When entrepreneur and real estate developer Anthony Champalimaud sought a new project to nurture and restore, he found the perfect property a short drive from Manhattan in upstate New York. Troutbeck, once a private estate built in the late 18th century in Amenia, and whose several incarnations included an inn, tavern, and conference center, encompasses 45 acres of lush woods, gardens, a peaceful stream, and rolling hills. From its outset, and through its varied lives, Troutbeck has hosted literary, political, and historic personages, from Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Langston Hughes. Champalimaud emphasizes that the compound is not meant to be a museum, but “a place where people want to come to be together.”
In seeking the ideal designer to transform the moribund property to its current modern, understated elegance, he needed to look no further than his mother, Alexandra Champalimaud, founder of her namesake New York firm, with whom he has collaborated several times before. “Alexandra is, of course, a force,” he says. “And, in this case, she has the benefit of having raised her client, so we share a great deal in common and benefit from an ability to work in shorthand. She would simply put her trust in my ideas and I would do the same.”
As for Alexandra, she credits her son with “an amazing vision. He made all the big decisions. He’s very detail-oriented and pretty darn right most of the time. I treated this like any other [professional] relationship, and it was a pleasure.” (In keeping with the intergenerational narrative, Alexandra’s husband, private equity investor Bruce Schnitzer, has overseen Troutbeck’s landscape design, and Johan, Anthony and his wife Charlie’s toddler son, serves as an unofficial goodwill ambassador—when available.)
In designing the interiors, mother and son wanted to avoid the expected tropes—what Anthony describes as “Laura Ashley meets Ethan Allen.” Says Alexandra: “We wanted to keep it as simple and honest as possible.” Each space—there are currently 37 guestrooms in three separate buildings, as well as a restaurant, swimming pool, tennis court, and walled garden—is individual, each with a mixture of original custom pieces and reconstructed vintage furniture. “We want it to look as if we owned it for a long time,” she says. The palettes throughout are gentle combinations of muted, classic, warm colors. Only paint—no artwork—adorn guestroom walls.
The Champalimauds have steeped themselves in the local history thanks to scrupulous research by Charlie, a preservationist, who found that hospitality figured very strongly in all of the former iterations of the estate. “We wanted to be respectful of everything the previous owners had done,” says Anthony, “but we wanted to reorient it to today’s values and how we like to live. Nothing ostentatious, but everything correct.”
