An Ocean of ART WILLIAM I. KOCH’S STELLAR COLLECTION IN PALM BEACH Architecture by Bridges, Marsh & Carmo Text by Steven M. L. Aronson Photography by Kim Sargent

ven when I was Oxbow Corporation. “An a little kid in oxbow,” he offers, as per- Kansas, I had a haps a way of explaining his E dream of the kind own trajectory, “is the bow- of house I wanted to have,” shaped bend in a river whe- says William I. Koch. The re it changes course, where wonder is that its realization the water is deep and still eluded him for so long, gi- and you catch the best fi sh. ven that he’s the son of the It’s the pull of the past, but founder of the second-largest the river’s hellbent on mo- privately owned company in ving on. Besides, ‘oxbow’ is the United States, Wichita- one of those macho western based Koch Industries, and words that I’ve always liked that he himself is the founder the sound of.” and CEO of a privately held Koch bucks the odds but in- diversifi ed alternative-ener- variably gets what he wants gy and technology company – for example, the America’s the West Palm Beach-based Cup, which is just about the ABOVE: The architectural fi rm of RIGHT: Hanging in the living room, Bridges, Marsh & Carmo created from left to right, are Young Woman an Anglo-Caribbean-style shuttered dressed in Oriental Shawl, 1929, by plantation house in Palm Beach for Matisse; Modigliani’s 1917 Recli- William I. Koch. Fernando Botero ning Nude; and Picasso’s blue-peri- sculptures stand near the entrance. od Night Club Singer, 1901; LEFT: The ancient and the modern coalesce in a hallway vignette com- posed of Chair de Poule Rhinoce- rontique, 1956, by Salvador Dalí, Maillol’s bronze nude La Montag- ne and a late-Hellenistic or Roman marble Aphrodite. A Louis XV-style girandole provides illumination.

most coveted trophy in all of sport. In 1992, only eight years after embarking on big-boat ra- cing, Koch (pronounced “coke”) skippered the yacht America³ (pronounced “America cubed”) to victory over preternaturally seasoned sailors on his very fi rst try. “When he does something,” says a friend, “he does it fi rst- class – he set his cap for that cup and he won it. And what he wanted next was a world-class house.” It was past time for an up-grade: Koch was living in an unremar- kable two-bedroom rented house in Palm Beach, which could ac- commodate only a smidgen of what was by all accounts one of the world’s estimable art coll- ections. Some 400-odd works strong, it encompassed every- thing from Greek and Roman antiquities to mid-19th-to-mid- 20th-century European and Ame- rican paintings and sculpture. “Impressionists, Postimpressio- nists, Surrealists, western artists, marine artists, early modernists,” Koch reels off. “I buy art that I respond to emotionally; I guess that’s why they call my collection eclectic – I have a lot of different emotions.” He’s certainly on heartfelt terms The dining room’s array of maritime with art history’s biggest names. paintings includes, from left to right Cézanne and Degas, Matisse on the bottom row, The Ship Anony- ma Off Liverpool by Duncan MacFar- and Renoir–Roding, Corot, Dalí, lane, Fitz Hugh Lane’s circa 1850s Miró-Léger, Balthus, Arp and The Golden Rule, and Confederate LEFT: The wine cellar, which was represented in Koch’s very ning on a Canadian Lake and refl ect my passions in life out- Armed Forces Shenandoah, 1865, by Chagall-Winslow Homer, Wil- George Alexander Napier. laid out by Mark Lessard and Fritz personal holdings. As are some Fitz Hugh Lane’s The Golden side of business, but then,” he liamGruber, Merritt was Chasebuilt with and 150-year-oldThomas Hartbricks Benton and a– stoneare among fl oor those salvaged (in every sense of the word) Rule. For all that, Koch hoped laughs, “I went and made the LfromEFT: an The Austrian wine cellar building, which dating was signature pictures: Monet’s that the house he was planning house itself a passion.” laidback out over by four Mark centuries. Lessard A computerand Fritz Gsystemruber, allows was built Koch with to locate150-year-old any of Field of Oats and Poppies, would have the feeling of a fa- After purchasing one of the bricksthe 35,000 and bottles a stone instantly. fl oor salvaged Modigliani’s Reclining Nude, mily place rather than of some largest parcels of land in Palm from an Austrian building dating back over four centuries. A computer Picasso’s Night Club Singer, dry and inanimate private mu- Beach – four acres stretching system allows Koch to locate any fo Grant Wood’s Arbor Day, seum. “What I really wanted clear from the Atlantic Ocean the 35,000 bottles instantly. Frederic Remington’s Eve- from the house was for it to to Lake Worth - LEFT: Koch, who is a world-class sailor sits in the library next to a silver replica of the America’s Cup trophy. He and his team won the pre- mier race in 1992 while crewing the America³. Crystal boats from Bacca- rat. FAR LEFT: Mahogany bookca- ses fl ank a George III desk.

