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 Edream 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 with art history’s biggest names. Cézanne and Degas, Matisse and Renoir–Roding, Corot, Dalí, Miró-Léger, Balthus, Arp and Chagall-Winslow Homer, Wil- represented in Koch’s very ning on a Canadian Lake and refl ect my passions in life out- The dining room’s array of maritime personal holdings. As are some Fitz Hugh Lane’s The Golden side of business, but then,” he paintings includes, from left to right liam Merritt Chase and Thomas on the bottom row, The Ship Anony- Hart Benton – are among those (in every sense of the word) Rule. For all that, Koch hoped laughs, “I went and made the ma Off Liverpool by Duncan MacFar- signature pictures: Monet’s that the house he was planning house itself a passion.” lane, Fitz Hugh Lane’s circa 1850s Field of Oats and Poppies, would have the feeling of a fa- After purchasing one of the The Golden Rule, and Confederate Armed Forces Shenandoah, 1865, by LLEFT:EFT: The wine cellarcellar,, which was Modigliani’s Reclining Nude, mily place rather than of some largest parcels of land in Palm laid out by Mark Lessard and Fritz George Alexander Napier. GGruber,ruber, was built with 150-year-old Picasso’s Night Club Singer, dry and inanimate private mu- Beach – four acres stretching bricks and a stone fl oor salvaged Grant Wood’s Arbor Day, seum. “What I really wanted clear from the Atlantic Ocean from an Austrian building dating Frederic Remington’s Eve- from the house was for it to to Lake Worth - back over four centuries. A computecomputerr system allows Koch to locate any ooff the 35,000 bottles instantly. 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 also had a poured-concrete hur- ricane room with watertight batt- beneath the courtyard (it gets Another requirement was a facts (including the original Koch likes to relax and enter- leship doors constructed directly activated the minute storm big cypress-beam-ceilinged reward poster for the capture tain on the second-fl oor loggia, a West-Indian-and-Mediterranean- warnings go into effect). “cowboy room” (a kind of of Billy the Kid) and art. The infl uenced space that overlooks LEFT: The architects designed the As for the upstairs, he needed second living room, where Remingtons and especially the gardens and Lake Worth. Set freestanding beach house, along- “kid-oriented rooms” – he he saw himself and his guests the Charles Marion Russell above the fi replace, which is bra- cketed with caryatids, is a circa side the infi nity-edge pool, to give has four children, ranging in “ending up after dinner, smo- paintings now clustered there the impression of being on a nauti- 1950 stone-and-glass-tile mosaic, cal journey through the Greek Is- age from two to 15 – which king cigars and bragging,” he reminded Koch of childhood Birds, by Georges Braque.