ISLANDHOPPING - The Wakaya Club & Spa

122 PALM BEACH ILLUSTRATED
ISLAND HOPPING
DAVID AND JILL GILMOUR FIND KARMIC BALANCE AT THEIR
PALM BEACH, FIJI AND MANHATTAN HOMES.
David and Jill Gilmour enjoy the
tropical splendor of Palm Beach.
Their Wyeth home (opposite
page) is adjacent to the
Everglades Club golf course.
BY A.B. TIMBROOK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JERRY RABINOWITZ
Sega na leqa.
The Fijian phrase that loosely translates to “Don’t
worry, be happy” seems to well define the tranquil
lifestyle led by Canadian entrepreneur David
Harrison Gilmour and his wife of 26 years, Jill.
Spending their days surrounded by lush banyan
trees, mist-laden orchids and exotic birds at their
Marion Sims Wyeth-designed estate on Palm
Beach—or amid virgin beaches, towering cliffs and
untamed horses on Wakaya, an unspoiled Fijian
island they acquired in the early ’70s—the couple is
most at home in a secluded oceanside paradise.
“The three islands I really recommend in the
world are, of course, Manhattan, Palm Beach and
the Fijis because they give you the entire spectrum
of what a woman and a man should be experiencing
on a regular basis from every point of view: health,
wealth and happiness,” says David, who also keeps
a pied-à-terre in Manhattan.
After living in London and Paris, Toronto-born
David, and Jill, a native of Auckland, New Zealand,
decided to make their home in America, honing in
on Palm Beach for its rich history, tradition of
preservation and proximity to David’s business ventures
in New York. He is a founder of Barrick Gold
Corp., South Pacific Hotel Corp. and the TrizecHahn
real estate empire, and more recently the founder of
Fiji Water. His current venture is Zinio Systems
Inc., a digital publishing and distribution platform

124 PALM BEACH ILLUSTRATED
The living room is a treasure trove of art,
including Degas’ Le Ballet (right).
Opposite page: The dining room houses
the Gilmours’ collection of English
paintings of the sporting life.
for more than 1,200 paperless magazine
titles and textbooks, including VIVmag, the
first 100-percent digital magazine.
“I could see that the island of Palm
Beach couldn’t slip away like so many
places have,” says David. “There’s been
huge progress in the 15 years that we’ve
known Palm Beach, but the island itself
has retained a lot of its wonderful feeling
of privacy and beauty, and many examples
of fine architecture.”
They bought their Golfview Road manse
sight unseen for its location—steps from the
shops and restaurants of Worth Avenue, yes,
but more importantly for its isolated lot, surrounded
on three sides by the manicured
greens of the Everglades Club golf course.
The couple transformed the nearly
untouched 1926 home into the comfortable
retreat where they now spend five months
out of the year, commissioning British
designers Derek Parker and Peter Morris
to oversee the renovation.
“They came out of retirement to do this
house and one house in Southampton, and
then promptly went back into retirement,”
recalls Jill, who had specific plans for everything
from the trompe l’oeil to the custommade
Balinese area rugs in the formal living
room. “In fact, I typed up a spec sheet,
which they referred to as Jill’s Book, with
heights of door handles and switches and all
these other things.” Jill, who studied at New
York School of Interior Design, even
designed the front portico with an upstairs
balcony to shelter guests from tropical rains.
Noted trompe l’oeil artist Pierre
Finkelstein added romantic rosettes to
existing stone molding in the living room,
which complements the eclectic collection
of furnishings and artwork, including the
late nineteenth century Le Ballet and Woman
Wearing a Boa by Edgar Degas, and a
Venetian School series depicting life at the
four corners of the earth.
“We went for an eclectic feeling with a lot
of the things that we love from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, always
including some Asian pieces,” she adds.
“We have Buddhas in all our houses in some
situation or another, and we find an Asian
mix to be very harmonious to live with.”
The dining room is home to David’s
collection of English artwork, depicting
sporting hounds and their masters on
horseback. At the room’s center is a round
English claw-foot pedestal dining table from
the early nineteenth century, surrounded by
eighteenth-century English Regency dining
chairs from Lord Hamilton’s estate, each
painted with a different Etruscan scene.
David had a guest room converted into a
study that now serves as his business
communication headquarters and houses

