Dominique Bluhdorn
& LULU FARMS
Previously Known As The Dreyfus Estate
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jane Beiles & Andrea Ceraso
HAIR AND MAKEUP: Rina Rama at Eva Scrivo Salons
An invitation to Dominique Bluhdorn’s is something special! Five years ago she acquired, and has since completely renovated, the estate formerly owned by the world-renowned investment banker Gérard William Louis-Dreyfus, located in the still-estate section of Mount Kisco. The estate was named Lulu Farm by Louis-Dreyfus with reference to the poem of that name by Charles Causley, and came complete with the scores of deciduous trees and medley of gardens, poetry cottage, guest house, barn, tennis court and pool and pool house Louis-Dreyfus originally installed when he moved onto the property a half-century ago. Passing through the large iron gate and ascending the switchback driveway, bordered by ancient stone walls and towering pines, and with acres of apple orchards and meadows in the distance - and still getting GPS directions - there’s the feeling of having arrived in a Bronte novel in the English countryside. Turning into the courtyard, the main house immediately impresses, but more for its classic beauty than its size. Getting inside is a glimpse at great design! …And, with staff unobtrusively buzzing about, Dominique, still just a few years too young to be called the ‘grand dame’, but very much commanding center stage, is the perfect hostess.
Dominique is the daughter of Charles Bluhdorn, the swashbuckling and hard-charging Austrian immigrant known as Charlie, who, before his death at the age of 56 in 1983, when Dominique was 22, built Gulf + Western into one of the first behemoth conglomerates made up of disparate parts. With Gulf + Western, Charlie acquired farflung enterprises such as the Consolidated Cigar Company, Kayser-Roth, Simon & Schuster, Madison Square Garden, Paramount Pictures - as most recently portrayed in the Paramount series The Offer, Charlie was the studio boss behind The Godfather movie series - and the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company, with it’s 300,000 acre property where the Chavon River meets the Caribbean beach in La Romana, on the southern shore of the Dominican Republic, where Charlie developed the 7,000 acre, ultra-luxury resort known as Casa de Campo.
Dominique remembers an ordinary early childhood attending Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan, and spending weekends on Florida Hill Road in Ridgefield, Connecticut, saying “My mother, Yvette LeMarrec, who came to America from France, had a huge influence on me. My older brother, Paul, and I, were raised with pretty traditional morals and values. We had plastic slipcovers on the furniture. If there was anything different about us, it was how my father seemed like a citizen of the world, and that we felt European and American. My dad was already making plenty of money, but ‘rich’ was not something in his vocabulary, and was certainly never our focus. He had a vision for things, and taught us only that there were unlimited possibilities, and that we had unusual opportunity to achieve. My dad allowed me to do, and even facilitated, whatever I wanted to do, as long as I was disciplined and working hard at whatever it was. He had no patience for dilettantes.”
But Dominique’s coming of age was everything but normal and there can be no mistaking the extraordinary life and circumstances she’s experienced! By 6th Grade, she was living in the family’s apartment at 810 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and had enrolled at Spence. “My dad was always working, and people who worked for my dad in one part of Gulf + Western or another, and who I think were mentored by my dad - like Barry Diller, who was like another son to my father, Martin Davis, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who obviously all went on to do great things - were always around. We often spent summers in the south of France in a little place called Port La Galere so my mother could be with her French family. My father loved driving a small motorboat — which he did very poorly - and parking alongside the huge yachts, whose owners would peer down and say ‘Oh, there’s Charlie’. But even those vacations seemed to revolve around my dad’s business meetings. When we crossed the Atlantic on the QE2, he had a special phone installed in his room so he could make deals to sell Paramount films for television.”
“He’d acquired the land in the Dominican Republic when I was young, so by the time I was in junior high school, we were constantly traveling to Casa de Campo. A big part of my dad’s vision for Casa de Campo revolved around the construction in stone of a replica 16th Century village, named Altos de Chavon - after its location high atop the banks of the Chavon River gorge. He wanted Altos de Chavon to be a local artists village and a global cultural center. He included a 500 seat amphitheater as a feature of the village and, just before he died, Altos de Chavon opened with the Concert for Americas, broadcast all over the world, and starring Frank Sinatra, who was a friend of my dad’s, and the great drummer Buddy Rich, and Heart, and Santana” Dominique remembers warmly.
“My dad went to Columbia University for a short time when he got to New York, but quickly dropped-out to go into business. My brother, who my dad dubbed ‘the family intellectual’, went to Harvard, but my dad made it clear I was to go right to work,” Dominique explains. “Starting when I was 15, I had a job working at the Dominican Tourist Information Center in New York City, and straight out of high school I started working full-time. By the time he died, I’d already moved to the Dominican Republic and become fully vested in the work at Altos de Chavon.”
“I was inspired, and helped found the Altos de Chavon School of Design. Our original mission was, very broadly, to foster design in the Dominican Republic. It started out by fostering a couple of dozen talented Dominican kids, and evolved into an acclaimed two-year college-level program in all areas of design. …And it’s been my life’s work! The aspiration is for it to be a sustainable arts and educational center, serving its population into the future, and continuing to produce disproportionately successful and talented designers who shape industry. It’s extraordinary, transformational in nature, and my involvement with all the talented and dedicated students and faculty - including even a few teachers who were students - sustains me.”
Indeed, Dominique has been the President of the Altos de Chavon Cultural Center Foundation and School of Design since 1981. She oversaw the growth of the institution as an integral part of Altos de Chavon, providing a full-time boarding school education in design to up to 120 students living and studying in the village each term, and ultimately thousands of students who’ve benefited over the years. She stewarded the School through Covid and her team adapted the curriculum to the digital age. She also led the School’s affiliation with the Parsons School of Design in New York and the development of a two-year college-level program in all areas of design and film. In addition, Dominique serves on the Board of Trustees of The New School, and as Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the Parsons School of Design.
