Tread carefully when you visit Joe Montebello and Ron Leal: Their two snow-white West Highland terriers, Cate and Maggie, are the same color as the floor of their 1950s Cape Cod–style house in Litchfield, Connecticut. These painted wood floors are dazzling, and this universal whiteness makes the place feel light and bright the year round, even on a dull day. That said, according to Leal, “The house is best of all in the snow—its whiteness continues inside and out.” When the pair found the place (originally intended as a weekender, but since 2004 a full-time residence), it looked very different. “It was a much more formal house when we bought it,” says Montebello. “Floors were an uninteresting brown wood with beige carpeting, and—with the low ceilings—I just wanted them to be whiter.” Leal adds, as if still in shock, “There were floor-to-ceiling white taffeta drapes puddled onto the floor, Sister Parrish striped wallpaper throughout the house, dark red wainscoting—and no books.”
The last comment draws attention to the fact that the house is now filled with books—over 4,000 of them. Many of these date from a period of over 30 years when Montebello was the creative director and vice president of HarperCollins Publishers. He even founded his own imprint, HarperStyle, where he oversaw many design best sellers, including Carolyne Roehm’s first book, A Passion for Flowers. (Montebello left the business in 2004, the same year Leal retired from his career as a fashion designer.)
Both men have always been interested in interior design. Floor-to-ceiling books (fastidiously and visually arranged, like interactive wallpaper) line the walls of the centrally placed dining room, which doubles as a library. “We built everything around the books,” says Leal, which add color and a festive air to dinner parties. Organized by subject, today they are used as reference material for Joe’s radio and cable-TV show, Between the Covers, on which he interviews authors. He also writes regular reviews for a local magazine. Needless to say, the excellent Marcel Breuer–designed library across the street is seldom needed.
The first change the couple made to the house was to create a new, larger kitchen—Leal is an accomplished cook. This is kept simple and predominantly white, with a large island counter that ends at a breakfast table overlooking the garden. The living rooms are minimally decorated. Leal and Montebello have collected photography for decades, beginning with a visit to the Staley-Wise Gallery about 30 years ago when they were given a Jacques-Henri Lartigue print. Montebello subsequently produced books on Annie Liebowitz, Walker Evans and Francesco Scavullo. Their prints are propped on the fireplace and on specially constructed shelves, a supporting device borrowed from Manhattan designer Vicente Wolf. (Montebello edited Wolf’s 2002 book Learning to See.) Color is kept to a minimum, predominantly beige and brown. Pattern is introduced with zebra and leopard prints, and the stairs up to the guest quarters are lined with leopard-printed carpet.
The capacious master bedroom suite is a new addition to the end of the house. It was designed by Kate Briggs Johnson, a locally based architect, in the same style as the rest of the house. Montebello’s remarkably uncluttered home office is at one end of the bedroom: an Apple laptop sitting on a Vicente Wolf window table. To keep him company, shelves line the end wall, populated by framed photos from their collection and, as often as not, by his two white-on-white Westies.
This article was featured in the Spring 2009 Home Observer.
