Cherry Hill

Avery Island is a lush, subtropical island in South Louisiana that is the home to Tabasco Sauce and many of those family members who still own the popular product. A hilltop with strong Gulf breezes on the southernmost point of the island provided the perfect site for the owners – descendants of Mr. E.A. McIlhenny – who were enamored with Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest outside of Lynchburg, Va.

Because many of the Avery Island homes are summer cottages with metal roofs, this 6,000 square foot house evolved into a “laid-back”, contemporary interpretation of a Palladian Villa. An octagonal dining room occupies the center of the cross-axial scheme, and the room’s double walls contain a hidden stair that leads to a rooftop widow’s walk offering views of a bay just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. The dining room sits within a large cube whose clerestory windows bring light into the middle of the house. Major rooms with wonderful vistas branch off of the cardinal points of the dining room and relate to special places on the site including the entry court, Live Oak meadow, pool terrace and pepper fields beyond.

The interior spaces are painted a warm white, accentuating the clerestory light that pours into the central dining room and filters into the living spaces. Directoire French antiques and mid-century modern pieces by Frankl, Wormley, Robsjohn-Gibbings and Murano share the spaces and are unified by a soft palette of fabrics in beige, brown and pale blue.