Nichole Hickey, manager of artist services at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County,
relaxes in a space designed by Lake Worth designer William Darrell Wright.
Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Designer Joseph Pubillones, who guest-curated the exhibition ‘Interior Design: The Florida Room,’
stands in a room designed by Nickie Siegel and Judy Weiss at the cultural council in Lake Worth.
A vintage ad for the Heywood-Wakefield Ashcraft line of rattan furniture depicts
a Florida room as it would have looked in the 1940s or ’50s.
By Scott Simmons
Fifty years ago, the Florida room was the great equalizer among homes in the Sunshine State.
Just about every home, large or small, had one.
Folks of a certain age will remember the typical space: a flat-roof, 12-by-15-foot room that was tacked onto the backs of the California ranch homes that sprang up everywhere in that post-World War II era.
Three of the four walls would have been lined with windows, the better to catch the cross-breezes in those days before air conditioning was a standard feature. The ceiling would have had exposed beams and rafters. Sometimes, the pine and cedar oozed sap that dripped onto the furniture and the occupants.
And that Florida room furniture?
It was casual, often of wicker or rattan, with colorful upholstery, and could have been made locally.
West Palm Beach was home to Wilhelm, a company that’s still in the business of repairing wicker and rattan; but South Floridians also relied on wicker and rattan by Heywood-Wakefield and Ficks Reed, among others.
Floors could be bare concrete or that new-fangled terrazzo.
As central air conditioning became more widespread in the 1970s, the Florida room became more integrated with the rest of the house, as owners glazed the windows, rolled shag carpeting across the terrazzo and decked out the space in swag lamps and macramé.
But that’s in the past.
Stephen Mooney created a tented retreat
of Blue Willow-patterned fabrics, white chairs
and an English Regency server atop a sisal rug.
The modern version
The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County invited nine designers to offer their interpretations of that classic space.
Those nine designers — Stephen Mooney, Susan Morgan, Frank Randolph, Allan Reyes, Angela Reynolds, Nickie Siegel and Judy Weiss, Gil Walsh and William Darrell Wright — have turned the 1960s sensibilities of a Florida room on end in “Interior Design: The Florida Room,” open through March 29.
“It stems from the solarium in England and those spaces. It kind of transcended from there to here,” said Nichole Hickey, manager of artist services at the cultural council.
But few of the spaces resemble those solaria or the Florida rooms of yore, for that matter.
“The purpose of the room really hasn’t changed, except that it’s sophisticated and stylized,” said designer Joseph Pubillones, who guest-curated the show. “It used to be a hodgepodge of leftover furniture that was available. Now it’s a room of the house that’s worthy of design.”
Hence the designers.
“With our exhibition, we’re trying to go beyond the concept of what an artist is,” Hickey said. “A professional artist is one who creates art and attempts to earn a living at it.”
In Stephen Mooney’s space, the Palm Beach designer has created a tented fantasy of blue and white, with lattice fabric covering the ceiling and a Blue Willow design draping the edges. White metal garden chairs surround a table lighted by a white tole chandelier.
It’s the perfect spot for an intimate lunch or dinner.
There’s no television, no Lawrence Welk; it’s not your grandmother’s Florida room.
The same could be said of the bold room by Nickie Siegel and Judy Weiss.
The South County designers wainscoted their room in a bold red, then topped it with a crisp turquoise. Upholstery is light, in off-whites and beiges, with bold, bargello-pattern pillows and striped cushions. An obelisk of shells stands on a table and a geometric rug carpets the cultural council’s tile floors.
“Florida rooms are something of yesterday,” Siegel said. “This is what we think it would be if it were today.”
Siegel, who grew up in Baltimore and has lived in South Florida for about 13 years, said she does not have a Florida room in her Highland Beach home. Indeed, the room she created with Weiss for the cultural council exhibition is the opposite of what she has in her own home.
“I’m drawn to neutrals because I have a wonderful respect and adoration for art, and, for some reason, I’m drawn to red art,” she said.
Designing a room like this offers an opportunity, Siegel said.
“We had a lot of fun with the inspiration and execution of this space. Usually, you’re working for a client,” so a designer has to take those preferences into account, she said. “We took those colors from the fabrics.”
The rooms at the cultural council are very different spaces, but there is a link.
“There’s always a seating area. Of course, the Florida room is where you go to relax,” Hickey said.
Jupiter designer Angela Reynolds, whose projects included a Maurice Fatio-style house in Manalapan, brings an alternate sensibility.
“I’m from Virginia, so my interpretation of what a Florida room should be is different,” she said.
Reynolds actually has lived in Palm Beach County since she was 13, so she remembers the classic spaces. But for her room?
“It was germinated through a back porch that was screened then glassed because we got air conditioning,” she said, remembering, “Back in the day, kids would sleep on the porch because it was too hot.”
Her room looks back to that notion of the sleeping porch with a swing bed suspended from the ceiling beams. Soothing gray covers the walls and a crisp pink rug covers the floor. Her white coffee table is a piece of living art covered with succulent plants; the other accessories also are in white.
“For me, a Florida room is an indoor-outdoor space,” she said, adding that she has a screened porch on her home. “I’m one of the few people who actually has a farmhouse like you’d see in Virginia,” she acknowledged.
The furniture here comes from Reynolds’ own porch.
“It’s very feminine, very fresh. It’s from me,” she said.
That variety of styles impressed Pubillones.
“It kind of reaffirmed the reason for the show, how designers will take the same task and come out with completely different rooms,” he said.
A familiar term
“Florida room.” The term endures in places as far flung as Indiana and Michigan.
Even Rena Blades, CEO of the cultural council, remembered hearing the term in her former home.
“I heard the term in Texas, although we take it to a different level here,” she said.
Blades does not have a Florida room in the traditional sense at the North Palm Beach home she shares with her husband, John.
“Mine’s an outdoor Florida room. I didn’t close mine because of the nature of my house,” she said. “For me, I furnished it with comfortable, sort of woven rattan furniture and Middle Eastern mosaic tables and tile. It’s very comfortable and casual.”
Perhaps that is what brings the Florida room back to its roots.
IF YOU GO
What: ‘Interior Design: The Florida Room’
When: Through March 29; there also will be a lecture by participating designers at 3 p.m. March 11.
Where: Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, 601 Lake Ave., downtown Lake Worth
Cost: Free
Info: 471-2901 or palmbeachculture.com
Angela Reynolds’ space has a sleeping swing and a living coffee table planted with succulents.
Comments