In Palm Beach, it’s always news when a celebrity home lands on the market. But when the homeowner also is a longtime island icon, the buzz grows even louder.
Such was the case when news broke that fashion legend Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau wants to downsize and is selling her expansive home and its accompanying tropical landscape, which can really only be described as a “jungle,” a word Rousseau uses herself.
And as would-be buyers will discover, the property is everything you’d imagine when you think of the “Lilly” label — lots of flowers, color and whimsy everywhere, and distinctive architectural details that nod at classical style, everything lightened by bits of bric-a-brac and gingerbread trim.
Altogether, the main house, casita and pool house offer 8,233 square feet of living space, inside and out, with nine bedrooms, eight bathrooms and three half-baths. At 710 S. County Road in the historic Estate Section, the house stands on a lot that measures about one-and-a-third acres and is filled with meandering paths, patios and tropical gardens. Built in the early 1980s, the house is listed with the Palm Beach brokerage of Brown Harris Stevens for $11.5 million. Rousseau’s daughter, Liza Pulitzer, is acting as her real estate agent.
Rousseau explains that about 20 years go, her late husband, Enrique Rousseau, first brought her attention to the property, which lies about eight streets south of Worth Avenue.
“Enrique and I had just sold our house on the lake, and we were just looking,” she says. “Enrique found this, and when I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my God. We are going to have to build,’ because we fell in love with the property.
“It was a tropical oasis, really beautiful — specimen trees, huge banyans, orange trees and a little stream. There were a Chinese garden and an orchard — and a service road coming through to the ocean — unbelievable.”
She had remodeled many times, but had never before built a house from the ground up, she says.
“Building was quite a process. Kemp Caler from Hobe Sound was the architect. It was quite a project, and, for a while, we didn’t get very far, because I didn’t know what I wanted. So I told him to put it on hold for a little bit. Then, after a few months, I told him I was ready to start up,” she says.
“He’d give me the design of the day. I’d spread it out on my desk with pencils and rulers, and I’d remodel what he’d done, give it back to him and then he’d redo what I’d done.
“That’s how it went. Little by little. It took a year, and then I told him: ‘I have one more request. Flip the plans and make the pool on the north side of the house.’ I thought he’d kill me. But the next day, the plans were flipped. Nothing to it. And we went with it.”
Just north of the South County Road entrance is the original gatekeeper’s stucco-clad cottage — the property originally was part of the Love family’s estate.
Rousseau smiles as she refers to the cottage as “Lady Chatterley’s lover’s casita.” Within it are a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. It’s surrounded by its own lush gardens and patios.
The main house is set back on the property. And once through the front door and into the entry foyer — with its Herpel-tile floors and barrel-vaulted ceiling — visitors are welcomed with all the colors from the Lilly palette, and then some.
Asked about the warm color on the entry’s walls and ceiling, Rousseau thinks for a moment and then answers: “How about tomato bisque?”
To the south is a powder room, and to the north is her office. A little farther along is her center-island-layout kitchen with professional-grade appliances, open shelving and a breakfast room — Rousseau loves to cook.
And take note of those refrigerator doors, covered with two big framed floral images.
At the end of the foyer is a sitting area, where a daybed is heaped with pillows, and the pale-green dining room, furnished with items she brought from her previous residence.
“Sometimes I keep the two tables together. Sometimes, I split them apart, and it turns into a group of 16,” she says. “It’s there to change for whatever group is here.”
A bit farther east are the loggia, bar and living room.
She loves sitting in the loggia when she’s not outside soaking up the sun. And the living room is unusual — octagonal-shaped with two huge windows with fanlights above them and a soaring ceiling.
“My ex-husband’s bedroom was octagonal, and I loved the shape of that room,” she explains, referring to Peter Pulitzer. “And I saw a picture of that window in some Southhampton brochure. I said, ‘We should have two.’”
One of the fanlights is actually a visual trick, she points out. “We faked it — it’s a mirror, and it looks just fabulous,” she says. “I wanted to see jungle everywhere. Didn’t want curtains and wanted it open to whatever was out there.
“Then came the surprise. The painters pulled a fast one on me. They wanted to know the color for the living room by the next day, and I hadn’t picked the fabric for that room yet. I thought, ‘Oh, my God. What color will I do the living room in?’ ”
Under pressure, she settled quickly on yellow. “It’s my least favorite color, but it goes with everything.”
It proved to be a good choice. Since that time, she has reupholstered her furniture in many different color schemes. “It’s a mish and a mash, but whatever I do, it looks like it’s always been there,” she notes.
Beyond the loggia are a guest bedroom and master suite.
Rousseau’s bedroom has a fireplace, a bay window with a window seat and a high tray ceiling, papered below the deep crown molding and painted above.
Also in the main house are two more guest bedroom suites on the second floor.
Behind the home is a pool house with a living room, bedroom, bathroom, cabanas and sauna downstairs and a guest suite on the second level. Part of the pool house was there when she bought the property, Rousseau says.
“It was a garage or tool shed with a little apartment over it,” she explains. “I added the living room right after finishing the house.”
For the pool house bedroom, she “found” an English bed that resembles bamboo and has an unusual tester. “It came with the armoire that’s behind the grand piano in the living room,” she says.
And, of course, all of this is surrounded by the lushest tropical gardens imaginable. Paths are everywhere, and little surprises are hidden all over. There’s a trampoline that every kid around has played on, she says, not to mention a charming playhouse, a hammock on a hillock, a bridge over the stream and, of course, Rousseau’s favorite feature, the enormous “slat” house once used as a work station for the Loves’ gardeners.
“It was right in the middle of the gardens,” Rousseau recalls. “It was the plant hospital for the main house. Really love it.”
The slat house has served as her dining room for her housefuls of family and friends for holiday meals, as well as the setting for several wedding ceremonies. Another patio for an outdoor kitchen and picnic seating is close by, as well as huge patios around the pool.
Rousseau, who wants a smaller home that will require less maintenance, says she hasn’t a clue where she’ll end up.
“I’ve had many wonderful years in this house,” she says. “It’s really a dream. It’s the coziest house. I’ve had a really good time, here — and I’m on to whatever.”
For information about 710 S. County Road, call Liza Pulitzer at (561) 805-5040 or (561) 373-0666.
