Tour a Meticulously Reinvented Art Moderne Classic in Dallas

This project was a tall order for AD PRO Directory designer Avery Cox and her team. It was one thing to delicately update a rare 1930s Art Moderne house in the leafy Park Cities enclave of Dallas, where the inclination is often to raze architectural gems in favor of grander piles. The fact that it was Cox’s own beloved childhood home was quite another.

“They made me interview for this job,” recalls the Austin-based decorator of her father and stepmother, the home’s current residents. “Obviously I wanted to be the one to help do this, but it would also be a huge emotional lift—recreating it for my dad and my stepmom and still honoring the architecture and spirit of the home.” That spirit, says Cox, is characterized by a sense of creativity and fun, all packaged within a creamy white façade, curving cruise-liner corners, steel windows, and public rooms of throwback scale with ample sunlight. Everyone agreed: Even though the house was slated for an entirely new chapter, the vocabulary Cox would use to write it had to be familiar.

Even before hiring their decorator, the clients, Martin and Sherry Tucker Cox, had identified the architect they wanted to oversee the build. William Curtis, of Houston-based firm Curtis & Windham Architects, had known the family for years, thanks to a multigenerational holiday retreat, a Wyoming dude ranch, that they shared. Curtis insists he’s no preservationist, though he has an outsize reputation for maximizing a building’s potential while remaining respectful of its original scale, materials, and setting. “The whole project was more of an interior reclamation,” he says, “of capturing the house and taking it back to an honest point when it might have been done originally.”

Once Cox had signed on, that reclamation process began on the first floor, where her father and stepmother wanted to underscore the home’s period-specific attributes. She began by conducting intensive research and was soon drawn to certain Art Moderne principles—organic silhouettes juxtaposed with linear architectural details, moments of saturated color and reflective materials against neutral fields, and entre-nous furniture setups—from the 1920s and ’30s. A base palette, working plan, and artwork suggestions allowed her to “build the design from the get-go with almost total buy-in,” she says. “Avery did deep research,” her stepmother explains, “and found unique fabrics, pieces of furniture, and quality artisans.”

Cox kept the focus on easy entertaining. “They’re both very social and love to host parties,” she shares. “My dad loves to cook and mix a cocktail and have music everywhere—indoor, outdoor.” (He’s locally famous for hosting a weeklong evening keg party in the backyard each November.) A jewel-box-blue wet bar connecting the living room and pantry, and better access to the streamlined coved kitchen, were both incorporated in the plan. That way, the designer notes, “you never get stuck in a corner.” Curtis says this was achieved largely by refashioning the downstairs rooms to “visually bleed together through [enlarged] openings or portals.”

To amplify the volume downstairs, Cox—who, named after the artist Milton Avery, looked to his oeuvre to inspire her own color choices—was clever not to miss the opportunity to make a few bold gestures. Among them: lacquering the dining room ceiling in a peachy hue from Fine Paints of Europe; lining the bar with industrial-grade high-polish aluminum siding; anchoring the living room with a vintage purple B&B Italia daybed; and soaking the den in texture-rich shades of blue-green. There’s also a palpable synergy between those elements and the clients’ own vibrant artwork, some of it by Cox’s late mother, who was an artist. “A lot of our family friends say this house just vibrates at a different frequency,” Cox says.

Refashioning the upstairs, meanwhile, was all about crafting a serene, functional, and private space for the couple. Walls were removed in the primary bedroom to create a unified space flooded with natural light from three exposures; it’s perfect, says Sherry, Cox’s stepmother, for curling up with a book. A dressing room with cozy Art Deco swivel chairs covered in caramel mohair is a favorite spot for the clients to unwind at the end of the day. And the white primary bathroom, a bright corner-windowed expanse, is accented by viola marble, substantial hardware, and the same custom plasterwork fluting that adds drama to the home’s kitchen island.

Now, looking back, when asked to distill the four-year project into its key elements, the designer doesn’t hesitate. “The most important thing is the unpretentious nature of the home, the honoring of the architecture, the playfulness, and the spirit of the residents,” Cox says. “It feels very welcoming.”