his noted Winston Churchill collection,
which includes a Frank O. Salisbury portrait
of Churchill that once hung at 10
Downing Street. Nearby, atop a marbletopped
Louis XV table, a seventeenth-century,
five-piece Dutch earthenware tulipiere
sits before a grand picture window.
Off the study is what the Gilmours call
their “Wakaya room,” a tropical, casual
screening room rife with Pacific Basin
art, including Fijian war clubs inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, late nineteenth-century
Chinese ceramic parrots and a Sepic
River sculpture from New Guinea
depicting the stylized ribs of a man,
which is a fertility symbol.
The self-proclaimed foodies, who enter-
126 PALM BEACH ILLUSTRATED
tain family and friends weekly, also added
a wine cellar off the gourmet kitchen,
which is outfitted with azure lapis marble
and restaurant-grade Traulsen appliances,
including a walk-in refrigerator and a separate,
full-sized wine chiller stocked with
Champagne, crisp whites and rosés.
Three small bedrooms upstairs were
combined to create a regal master suite
with his-and-hers master bathrooms and
dressing rooms. Against a wild backdrop
of walls upholstered in multicolored
blooms and peacock feathers (a reproduction
in cotton by Manufacture Prelle in
Lyon of the nineteenth-century silk brocade
found in Marie Antoinette’s personal
chambers) is a collection of antique fur-
Pierre Finkelstein added the romantic rosettes to
the living room’s stone molding. Opposite page:
David Gilmour’s collection of Winston Churchill
memorabilia (top right) is displayed in the study.
The master bedroom (bottom) is a regal retreat.
nishings, including English Louis XVI
chairs situated around a Louis XIV cabinet,
a Louis XV armoire, a Provençal Louis
XV desk and arm chair, and a French Louis
XV bench, all pulled together by several
nineteenth-century Aubusson rugs.
“A lot of people think it a little extravagant
to have it on the floor, but it’s not like
you’re coming off the street wearing filthy
shoes,” Jill says in defense of the latter.
Outside, landscape architect Mario
Nievera planted a tropical landscape to
mirror that of Fiji’s South Pacific splendor.
“We wanted to take advantage of the
unique position of the house, thus we put
in a sheer fence at the south border,” Jill
says of the wrought iron gate that allows

“ ”
128 PALM BEACH ILLUSTRATED
I COULD SEE THAT THE ISLAND OF PALM BEACH COULDN’T SLIP AWAY
LIKE SO MANY PLACES HAVE. —DAVID GILMOUR
their compact carpet of zoysia grass
to flow uninterrupted into the golf
course greens. “We wanted a serene,
subtropical feel, and installed Canary
Island date palms of varying heights
to contrast with the various species
of (banyan) trees. Gardenias, being
our favorite flower, are a feature, as
are boxwood, hibiscus and variegated
crotons, which give wonderful
color all year round.”
Hardscapes reflect the Gilmours’
eclectic art and antiques collection,
which spans more than 2,000 years
from ancient Chinese chinoiserie to
contemporary works and hails from
nearly every continent. Above a dining
table, a lighted dome grants the
The Gilmours have created a tropical
haven in their Palm Beach home.
Opposite page: David’s Churchill
collection includes, among other
objects, a Salisbury portrait that once
hung at 10 Downing Street.
Gilmours a stylized view of the stars
of the Southern Cross. And across
the garden from an infinity pool
lined with Bisazza Italian tiles
stands La Vencoise, a seven-foot-tall
sculpture by James Ritchie, a replica
of the original outside a cathedral in
the South of France.
Still, their Palm Beach home is but
one piece of a harmonious puzzle.
David calls his 5,500-square-foot
postwar New York apartment, with
its emphasis on Asian art and
antiques and its east-to-west views
of Central Park, a Wakaya in the sky.
“It’s the forty-second floor,” he says.
“It is, I think, the perfect way to live
in New York. We enjoy Manhattan,
PALMBEACHILLUSTRATED.COM | JANUARY 2008 129

ut two or three months a year is plenty.”
Rated the No. 1 Island Resort by Andrew
Harper’s Hideaway Report, their luxurious
Wakaya Club resort has become one of the
most exclusive getaways for the well-traveled.
Celebrities and politicos who flock to
the island, including Bill and Melinda
Gates, Nicole Kidman and Celine Dion, can
expect the utmost in privacy, be it on a
deserted beach or within the new 4,500square-foot,
two-bedroom Ambassador’s
Bure, which includes a private spa treatment
room for two, a privately staffed
gourmet kitchen, and a private shiatsu
pool that is contiguous to a private beach.
David attributes the attraction not to the
cottage suites, but to the land itself and to
the 72 Fijian families who run the estate
and its village. “Part of the reason Fiji is so
unusual is that Fijians are totally indigenous,”
he says. “They’ve been there for
The landscaping at the Gilmours’ Palm Beach
home was designed to mirror Fiji’s splendor.
Vale O at the Wakaya Club (right) is a study in
simple elegance. Opposite page: The
sculpture is a replica of La Vencoise,
which is in the South of France.
honored guest. Being surrounded by these
people that truly love and respect you, that
is a sense of giving that goes beyond money
or material things.”
In addition to their 12,000-square-foot
Vale O, or “House in the Clouds,” the
Gilmours are building another modern private
manse on Wakaya, to be completed in
December 2008. Vale O will be renamed the
Royal Suite, in honor of Spanish Crown
Prince Felipe, who honeymooned there. For
the new house, Jill has a new version of Jill’s
Book with story boards on each room detailing
everything from leather chaise lounges
to teak bathtubs and loose pebble floors.
“Fiji is where we’ll house our Asian collection,”
says David.
After all it is the harmony of art, nature
and luxury that has kept the Gilmours at
peace for decades, and will continue to do
so for decades to come.
Sega na leqa indeed. u
thousands of years. They look at you as an BARBARA KRAFT
130 PALM BEACH ILLUSTRATED PALMBEACHILLUSTRATED.COM | JANUARY 2008 131
BARBARA KRAFT