Rent Yourself Some Palm Beach High Class

OWNER: Estate of Aimee de Heeren
LOCATION: North County Road, Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $90,000/month
SIZE: 13,539 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: The beauty is graced with nine bedrooms overlooking the ocean on the east side of the house, and on the west side there is a salt water pool, floral and rose gardens. There are four fireplaces and an elevator along with a library, living room, dining room, pantry, kitchen, loggia, twelve bathrooms, and many terraces. A two story tower on the ocean hold a living room, bedroom and ladies' and mens' baths. The beach cabana and tennis court complete this splendid vacation paradise.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday Your Mama discussed the sophisticated and soo-blime Manhattan townhouse of deceased international high society icon Aimee de Heeren, who in life was cultured, multi-lingual, beloved by blue bloods every where, and a devout devotee of Omega 3 oils and Dr. Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet which many in her circle believe kept her looking healthy and many years younger than she actually was. At 90, the ladee was said to look 60, and that, children, is really something to strive for.

Thanks to some late night and in depth digging by Billy Blabbermouth, Your Mama has learned that Louwana, Mme. de Heeren's legendary house in Palm Beach is available for lease at $90,000 per month. Located on an ocean front parcel that happens to sit right next door to that vulgarity that Donald Trump has on the market for $125,000,000, the Addison Mizner designed Louwana was built in 1919 by Gurnee Munn and named after his first wife Mary Louise Wanamaker. Mister Gurnee Munn was our Mme. de Heeren's huzband Rodman's mother's (Fernanda Wanamaker Munn de Heeren) first husbands' (Ector Munn) brother. Does that make any damn sense? Lawhd have mercy on our booze addled brain, Your Mama understands quantum mechanics better than we do the labyrinthine family trees of these high society types.

Anyhoo, Louwana is far from the largest or grandest house to line the swanky shores of Palm Beach, however, it is often referred to as "the last great house in Palm Beach." None the less, at more than 13,000 square feet with 9 bedroom and 12 bathrooms, there is plenty of room for several branches of the family tree to take up residence. According to listing information, the house sprawls over 4 levels, and includes formal living and dining rooms, a library, 4 fireplaces, and elevator and staff quarters.

In addition to the main house there is a large salt water pool set in a walled courtyard on the landward side of the house, a tennis court, a large ocean side lawn for rousing games of croquet or bocci or whatever ball games Palm Beachers play in the winter, and a beach cabana offers a living room, bedroom and his and hers bathroom, because the Lilly Pulizter types apparently don't think it's appropriate for the ladees and the mens to be changing in the same room or sitting on the same terlits.

The interior of the house retains that particular sort of grace and genteel that can only be experienced in a house that has been owned for generations by the same family. These rooms are not about some hedge hog or make-up maven buying a piece of architectural and social history and then hiring a nice gay decorator to go up in there and work the interiors into a fanciful facsimile of what a Palm Beach winter estate is supposed to be. This house has been richly layered over time like a catty wompus wedding cake, every rug, every book, lamp and still life painting adding to the depth and quirky richness giving it that elusive, uber-desirable and strong sense of "place" that decorators and homeowners alike are always trying to create.

No babies, Your Mama does not want any flowered chesterfields, Ming vases or pickled paneling up in our seaside residence, but for this house, in this location, with it's history, there is really nothing to be changed. Except that kitchen, because let's be honest, it's looking rode hard and put away wet what with those broken down blinds and plastic dish drainers from the Wal-Mart over in West Palm. And let's talk about the styling for the photographs. Your Mama understands that some of these photos were taken for a magazine layout, but what's with that Flamenco dress flapping in the breeze on the balcony? Please.

Access to the house appears to be either through or adjacent to a small estate that sits directly on the North County Road and which property records reveal belongs to Christopher Kellogg, a man whom Your Mama assumed had all kinds of cereal money, but The Social Butterfly says that's not the case and that particular Kellogg money, or what is left of it, is also from the Wanamaker fortune. Mister Kellogg is in some way connected by marriage and two or three times removed from Mme. de Heeren, but sorry kids, but we're simply too tuckered out to parse the crazy-making Munn/Wanamaker/Kellogg/de Heeren family trees to determine the exact connection between Mister Chris Kellogg and Mme. Aimee de Heeren. Why don't one of you people do it and let me know what you figure out.

It's quite possible that Mme. de Heeren's Palm Beach estate will come to the sale market as well. Although, wouldn't it be so much better if one fo the remaining Wanamaker/Munn/Kellogg heirs grabbed this horse by the reins? Yes, we think so too.