryway, lacing his sneakers in preparation for a game of tennis with his wife on the sunken court that lies just beyond a magnificent lawn dotted with quirky cone-shaped boxwoods; Miranda Brooks masterminded the landscape. Behind him a dramatic staircase climbs to a second-floor landing outfitted with Flemish still-life paintings and a pair of stag antlers from Baron de Rothschild’s château. Given the decor—not to mention the romantic roofline, ivy-covered turrets, and leaded bay windows—it would be easy to mistake the house for something closer to a historic manor house than a suburban home.
In many ways Round Hill, as it is now called, is a perfect mix of Tommy’s sporty, all-American style and Dee’s sophisticated European aesthetic. Dee, a handbag designer who had previously lived in Europe working as a model, fell in love with the house from the first minute the couple drove up the switchback driveway.
Originally known as Château Paterno, the castle was built for real-estate magnate Charles Vincent Paterno in 1939 by award-winning architect Greville Rickard, a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture. In 1961 the art collector Joseph Hirshhorn bought the property and used it to house nearly 6,000 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures—most of which can now be found in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. Over the years the castle had been remodeled in parts and added on to, but by the time the Hilfigers pulled up, the place had been long neglected. They immediately enlisted architect Andre Tchelistcheff to oversee a renovation that included new electrical wiring and a painstaking restoration of the original terra-cotta roof, whose tiles needed to be replaced; molds were made for new tiles, which were cast in Turkey and finally installed one by one.
The house is a local historic landmark, he adds, so Tchelistcheff relied on old photos and architectural plans to re-create the original footprint and devised new additions based on existing elements, such as the soaring two-and-a-half-story leaded bay window in the entryway.
To achieve that layered, lived-in feel while also adding entertaining spaces and creating more relaxed, family-friendly rooms, the Hilfigers turned to decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard, who had worked on their Miami home. In the dining room, Dee and Bullard mixed Ming dynasty porcelain from the 16th and 17th centuries with Venetian glass, Portofino linens, and Tiffany silverware. In the kitchen, 18th-century blue-and-white delftware is paired with curtains and upholstery by Chelsea Textiles and a rug that previously belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The eclectic architectural and design elements that are part of Round Hill’s DNA could have posed a challenge, but Bullard drew inspiration from them and had a lot of fun with the details.
Read the full story here –> https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/inside-tommy-and-dee-hilfigers-ivy-covered-connecticut-castle
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Inside Tommy Hilfiger’s Ivy-Covered Connecticut Castle | Celebrity Homes | Architectural Digest
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