BELOW: The boat room, which is outfi tted with teak like a yacht, dis- plays meticulously crafted models of every defender and challenger to vie for the cup. The trophy is named af- ter the schooner America, the victor in the fi rst competition, held in 1851 off the Isle of Wight.

he began interviewing architects. diterranean biggie,” says Digby “There’s a famous one down here Bridges, who, with his partners, who said to me right off the bat Mark Marsh and James Carmo that he likes to take control – tell – all of them working with pro- the homeowner what is good taste ject manager Carl Lessard – put and what isn’t. I realized I would up Koch’s just-shy-of-40,000- be spending my money to please square-foot house. The look the him, and I said to hell with that. owner had in mind was, charac- So I interviewed another local teristically, one that would “fi t” fi rm – Bridges, Marsh & Carmo. in Palm Beach “but not exactly I liked their attitude: The attitude belong” there. He pictured it as that they had was, ‘We’ll please “Anglo-Caribbean, with kind of a you.’” British colonial feeling”; it would A man who takes a certain pri- have the grace and charm of one de in not doing things the way of the so-called great houses in a everybody else does them, Koch place like Barbados. His, moreo- immediately ruled out the idea of ver, would be structured around building his house in the prevalent an open-roofed central courtyard Palm Beach style. “He aspired to that “drew beautiful breezes a lot more than just another Me- through the house” and was gir- LEFT: Degas’s Open Arabesque on Right Leg, circa 1882-85, rests on a Neapolitan inlaid tulipwood commode in the master bedroom. Girl in a Black Cap, circa 1760, was painted by Pietro Antonio Rotari. The Louis XVI bergère is signed by J. B. Boulard. Pratesi bed linens. ded on all sides by a wide hall gallery. “All of the rooms were to be exceptionally well propor- tioned, based more or less on the golden mean,” adds Bridges. Because the site sloped, the ar- chitects were allowed to put in a basement – the result being that while from the ocean side the house looks like a comfortably scaled villa, from the lake side (where the basement surfaces as the fi rst-fl oor elevation) it looms enormous. Koch wound up using every square foot of extra space that the basement af- forded. First and foremost for a wine cellar (his collection is uni- versally regarded as one of the fi nest). Then for a “boat room” (decorated in yachting style with alternating bands of holly and teak fl ooring) to harbour a model of every challenger and defender since 1851, when the schooner America won the fi rst race, off the Isle of Wight, and with it the cup that would carry its name ever after. Room, to, for an “Af- rica bar” (boasting native spears and drums as well as some of Koch’s father’s old hunting tro- phies), and a fully outfi tted gym. And for a movie theatre “with,” Koch enthuses, “a lobby like in an old popcorn palace.” With an eye to safeguarding his art, he Koch likes to relax and enter- tain on the second-fl oor loggia, a also had a poured-concrete hur- West-Indian-and-Mediterranean- ricane room with watertight batt- beneath the courtyard (it gets Another requirement was a facts (including the original infl uenced space that overlooks the gardens and Lake Worth. Set LEFT:leship doors The architects constructed designed directly the activated the minute storm big cypress-beam-ceilinged reward poster for the capture freestanding beach house, along- above the fi replace, which is bra- side the infi nity-edge pool, to give warnings go into effect). “cowboy room” (a kind of of Billy the Kid) and art. The cketed with caryatids, is a circa the impression of being on a nauti- As for the upstairs, he needed second living room, where Remingtons and especially 1950 stone-and-glass-tile mosaic, cal journey through the Greek Is- Birds, by Georges Braque. lands. The white stucco structure, “kid-oriented rooms” – he he saw himself and his guests the Charles Marion Russell which is punctuated with mahoga- has four children, ranging in “ending up after dinner, smo- paintings now clustered there ny-framed glass doors, serves as age from two to 15 – which king cigars and bragging,” he reminded Koch of childhood guest quarters. necessitated multiple play- laughs) to corral his frontier- summers spent rooms and nannies’s rooms. era fi rearms, furniture, arte- continued on page 194 An expansive pool captures the re- fl ection of the rear facade, where, on the second-fl oor terrace, Koch often hosts large parties and fa- mily dinners. At right. lighted, is Three Faces, Father; Mother; Son by Ecuadoran artist Pablo Guaya- samin. The landscape design is by Robert E. Truskowski. AN OCEAN OF ART continued from page 127 on his father’s 300,000-acre ranch in beauty that swept him off his feet in the of putting different things together from western Montana, baling hay, mending grande-luxe Hotel de Crillon. “Something different periods and having it work out.” fences, clearing out stalls and altogether for my architects to be inspired by,” he OOnene of the marvellous prodigalities of getting the hang of the cowboy life. explains. tthehe house, not to sasayy pleasures of the life “We just kept adding rooms to the house, It was in the entrance hall stairwell that ssavouredavoured there,there, is the wine cellar. Asto- and somehow we got up to I guess 23,” Koch himself was inspired – to “mix things nishingly, its treasures include 29 bottles Koch calculates. “And 12 baths.” He en- that don’t conventionally go together: Pi- ooff 1929 Romanée-Conti, 130 vintavintagesges of visaged each room as having an indepen- casso with Grant Wood with Monet with CChateauhateau Latour and four bottles of 18th- dent character. “I wanted to be able to go Maillol….” He makes it a point to install ccenturyentury Bordeaux purchased by Thomas from one atmosphere to another – from his own art. “That’s where the engineer in JJefferson,efferson, whose initials are etched in the the living room, so that’s where I put my me comes out,” says Koch, who holds th- gglass,lass, when he was serving as minister to Impressionists, to the dining room, where ree degrees in chemical engineering from FFrance.rance. For wine such as this,this, Koch has I hung all my maritime pictures, into the MIT, including a doctorate. “It’s a prob- cconstructedonstructed nothinnothingg less than a subterra- garden room, where my antiques are, and lem you have to solve in a matrix fashion nean shrine. “He wanted you to feel trans- then down to my African bar, and so on – – you want it to work geometrically but ported to another time, to an old castle and have the experience not be jarring.” also by color. And logically too, by sub- oorr chateau,” sasaysys Carl Lessard’s brother, For aesthetic continuity, the transoms ject matter.” Mark, the cellar’s designerdesigner.. above the French doors to the outside He arranged the furniture in the house The ceilings of the 36-by-52-foot room were repeated on doors that opened room himself as well. For 15 or so years he’d are ggroin-vaulted;roin-vaulted; its columns and walls to room, and only certain subtle woods been amassing a trove of Italian, English wwereere fashioned by Austrian masons from were used to create transitions between and French (predominantly Lois XVI) iimportedmported 150-year-old bricks, as were the spaces. Koch, by his own admission, pieces in addition to several by the Gia- iitsts fl oors from 400-year-old400-year-old stones; even was no pliant client: “I pushed my peop- cometti brothers, Diego and Alberto. tthehe cast-iron racks and storage bins were le really hard.” He sent his representative “Again, I love the combination of the hhand-built.and-built. ThThee cocollectionllection ititselfself iiss rremor-emor- Carl Lessard to take a photograph of a geometry and the colors and what fi ts and sselesslyelessly ororganized:ganized: wine storastoragege raised to staircase whose cut he admired – a period what doesn’t, and being eclectic – the fun tthehe level of science. A system of graphics-

