Step Inside a Greenwich Home Inspired by Ralph Lauren

The Judge oil painting sparks dinner conversation in this Greenwich dining room where two Visual Comfort & Co. chandeliers hang above a custom, polished, live-edge table.

The homeowners elected to forgo grass and trees in favor of a meandering stone pathway that leads to the entrance of the three-story home, which went from pale gray to black.

The front door, which was repositioned during the remodel, opens into the living area and the staircase with its cable railing and wood handrail. A 100-plus-year-old bench from a church in Portugal sits under the front window.

A nubby boucle chair and ottoman offer a place to read next to built-in bookshelves; the top shelf corrals the homeowners’ collection of vintage tomes.

Furniture-like cabinetry painted Farrow & Ball Railings contains the freezer, wine refrigerator, and refrigerator, while the door on the right leads to the butler’s pantry.

The couple’s portrait collection watches over many rooms in the house, including the Christopher Peacock-designed kitchen. The wife, says interior designer Antonio Pippo, was adamant the kitchen island not include seating. “She didn’t want people gathering around the island,” says Pippo. “She wanted them to be elsewhere, having fun.”

Gucci wallpaper makes a statement in a first-floor powder room.

“She just speaks to me,” says the wife, who works in fashion, of the portrait of a tarot card reader hanging in the primary bedroom. “There’s something about her I just can’t shake. Art should be something you can’t move on from.”

The husband’s bath features travertine-like stone on the walls and floor.

The home’s third floor serves as the youngest daughter’s bedroom.

In the wife’s bath, the cast-iron Penhaglion tub showcases a polished stainless-steel finish. The vintage pendant hanging above was purchased in New Orleans. “That’s an actual crown on top of the beadwork,” says Pippo, who covered the ceiling in a Holly Hunt paper that sports a gold and silver sheen.

They say there’s no such thing as a coincidence, but one couple seems to have a habit of attracting them. The wife was an acquaintance of interior designer Antonio Pippo when Pippo expressed a desire to relocate. She told him he should move to her street; a few months later, he was unpacking in a home just several houses down from hers. When it came time for her to redecorate, she and her husband of course reached out to Pippo.

Fast forward ten years, and the couple had decided to downsize to Greenwich. Once again, they contacted Pippo. “It was a cute house but not the right aesthetic for them,” the designer says of his clients’ new abode. “She told me she wanted Ralph Lauren—just
not literally.”

But the 1909 Shingle-style home needed much more than an Americana refresh to achieve the couple’s vision. In another happy coincidence, a mutual friend referred the husband to builder Jim Gasparino. “I picked up the phone to call him and immediately recognized his voice,” says Gasparino. It turned out the husband and Gasparino had gone to high school together. “We hadn’t seen each other since we graduated.”

The house was taken down to the studs and walls were removed to give the homeowners the open floor plan they desired. A living room bump-out was demolished to make way for a front porch. Rooms were combined on the second floor to accommodate a primary suite with his-and-her bathrooms and closets. “They did the opposite of what people normally do,” says Gasparino. “They removed bedrooms instead of adding them.”

Pippo translated the Ralph Lauren directive into a color palette of brown, black, tan, camel, and cream. New Orleans acted as inspiration, too. When one of the couple’s daughters attended Tulane University, the wife found herself captivated by the city. “It grows on you like Spanish moss grows on trees,” she says. Gas lanterns on the home’s black exterior and a pendant above the tub in her bath were all sourced from locations in The Big Easy.

By design, not coincidence, the home serves as the ideal gallery for its owners’ collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits. The people in the oil paintings aren’t distant relatives; in fact, the homeowner admits she knows nothing about them, but she’s irrepressibly drawn to them. “After a while, they become family,” she says.

Project Team
Interior design: Antonio Pippo Interiors
Builder: PJG Partners
Landscape design: Troy’s Garden Nurseries