Michael S. Smith Brings Art Deco Flair to a Waterfront Home in Wisconsin

This article originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of Architectural Digest.

January 2009, at one of the many glamorous Washington parties celebrating President Obama’s inauguration, a woman from Chicago was introduced to Michael S. Smith. She told the designer, who had been tapped to make over the Obamas’ family quarters at the White House and would go on to update the Oval Office, that she had a “cupcake” of a project for him: sprucing up a former boathouse at her family’s Wisconsin estate on Geneva Lake. A vacation destination dating from the time of the Civil War, the lake and the nearby town of Lake Geneva have enticed baronial Chicagoans ever since the steel, lumber, and cattle industries minted major fortunes in the city. Indeed, the area came to be known as the Newport of the West on account of the diadem of palatial dwellings ringing its shores. Residents once arrived by train, then had their trunks loaded onto ferries that would usher them to their homes.

Built in the 1920s, the structure entrusted to Smith resembles one of the old steamers run aground, with Art Moderne curves and a chimney reminiscent of a smokestack. (The boat slips were sealed up by a previous owner, who transformed the area into living space.) Locals know the edifice by its nickname, the No-Go, a ship that refuses to budge. “I used to joke to my client about how great it would be,” Smith says, “if we could take it to the Caribbean in winter and the Mediterranean in summer.”

主要的构思与此形成鲜明对比的是,属性residence, a Spanish Colonial Revival house just up the hill, the fanciful structure could almost be mistaken for a folly. In fact, it’s an integral part of life at the estate: Smith’s client determined that the building should be both a guesthouse and, as she notes, “an intensely sophisticated man cave,” where her husband and his friends could play poker, sip scotch, and smoke cigars late into the night.

Design-wise, her hope was for the structure and its interiors to evoke a prewar yacht—a goal Smith accomplished in collaboration with Dennis Rupert, a principal at the Chicago firmHBRA Architects. The existing nautical-style exterior railings and porthole windows (set at clerestory heights) were replaced with new versions, and the rooms were all clad in mahogany. Complementing that paneling are floorboards in alternating finishes, the striped effect recalling the decks of vintage Chris-Craft vessels.

“We looked at a lot of boats from the ’20s and ’30s,” Rupert explains of the process. “Their millwork was perfectly fitted, with a flushness to it but also a remarkable softness—nothing too sharply defined or overexpressed.”

Once the architectural work was complete, Smith, as the client tells it, “provided the frosting.” Though the space almost dared him to decorate with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, the designer opted for a refined mix of mostly early-20th-century furnishings, among them numerous Art Deco finds. “I didn’t want the place to be kitschy—that was a direction the project could have taken,” he says. “After all, it’s a boathouse that looks like a boat. Imagine an airport that looks like a plane. Instead of amusing we wanted elegant.”

To anchor the living room—accessed from either side via an exterior walkway—he installed a marble chimneypiece accented with a steel surround, which is joined by a bespoke sofa in the style of Paul Dupré-Lafon, a pair of vintage Italian cherry armchairs, and parchment-covered side tables by Jean-Michel Frank. Artist Nancy Lorenz, Smith’s frequent collaborator, created a silver-leaf ceramic wall frieze with rippling mother-of-pearl inlays, the iridescent details engaging in a spirited dialogue with a custom-made rug that swirls with a fish motif of Smith’s design. Ever rigorous, he made sure the aquatic species were all indigenous to American lakes. “Even with the historical details, Michael brought a modern touch,” his client says. “I never felt like he was going to put us in a museum.”

At the far end of the room is a compact kitchen, fronted by a whimsical bar decorated with carved mermaid caryatids (a piece original to the main house). Behind this spot lies the spacious main bedroom suite, what the owners call the “captain’s quarters.” Two more sleeping cabins with arched ceilings occupy the floor below. In each of these chambers, carefully coordinated millwork—beds, seating nooks, shelving, and cupboards—achieves what Rupert calls “a totally built-in environment.” There is nothing so precious that it won’t survive the nights when the couple’s young son requisitions the place for a pajama party.

This is a family destination after all. Summer days routinely begin with a leisurely boat ride into town for breakfast, and soon afterward everyone is gathered by—or swimming in—the lake, which by late July takes on a vivid turquoise hue. Only in the evening does the No-Go assume the air of a members-only club, as the client’s husband settles in for a night of cards with friends. His wife does make the occasional cameo: “Every now and then,” she says, “I’ll go down, play a round of Texas Hold’em, and beat the boys.”