Impressionists, Postimpressionists, Surrealists, marine artists, early modernists,“ Koch reels off. „I buy art that I respond to emotionally.“ rrichich maps installed by Mark Lessard blank book ever produced, it once did balustraded steps seven feet wide ascend allows Koch at the touch of a coucoupleple of duty at fabled hostess Marjorie Merriwea- to terraces the full width of the house. ccomputeromputer keys to locate (and putatively ther Post’s Adirondack camp, Topridge; Behind columns and arches languishes ssoonoon consume) any of the 35,000 bottles among the hundreds of signatures it alrea- a loggia with a cypress-beam ceiling, a iinn hihiss cecellar.llar. dy contained when Koch bought it were raised fi replace and an onyx-and-marble ““JustJust as I tried to create a different atat- those of Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” mosaic fl oor – not to mention mosaics by mosphere in each room of the house,” Whitney and Joe DiMaggio. Koch jokes Braque, Picasso and Léger. Koch says, “I wanted every part of the that he hopes o fi ll it.) “I’ve lent so many works to so many mu- property to feel particular, too – starting A 67-foot-long tunnel runs under South seum shows that now what I try to do is with a big front lawn for my family.” By Ocean Boulevard from the lawn to the just keep it all at home; I don’t want to “family,” he turns out to mean not only beach – waiting there, with a swimming live without it,” the eclectic collector re- his four children but the fi ve large-scale pool that has its own waterfall, is a sim- fl ects. “Every single sculpture and pain- bulbous bronze Botero sculptures – Cat, ple white stucco three-room guesthouse ting I have is on view here.” In the face Dog, Girl, Woman with an Umbrella and that could pass for a dwelling on some of that old admonition about the emotions Man with a Cane – which he assembled enchanted Greek island. The lake side of – “Always show less than you feel, don’t over the course of a decade to represent the house has a wealth of pleasances also. let it all hang out!” – here is Bill Koch a unifi ed group and then playful arranged A dock. A boathouse whose upper-deck letting it all hang out by letting it all hang. in a smile-inducing line by the front door exposed-beam ceiling and cedar-shingle “I haven’t closed the book on collecting to greet guests. (Inside, on a marble ta- roof evoke whimsical Key West rather yet,” he declares, “but I’m closing it – I’m ble in the living room, rests a 275-pount than Palm Beach. Another, more capaci- running out of wall space.” guest register with 126,500 spaces for ous swimming pool. Then, from what can In a 40,000-square-foot house?! names. Made in 1876 and still the largest only be called a greensward, two rows of Well, even the Louvre has its limits.