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White Christmas

This Summit Avenue holiday home defines enchantment

Photo by Maki Strunc Photography
Styled by D’ette Roberts

Making the holidays magical for children requires little skill. With once-a-year gatherings of people, school vacation, and the possibility of Santa-delivered toys, the momentum builds on its own. Add the scent of an evergreen in the house, strings of colored lights and a few discount ornaments—no matter how haphazardly applied—and you can fill a kid with wonder that lasts until New Year’s. But we fickle adults—over-worked, over-wrought, with too many Christmas squabbles and too many extra pounds—we are the ones that need enchanting. Filling an adult with holiday spirit takes a flair for drama, a steady eye for color and texture, and a sure sense of escapism. In short, it takes an interior designer. One such miracle worker on Summit Avenue in St. Paul counterbalances the annual blizzard of holiday kitsch with scenes of unadulterated winter elegance. From the extravagant coyote fur in the living room to the sugared fruits in the dining room chandelier to the glittered bird nests on the oak staircase, interior designer Ann Fontaine’s holiday home is like a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale mixed with 1940s Hollywood glam.
 

Big old houses like this were made for entertaining, for gathering people together,” says Fontaine, owner of Fontaine Designs in St. Paul.

When friends and family arrive at her door for the annual Christmas Day open house, the setting works its magic on everyone. Knotted shoulders ease, laughter flows, and lips hum along with Harry Connick Jr. on the sound system. Regardless of what her guests have going on in their crazy-busy lives, Fontaine gives them a few hours of sparkle and glow.

She conveys holiday spirit so effortlessly because she lives with a cool palette through all four seasons. Dressed in linen white trim, fluffy white furs, creamy-hued quilted velvet chenille, and metallic leather, the house has the kind of icy glamour that Barbara Barry made famous. It could put a chill in your bones, but the arctic palette is offset by the northern light streaming through the windows and sheepskin throws that embody warmth. The walls of the owner’s bedroom and bathroom, painted “Brushed Steel,” say “ethereal,” not “industrial,” and the white onyx bathroom floor is as crisp and pure as the surface of Como Lake after a hard freeze. “Particularly with a big formal house, the task is taking a cold, formal shell and warming it up with lots and lots of textures and fabrics and furs,” Fontaine says.

She purchased the house in February 2005, from an elderly couple who had raised children there, but could no longer care for a massive home that must meet all the preservationist requirements that accompany a residence on Summit Avenue. “They loved the house, but it had become much too much,” says Fontaine.

From the start of the renovation, she worked to be true to the spirit of the house, without being a slave to historical correctness. She returned the grainy oak trim to its original luster in the dining room and foyer, but coated the living room in her favorite paint, Benjamin Moore’s “Linen White.” “The preservationists are going to hate me for it, but it needed the lightness,” she says.

In the living room, she tore out the coal-burning unit in the fireplace, replaced the oak mantel with one of cast stone, and added custom built-ins on each side, with leaded-glass insets modeled after original stained glass in the built-in buffet. That same glass reappears over the cocktail bar in the kitchen, a space demolished to the studs to get rid of the isolated servant’s kitchen and improve the flow of the main level. A carpenter replicated the original wood trim and added corbels over the range hood that mimic woodwork designs found in the foyer.

Fontaine’s vision throughout was “refined but never formal.” When she discovered exposed brick on the kitchen walls, she covered it up again to avoid a “pub” look. In the living room turret area, where some might have opted for a grand piano, she designed a moon-shaped settee with biscuit-tufted ottomans in a flat beige leather. For main-floor window treatments, she added simple silk-blend shades, rather than ornate draperies, to keep the focus on the architecture and the woodwork.

Maki Strunc Photography

Throughout the main level, she compromised between the house and her own “soft contemporary” aesthetic. But on the upper floors Fontaine plays freely, unencumbered by historic premises. Her bedroom is the realization of a photo she saw years ago of an enormous raw silk upholstered wall in lieu of a headboard. “I carried that magazine clipping around with me for six years,” she says. The tufted wall she designed seems to hold the bed and bedside table in a breathtaking wool-blend embrace.

A guest suite down the hall became a glorious private owner’s bath, with custom “Linen White” cabinetry brushed with a silvery metallic glaze, satin nickel fixtures, an ottoman cube at the dressing table covered in ivory terrycloth, and a contemporary version of the claw-foot tub, refinished in the same shade of “Linen White.” The most spectacular feature is the white onyx floor, with touches of gray and the softest hints of blue. “It’s bright and polished, just like an ice-skating rink,” she says.

Across the hall is 8-year-old Adriana’s bedroom, painted a soft peach and finished, in typical Fontaine fashion, with a cushy cut-pile custom rug that matches the patterning on the linens, sheepskin throw, and monogrammed upholstered headboard. In this room, mom and daughter settle down to read Mr. Finnegan’s Giving Chest, Adriana’s favorite Christmastime book, and gaze across the street. “There’s a huge tree that’s all lit up in front of the governor’s mansion, and our neighbors have a massive tree that they cover in a gazillion white lights,” Fontaine says. It just goes to show that sometimes—just sometimes—the holidays are enchanting all on their own. Even for us fickle adults.

Alyssa Ford is the associate editor of Midwest Home.

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