Fit for a Vanderbilt

By CHRISTINE DAVIS

Special to Palm Beach Daily News Friday, February 12, 2010

Local history records that Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan's Manalapan dream home, Casa Alva, was indeed the embodiment of her dream come true. Coming from a loveless, forced marriage to the ninth Duke of Marlborough, which had been arranged by her mother when Consuelo was 18 years old, and finally married to the love of her life, Jacques Balsan, she commissioned Maurice Fatio to design their love nest in Florida's tropical paradise in 1932.

The home expressed her delight in, and adoration of, Balsan, a French aviation pioneer, history tells. And nearly 80 years later, her love remains apparent, for Casa Alva is an unabashedly romantic house. You can see it in its pair of undulating, wrought-iron-embellished staircases and its boiseries of all kinds, ages and descriptions. There are gleaming floors, expansive rooms, intimate spaces, a tower, a lake cottage — all placed on exquisitely landscaped acres of land on Point Manalapan, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway.

At age 80, Balsan sold her home and its surrounding land to William Benjamin in 1957, the year after her husband died; she would live seven more years. Benjamin subsequently developed homes in the area as well as the community of Point Manalapan. As part of his plan, he turned her mansion — with its 26,177 square feet of living space, inside and out — into a private club.

Then, 29 years ago, he offered the building for use as a designers' show house, and that's when its beauty struck his wife, Maura. The couple decided to make it their home. Today, however, the Benjamins say they want something a little smaller, and their historic home with eight bedrooms, eight full bathrooms and five half-baths on 5 acres of land with 500 feet on the Intracoastal is offered for sale at $13.5 million through Illustrated Properties in Palm Beach.

Bill Benjamin, a former Manalapan mayor, recalls how he came to buy the house. "I had been buying property on the coast, and as I drove down A1A and looked out over the water, I'd see this house looking back at me. I spoke to a broker about it, and he told me: 'Oh, it's Madame Balsan's house, and it's coming up for sale.' It came with 150 acres of waterfront property.

"At that time, there were plenty of vacant lots in Palm Beach and Delray Beach, and Manalapan was not very interesting. I appreciated the building, but my own interest was real estate. When I bought it, I ended up with over 3 miles of lakefront — and that's worth something. I sold lots and built houses, and these grounds got smaller and smaller, until I said, 'I'm done with developing.'"

Even today, his wife says, the house offers surprises. "Though I've lived here for many years," Maura notes, "I'll be on the phone and I'll notice architectural features — something as simple as a door handle — and think how beautiful it is. Something as plebian as the Cuban tile floors — they are beautifully preserved."

Her list of favorite features in the house, in fact, goes on and on: Her list of favorite features in the house, in fact, goes on and on: "The curved doors in the corners of the dining room and the little green room, Madame's writing room and the enfilade of doors in the hall...."

The boiserie in the master-suite sitting room, she notes, is a fine example of French woodcraft. "It's Regency, from Paris, and because of the depth of the carving, it's extraordinary," Maura says.

Bill still marvels at how architect Fatio crafted a house that perfectly reflected its owner, especially in the way one room flows effortlessly into the next. "She had exquisite taste and the money to enjoy it," he says. "The home flows — and at night, it's beautiful." His wife picks up his thought.

"It flows like a dream," she adds. Although divorced from the Duke of Marlborough, Consuelo Balsan remained friends with some of his relatives, including Winston Churchill, who visited Casa Alva as her houseguest. Churchill made one such trip in 1946, says Bill Benjamin, on his way to Fulton, Mo., to deliver an address at Westminster College.

"I believe that he polished his famous Iron Curtain Speech here. He had been staying at Casa Alva before he went to Missouri," Bill says.

The Churchill connection later extended to the Benjamins — although the link was through Consuelo Balsan's granddaughter, Sarah Churchill, whose father was the son of the Duke of Marlboro. "Sarah Churchill was a friend of mine," Maura explains. "I have a picture of her with Winston smoking cigars together here. They were great friends." She recalls how Sarah Churchill once told her how Consuelo loved to redecorate Casa Alva, sometimes acquiring the contents of a room in toto and then making way for the new by selling the old to antiques dealers in Palm Beach. "Sarah used to sit with her grandmother, and Madame would say, 'Go to Douglas Lorie, and sell this. I just bought another room,'" Maura says.

Bill characterizes 'Madame' succinctly: "She was a real 'Vander-builder,'" he says, using the term coined to describe the famous family's mania for lavish residences. Fatio, in fact, had designed an extravagant mansion across the water for her brother, noted yachtsman Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, shortly before Consuelo built Casa Alva.

Like the oceanfront Villa di Venezia, Casa Alva is positioned to advantage of its dramatic waterfront setting.

"When you are in the living room and look out through the doors, you see the water," Bill notes. "When I first bought this house, you could stand anywhere on that line and see both the east and west lakes.

"I was brought up in big houses, and what I find impressive are the proportions. Go from room to room and you will see that the rooms have different ceiling heights, because each ceiling is in proportion to that room."

In addition to the house, the property itself has a noteworthy history. The Pierce house, one of the first homes in the Manalapan area, once stood on the land, while another early settler house, the original home on the plot, was moved from it and today serves as the Benjamins' garage.

After they acquired Casa Alva, the Benjamins set about updating the décor, and that included redoing the hardwood floors in the living room. "After they were redone, and I saw them for the first time — they were red. It was teak. You can't have bright red in the living room, and we had to re-stain them," Maura says. Maura says the decorating was daunting task.

"If a piece of furniture isn't exactly right for the spot, this house will spit it back out," she quips. "Decorating was a job, but it all came together."

Adds Bill: "No regrets. We've had wonderful years here. We've watched the community grow, and our children and grandchildren have enjoyed being here. "It's been a fun house to play with."

His wife hopes that Casa Alva's third owner will one day express similar sentiments. "We hope someone else will appreciate the house," Maura says. "It's going to be hard to leave."

For information about Casa Alva, 1300 Lands End Road, call listing agents Diana Reed at (561) 714-5860 or Rodney Dillard at (561) 379-5638.