Two years ago, the decorating duo of Gay and Tom Freeman did something that for most of us would be unthinkable: They walked away from their “stuff.”
“We’ve spent our careers really exploring how people live: How they entertain and just everyday things,” Gay says. “It was time to look at our life with new eyes.”
So it was that the pair came face to face with the reality that they had spent 30 years interpreting the living arrangements of many of their clients, and the time had finally come to re-evaluate their own home. Stepping back from a sizable household crammed with elegant furnishings, dozens of paintings and hundreds of books, it was time to decide what they cherished most in their personal surroundings and downsize.
The first leg of Tom and Gay’s personal journey started in a compact Park Cities highrise. But while the old household may have been too big, this one was too small.
“[It] was a place to hang our hat for the moment,” Gay says. “But we continued to look. Then, one morning our real estate agent called and said there was a space we might really want to see.”
And there it was – behind the proverbial Pink Wall in Preston Hollow – just what they were looking for: The right amount of room in a tranquil setting, with some honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned drama.
Stairway to heaven / “It had a glamorous feel,” says daughter and decorating partner Betsy Freeman. “Walking in the door, we got the sense that this was the right spot.”
The apartment’s former owner, the late Edna Zale – wife of Morris Zale, patriarch of the Zale jewelry dynasty – may well have been drawn in by the same arrested sense of style the place exudes. Like the expansive set of a 1950s Hollywood musical, a sweeping staircase in the front hall winds around a fountain to a grand domed skylight outside the entry to the Freeman’s second floor abode.
“I like a little nostalgia…the staircase, the railing are wonderful,” Gay says.
Betsy and Gay immediately saw how the rooms might play out with some of the couple’s favorite things. But it was the coat and the suitcase that really did it for Betsy.
“Some of Edna Zale’s belongings were still here when we first saw the apartment,” she says. “And there it was – the exact 1960s leopard coat from Neiman’s that Mom still has, just a different size. And she had the exact same red leather French luggage. Seemed like it was meant to be.”
“I think the space upstairs is what finally sold us,” counters Gay, referring to a loft-type area Tom immediately began using as his studio. “We’re really going to get it in shape…create his own sanctuary. He hasn’t painted for years and years, but he did some workshops recently and started to get stimulated again.”
So the papers were signed, and it was time for work to begin.
“And we left for Europe. For five weeks,” laughs Gay. Guess who got to be the decorator this time around?
Daughter Betsy takes a deep breath and shrugs: “They left town and I just started bringing in things.”
“We didn’t know what it was going to look like when we got back,” says Gay, clearly a little unaccustomed to sitting in the client’s chair. “But she had it very livable for us.”
In fact, Tom and Gay have been in the process of passing much of the business on to Betsy. The family’s Dragon Street gallery, II Sisters, is actually named for Betsy’s daughters, Alexandra and Sophia. Gay and Tom’s son, Thomas Warren Freeman, opted out of fabric swatches and Persian rugs to be a mechanical engineer in Tulsa, but Betsy is enthusiastic about her parents’ line of work and already has impressive design credits in her own right, including one at the Vatican. Her latest project is designing a line of furniture.
Enough downsizing already / At first, the Freemans thought about going contemporary in their new space, but Betsy pointed out that would necessitate getting rid of a lot of their belongings.
“There were too many things we still have that we love, whether valuable or not,” Gay says. In fact, it seems that almost every object in the Freeman home has significance, either because of its beauty or a personal association, from a fine pair of Venetian chairs to the coffee cups the two granddaughters made for them.
“We may have something quite valuable next to something that costs 50 cents,” Gay says. “But that’s OK, that’s us.”
And they found that after living in the high-rise – what they call “their little experiment in the sky” – moving back into a larger space has its joys.
“Getting all my books unpacked,” Gay says. “Because I read them, and I refer to them. And Betsy uses them a lot. There’s also some art we didn’t have room to hang in the small high-rise.”
Betsy says: “I remember how difficult it was for Mom and Dad to choose what art to take to the apartment when they sold their lake house and their home. They have missed the pieces that have been in storage. We are all enjoying the art again.”
A number of artists are represented in the home’s décor, including Matt Lamb. The Freemans’ gallery has the corner on the local market for the Irish American painter whose works can be found displayed throughout the world in estates and Fortune 500 boardrooms; some of the pieces, which usually fuse religious themes with whimsy and vivid color, hang in the Vatican. The family was among Lamb’s invited guests at an exhibit at Westminster Cathedral, where his paintings were described by the London Times as “teeming with devils, umbrellas, top hats and ladders.”
At last / Today, Etta James’ moody crooning fills the Freemans’ new Paris-style flat, chords bouncing off mulled, fresh colors. The Freemans’ clients have been in 40 states other than Texas, as well as Italy, France, Canada, Ireland and Mexico. They have tackled everything from the historical renovation of a commercial building in San Francisco to an entire floor of the Carnegie Tower in Manhattan.
Currently, the designing family is working on several local residential and commercial projects, as well as homes in Houston, Paris, Durango, Key West and a building in Sarasota, Fla.
Overall, life behind the Pink Wall looks promising.
“We love the space and the location. It’s lovely and quiet and we have lots of privacy,” Gay says.
