No matter the style or scale, however, his sixth sense for the provision of creature comforts is evident throughout his work. “He just knew how to design a house for cultured living,” notes Escher. It’s telling that Williams opted for modernism in his own residence, yet the functionalist disposition of the rooms is balanced with richly personal details. “On one hand, it’s still sort of a traditional layout in how the kitchen and back-of-house facilities are organized,” says GuneWardena. “But the plan is very modern in how you enter: There’s this stair hall that’s kind of like the center of the pinwheel, and then the three main spaces angle off there.”
When it came to understanding the complex mix of styles in the house, Williams’s library offered an important clue. GuneWardena found a 1950s press photograph of the architect in his office in which he could read the spines of books on his shelves. These included several volumes on interiors by French designers including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, so it’s no surprise that Williams, whose buildings spanned the architectural spectrum from Beaux Arts to Space Age, wove Art Deco details inside his own International Style house.
One particularly evocative flourish is the wrought-iron staircase railing embellished with galloping cast-brass gazelles. Another striking feature—a request from Mrs. Williams after the couple visited a similar space at a country club in Jamaica—is the so-called Lanai room with its coffered ceiling and stone floor that opens to the back garden. Escher and GuneWardena also carefully uncovered the dreamy original sorbet-like color palette under layers of white paint: The rooms had originally been swathed in pale pistachio and rose.
To give the interior a contemporary aesthetic that picks up the thread of the history without feeling like a museum, Cotton and Lewis studied the extant elements and surviving furniture. Cotton says they carefully considered “what it meant to restore the existing pieces, what it meant to add additional pieces, what it meant to have the architecture, which is so strong and so interesting—and really, in many ways, the star of the show—be at the forefront. And then, how does someone actually live in this and bring their own life to it?”