Dominique’s lifelong passion for public service was most certainly influenced by her late husband, Hatuey De Camps. “I met Hatuey when I was only 21, but we didn’t marry until much later. He was a politician from a young age, and worked as a student leader to help bring down the regime of the then dictator Trujillo. We were introduced by the then President-elect of the Dominican Republic - and were definitely not impressed with each other at that first meeting. He eventually became Secretary of State, and President of the Lower House of Congress, and ran for President himself - twice. He had five children from two previous marriages – and then we had a daughter, Gabriela …and then, surprise of all surprises, triplets, Alexandra, Olivia, and Charlie. My stepchildren and children are wonderful and together we had a very close family life, primarily located in Santo Domingo.” Sadly, when the triplets were only 6 years old, Hatuey was diagnosed with colon cancer. He passed in 2016. “To this day we are a very united family - a wonderful legacy created for me and all the kids by Hatuey.”
Sitting in one of two luxuriously casual garden rooms on the first floor, Dominique explains, I first fell in love with Lulu Farm from pictures I saw of the trees and gardens, the red barns, the cow, and even the historic 1870’s main house that Louis-Dreyfus had on the property, and I bought the estate in 2018. …I had an expansive vision for the whole place. I may not have been completely realistic, but I was determined! …When my brother Paul, who also lives nearby in Bedford, came to have a look at the property, he said ‘Nico’, the nickname he uses for me, ‘Are you sure you want to get into this level of work? Do you have any idea what you are getting into???’ …So I was pleased to have his wife, Anni de Saint Phalle, who understood the potential from the beginning, to support me and my endeavor.”
Dominique recalls, “The truth was that when I bought the property in 2018 it was grown over and needed a ton of work. Not livable…but it all spoke to me! From the beginning I felt a kind of spiritual connection with this magical property, and most especially the trees. I worked my way from outside in. Together with my then landscape architect, Brian Grubb, we immediately started rethinking and reworking the outdoors. Among the things involved was moving and protecting about 50 of the big trees around the house to a nursery we created just for those trees. They were above the ground for almost two years while we did construction. We moved roads, and created stone paths and wild gardens along the way. I became obsessed with burying the power lines that ran throughout the property entangled in the big trees. It took me six months to get permits to begin all of the work we contemplated, and we got started with construction in January 2019, right when Covid started. I collaborated closely on the architectural redesign of the main house with Charlotte Worthy, who’s a fabulous architect I’d worked with before, and who really takes her ego out of it and works to get done what the client wants. We blew out the sides of the house to accommodate another layer of rooms on each side, and expanded the back of the house to accommodate a porch that spans the width of the entire house and overlooks the pool and west side of the property. I brought in Max Apton to start work on the trees and gardens, and a crew of landscapers got to work on the 24 acres of property…and they’ve been out there working ever since. I didn’t move-in until summer 2020, and then the house was almost empty!”
Dominique didn’t have an interior designer working on the project until late in the process…And then only upon the advice and insistence of her friend Martha Stewart. “One day she came right out and said, ‘Are you going to live in an empty house forever? You need an interior designer. NOW!,” Dominique laughs retelling the story. “The renowned decorator and Bedford resident Stephen Sills was a close friend of hers. He had come to the house on occasion during the construction, but I couldn’t imagine him having the time or interest in getting involved with this project. But Martha said ‘Just ask him!’, and the result has been a creative and personal relationship I now hold dear. Stephen is one of the hardest working people I know. We connected in one minute and have been on the same wavelength ever since. He understood my vision for the interiors, and was able to interpret what I couldn’t even communicate. He just knew intuitively.”
The interiors throughout the main house, as well as Louis-Dreyfus’ poetry cottage and the guest house, are sublime. Soft and subtle while clean and commanding. All in limewashed earth tones, with rich fabrics and wood accents, a perfect blend of old world and 19th century American farmhouse aesthetics. The living room is immediately visible from the front entrance vestibule, and includes a square, rustic, wooden table that serves as a focal point that unites each of the surrounding rooms. Through the process of designing the home, Dominique and Stephen visited estate sales, and on one such trip, came across a large collection of old kitchen tools - which he had cemented in place inside of a giant metal farm pale, and which sits atop the rustic table, evoking the feeling of a massive flower arrangement.
The formal dining room, with reclaimed barnwood walls and always-on-display oversized arboreal arrangements - fresh from somewhere on the property - is relaxed and inviting. The dining room and den are connected through an array of French doors and an indoor-outdoor porch can be opened-up with the click of a button. The two side-by-side garden rooms on the southern end of the main floor were designed to bring the outdoor gardens into the house. The larger of the two rooms has oversized windows and double- story clerestory skylight. A trickling antique water element surrounded by palms, ferns, orchids and other lovely tropical plants complete the sense of being in a greenhouse. It’s like a field trip to the Botanical Gardens, but without leaving home.
A small breakfast table is located inside the charming kitchen which opens to an informal, cozy family living and a dining area. Behind the kitchen is a hall with a fabulous copper sink for washing the dogs and arranging flowers brought in from the gardens.
A continuously curved natural-wood banister leads from the bright chartreuse front-entry hall downstairs to the second floor landing area – where a sitting room with subtle Moroccan vibes connects to the private bedrooms. A glance upwards reveals a gallery of windows on the third floor. A vestibule with nothing but a small and delicate table and a pair of French doors with a balcony lead to the Parisian-style primary bedroom suite, clearly inspired by Dominique’s French roots, where no detail is spared.
