Built in 2015, the rambling oceanfront pile at 1071 N. Ocean Boulevard in Palm Bech clocks in at a very impressive 35,000 square feet of barrel-tile-roofed wings, vaulted galleries, stately rooms, and grand staircases. The circular driveway is the size of a town square or a proper cour d’honnour of a great chateau in the south of France—of which the Mediterranean style of this place does its best to emulate.
To the sides of the drive are two motor courts accessing the garages. Beyond the cour, the corps de logis spreads out, dividing it from the ocean. That’s 242 feet of direct ocean frontage. Inside, amenities include a grand salon that would make a very respectable ballroom, library, octagonal movie theater, master suite, large guest suite, six more bedrooms, billiards room, two garages that can hold four cars each, two servants apartments, gym, game room, arcade, hair salon, massage room, bowling alley, wine room, grand dining room, family room, very bofo kitchen, ‘her’ office (presumably the library is ‘his’ office when he’s not at work), and little extras that tend to make appearances in big old Palm Beach palazzi. We’re talking a dog room, staff office, butler’s pantry, and an excessive number of powder rooms. Maybe that’s the real definition of luxury though? Never having to walk farther than the length of the ballroom to use the john.
A quick architectural vocabulary lesson here: a cour d’honnour is a large, formal ceremonial court leading to a grand house, which surrounds it on three sides. In the middle is the corps de logis, which is the main part of the house and is flanked by two wings that form the other two sides of the cour. The fourth side of the cour is left open for the public to see, or at least guests coming up the drive. A house with a corps de logis is meant for showing off. Think of Versailles or the Vatican, and you’ll get the idea.
While still under construction back in 2015, the house was put on the market for a bofo $85 million (I wrote about it for Curbed Miami at the time), making it the most expensive house for sale in Palm Beach. Since then it has sat around, with nary a buyer in sight and lost $20 mill in price, settling at $65 million.
