Ambiance Part Deux - 111 Archer Avenue

My favourite house is both fictional and real. 111 Archer Avenue is how it's known in Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums", but the house where the film was shot really exists on the corner of Convent Avenue & 144th Street in Harlem.

The simple answer to what I love about the Royal Tenenbaum house would be everything, but its all about the details.

One thing I quite like about The Tenenbaum house is that almost everyone in the family has an "office" or in Chazzie's case his room is an office.

Chaz's Office

Now I don't particularly like the "70's" office feel of Chaz's room, but I do like where he positioned his desk. I love the nooks and crannies of the Tenenbaum house. In terms of location though, Etheline (who shares her office with Henry) has what would be my ideal spot for an office and if there was a way to enter the house's courtyard it'd be even more perfect.

But the best room in the house is Margot's.

In the film Margot likes her secrets. She also apparently likes her privacy.

I love the wallpaper.

Have I mentioned I love the wallpaper?

I wouldn't transform my bathroom into a darkroom, but it's a cute idea.

Margot's "Library of Plays". Also she's the only Tenenbaum with a working fireplace.

Richie also has great wallpaper, which he paints himself.

In fact Richie is the "artist" of the Tenenbaum family. He has an art gallery in the ballroom.

There are other great rooms in the house with little details I'd love to find in my own dream house. Lots of beautiful wood, swinging doors, a phone cubby, and a closet full of old board games.

Game closet. With two sets of Operation.

The library.

The phone cubby (doors open).

The phone cubby (with doors closed for privacy).

Smaller kitchen or breakfast nook.

The stairway before Javelina (the boar's head) is stashed in the game closet.

Obviously my dream house would need its own flag. Aa "A" for Ama!

But what I love about the Tenenbaum house, aside from what I've posted above has always escaped me. Now that I'm house hunting for a move to Amsterdam I need to be able to tell someone what I'm looking for - and that hasn't been easy.

I can say I want this and this and that - I want more than one bathroom; a library; two offices; an extra bedroom for guests; a massive dining room for dinner parties. I can specify the neighbourhood or that there's a garden of some kind, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get it.

I found this great interview of Wes Anderson talking about the Tenenbaum house where he specifies the things I haven't been able to quite put my thumb on. I want my own little world. A sort of castle. Surroundings that are "dated and dusty". Bohemian. I want a house where each room seems to have its own identity.

Then I remember a house I lived in once. It was massive. Most of the walls were paneled with mahogany. There was a similar sort of staircase and a quirky bathroom with a claw footed tub and a window I always forget to pull the blind on (thankfully there were lots of trees). I like Richie had the attic bedroom.

But I'm being sentimental. Despite what I can call to memory like the porch that ran along the front of the house where I hung a porch swing (that I bought at a junkyard for $5), it was a boring house. I was a poor student. I didn't care very much about the ambiance of where I lived so much as comfort and that I could get 200 people inside it on a Friday night.

Still, looking at the last picture of the Tenenbaum flag flying over the neighbourhood I see houses with fascades like those found in Amsterdam. Haarlem was originally a city in Holland (and New York once owned by the Dutch was called New Amsterdam). It keeps me hopeful that eventually I'll see a place and I'll have that moment when I think to myself - 'this is my Tenenbaum house'.

Now all I need is a Chazz to help me close the deal when that day comes. I've already tracked down Margot's wallpaper.

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Ambiance Part I - Tony Duquette

Every great tale needs the perfect setting and so does every great life. In French ambiance can mean, surroundings in its simplest translation. But ambiance is one of those words in French that means many things from the tangible to the intangible such as the fineness of a table napkin to a feeling in the air - to the obvious (the best champagne) and the more subtle (mood lighting).

Ambiance even comes with it's own unique problem - the lack of ambiance. If someone says, ça manque d'ambiance ici that means going elsewhere until the ambiance is just perfect. If Goldilocks had been French she would have risen from the first two beds because they lacked ambiance. 

The easiest way to create ambiance is through decor. Its what makes walking into a beautifully decorated room feel like entering into a sanctuary. Sometimes if you're really lucky you get to walk into another world. I imagine that is how it must have felt to walk into a room decorated by Tony Duquette.

Duquette started in stage and set design and was discovered by tastemaker Lady Elsie de Wolfe Mendl, who is often credited as the inventor of interior design as a profession. As well as being a Lady of high society in New York, London, et Paris – she was also an actress, authoress, and of course an interior decorator.

Elsie in her later years.

Elsie brought the salons and ballrooms of her wealthy clientele out of the dreary Victorian age by dragging it back to a more 18^th century French aesthetic, but her hatred of Victorian décor had its roots in her obviously cruel mother who often told Elsie she was ugly, but “just what ugly was she (Elsie’s mother) did not know”.

One day Elsie returned home from school to see her parents had redecorated the drawing room.

“She ran [in]... and looked at the walls, which had been papered in a William Morris design of gray palm-leaves and splotches of bright red and green on a background of dull tan. Something terrible that cut like a knife came up inside her. She threw herself on the floor, kicking with stiffened legs, as she beat her hands on the carpet.... she cried out, over and over: "It's so ugly! It's so ugly.”

Thusly Elsie developed a lifelong hatred of Victorian furniture and perhaps it might explain why she wrote her autobiography, from which the above story was taken, in the third person.

A room decorated by William Morris.

A room decorated by Lady Elsie de Wolfe Mendl.

Elsie helped Tony get his first gigs decorating for her friends and he had an amazing career – and life. Tony not only did film sets for Vincent Minelli, designed jewelry - he was also the first American artist to be honoured with a one man showing at le Louvre.

What I love about Duquette’s work is he dumpster dived and was fearless. He was the original Do-It-Yourselfer and he was no snob. He happily put 18^th century tapestries next to some crazy wood thing he’d spray painted gold. His greatest accomplishment though was his house, Dawnridge.

There a great blog with more pictures of Duquette's rooms here.

Now even for me a house that was wall to wall in the spirit of Tony Duquette would be a little too much, but juste. My main complaint would be that I wouldn't know how to fit some of my favourite types of design elements into the oppulence of such a room.

I'd love to find a way to mix my grandmother's antiques, my love for jazzing things à la Duquette, and my love for order, the Bauhaus movement, and industrial furniture because when I look at photos of Dawnridge, I can't see a Barcelona chair and matching ottoman feeling at home in such a room.

And I'm not such a fan of such exacting symmetry as you can see in the second photo above. Looking down the room it becomes obvious starting with the two plant stands to the two chairs and even to the two matching purple pillows.

But like I said ambiance can be obvious and most importantly when I look at pictures of Tony's house I cannot imagine for one second that it wouldn't be a perfect setting for a fabulous life. Maybe not mine specifically, but it was the fabulous setting for Tony's own life.

Stay tuned for Part II where I show you the inside of one of my dream houses. It's not going to be what you expect...

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