On the Market: Arij Gasiunasen's artfully intimate Clarke Avenue home in Palm Beach

Arij Gasiunasen never has understood the appeal of the wide-open spaces that characterize the interiors of so many expansive residences.

 

Give him a more intimate floor plan any day - and especially when he's hosting one of his frequent dinner parties.

 

"I don't like walking in the front door and seeing the whole house. I like privacy," explains Gasiunasen, who is known for offering museum-quality contemporary and modern art at his namesake gallery in Palm Beach.

 

Unfortunately, when he bought his home at 260 Clarke Ave. - five streets north of Royal Palm Way - nine years ago, it featured just the sort of open plan that has always given him difficulty. But at the time, there were only a few houses on the market in Palm Beach, and he liked the French Normandy-style home otherwise.

 

So he formed a plan and got to work. He knocked out the center of the house to create a soaring ceiling over the living room. He enclosed other rooms and combined spaces to finally create the dramatic home that he named "Casa Blanca," with a new layout that worked for his lifestyle.

 

On the outside, he had trees moved from the back of the house to the front. Today, high hedges shelter a lovely sculpture garden with sculptures by Sophie Ryder and Jim Dine.

 

Offering more than 5,750 square feet of indoor living space, the home with four bedrooms and five-and-a-half baths ended up exactly as its owner wished. But Gasiunasen is thinking of starting another residential project, so he has listed his home for sale at $9.35 million through Corcoran Group Real Estate's Palm Beach brokerage.

 

Gasiunasen says he's a stickler for details and believes interior decoration should be a true collaboration between homeowner and designer. So he asked his friend, designer Colleen Kosoy of Palm Beach and Toronto, for help with the basics, then asked Palm Beach designer William R. Eubanks for help with the final execution.

 

The front door - featuring glass overlaid with Art Deco screens from Paris - opens to a dramatic two-story foyer, where the stairway is embellished with wrought iron and brass. The floors are covered in limestone and banded with black. Distinctive black-and-gold columns set off a Hunt Slonem painting in the front foyer, and the walls have been faux-painted to resemble stone blocks.

 

Walking through a Moroccan arabesque arch, one enters the living room, where the two-story ceiling is crowned by a skylight and a lacy wrought-iron light fixture at its center. Edging the second-story space on three sides of the living room is a gallery arcade.

 

As in the foyer, the living room's floor is limestone, and the walls are faux-painted. An Art Deco fireplace mantel is faux-finished in black marble, set off with two columns topped with gold horse heads.

 

The ivory-schemed room, plush with velvet and brocade upholstery, is furnished with giltwood Italian armchairs, along with Biedermeier and Art Deco antiques. The art here includes works by Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz and Alexander Calder.

 

In the south end of the room, columns support a Roman arch that divides the living space from a second, more intimate seating area.

 

"I wanted to separate my living room from what I call the 'Dessert Room.' My dinner guests used to stay at the dining room table forever. Now I move people to this room or my Red Room, or I open the French doors and people spill over outside. That way, they can sit next to someone else to talk."

 

Gasiunasen often refers to rooms by their color. The Red Room is accessed via an arabesque-arched doorway from the Dessert Room. Another such doorway from the living room leads to a bar area and a first-floor sitting room Gasiunasen calls the Yellow Room,

 

The Red Room, set up for media and music, features faux-marquetry walls painted by Robert Speed, the effect heightened by picture moldings, chair rails and a color scheme of deep mahogany. Two sets of French doors open to awning-covered patios, the pool and gardens.

 

Gasiunasen likes to have a pianist or trio play when he entertains. "A white baby grand piano was also painted by Robert Speed. I told him that I like Biedermeier," he explains.

 

A hallway from the Red Room leads to the mirrored-and-glassed bar area, showcasing crystal and framed photographs. Beyond it, in the northeast corner of the house, the Yellow Room's walls are painted a golden strie that offsets the limestone floor. This room, which was once a bedroom, serves as a morning sitting room for guests. Its bathroom has an exterior door, so it can double as a pool cabana.

 

West of the foyer is the dining room, where walls and ceiling are bathed in midnight blue. Furnishings include a custom marble-inset table and gold chairs upholstered in blue velvet that he acquired from the John Paul Getty Jr. estate. Casement windows offer views of the front courtyard and sculpture garden.

 

"Dining rooms should be enclosed," he says. "Originally, this space was all open and was a media room. I like to have a surprise when I have a dinner party. I open the dining-room doors, and the candles are lit - and it's beautiful."

 

The dining room opens to the breakfast room for informal dining. The room's cherry lacquer coordinates with the center-island kitchen, which also offers bar seating. Farther along are a butler's pantry, a laundry area and the garage, as well as a flower-cutting room off the outdoor kitchen. The rear stairs also are found off the kitchen.

 

Upstairs in the east wing of the house is the master suite. The bedroom - decorated in cream, coffee and coral - has hardwood floors and French doors that open to a balcony overlooking the pool. The bed, dressed in cream bed coverings, is draped and topped with a canopy edged with coral trim.

 

The master bathroom includes a dressing room area, an open double shower and a soaking tub set into an alcove.

 

Also part of the master suite is an office with a toffee color scheme.

 

On the west side of the second floor are two guest bedrooms - one decorated in apple green and the other in yellow.

 

"I was in my Toronto or New York mode with those colors," he says. "When I started coming to Florida 30 years ago, the style was all peach walls and white-wicker furniture. I didn't want a Florida home. I wanted something more like a brownstone that you would see in New York or London, where you could mix antiques and art."

 

At the rear of the house, two coral-Keystone patios - with drapery side panels for additional shade - are connected for convenient outdoor entertaining. They're furnished with black rattan chaises sporting rust-color cushions. Two mirror-topped round tables with wrought-iron chairs accommodate dining for 20.

 

Guests on the patios enjoy a view of the pool and backyard sculpture garden, blooming with bougainvillea and surrounded by 20-foot hedges with red and yellow hibiscus.

 

"The outside of the house was always pretty," Gasiunasen says - and thanks to his dramatic artistic vision, the interior is equally appealing.

 

 

For more information about 260 Clarke Ave., call listing agent Abe Gosman at (561) 818-8162.