King Of The Hill

A Virginia entrepreneur transforms a tired Victorian into a stylish waterfront retreat.

Written by Kessler Burnett
Photography by Erik Kvalsvik

For a Saturday afternoon, Bill Westbrook is dressed up. Sporting a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, he climbs out of his 1988 Jeep Grand Wagoneer toting a bag of egg sandwiches from his favorite breakfast spot, Rocket Billy’s, a roadside trailer where the crab cakes are always good—and the local clientele always colorful.

Tailed by his Great Dane, Zack, he settles into a wicker sofa on the porch, where he watches the wind bully a fleet of Flying Scots racing on the usually sleepy creek. Considering that Westbrook’s weekdays are spent entrenched in corporate America (he’s vice chairman of Fallon, a Minneapolis-based advertising agency), weekends at his Irvington home are decidedly formality free. “By the time I cross the Rappahannock River bridge, I start breathing again,” says Westbrook. “And when I finally drive up to the house, it’s like one monstrous exhale.”

Westbrook discovered his first home on the Northern Neck in 1994, while living in Richmond. In search of a place to sail, he drove into the tiny village of Weems and followed his nose down a dead-end road, where he discovered an abandoned waterfront cottage. Six months later he bought it, remodeled it, and moved in. Once fully wooed by the area—and its untapped potential—in 1995 he purchased and renovated The King Carter Inn in nearby Irvington, transforming it into The Hope & Glory Inn, the much-heralded romantics’ retreat. In order to be closer to his blossoming rural empire (which, by this time, included the Trick Dog Café and five boutiques), he set his sights on his current home, located at the entrance to Carter’s Creek.

“Legend has it that the house was built on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and was barged to Irvington just over a hundred years ago,” says Westbrook, a former freelance writer for Sail and Rudder magazines. “I used to sail into the creek with my sons, and I’d see the prideful old house sitting on the hill, its windows lit up by the setting sun like they were on fire. And I’d say, ‘One of these days, your dad is going to buy that house.”

When the property, named Zipporah after a previous owner’s daughter, went on the market in 1996, Westbrook hesitated for another year, and then he pounced. “After buying it, I waited almost four years before I worked on it,” he says. “I was afraid that the locals would be upset that I had changed a landmark. I felt like I had to live in it a while before I earned the right to change it.”

In typical Victorian fashion, Zipporah’s interior was chopped up into many little rooms and had only a small porch facing the water. “The worse shape a house is in, the more romantic it is,” says Westbrook.

“And the more hopeless it is, the more I’m drawn to it. I always start the rehab process with a glass of scotch and a sledge hammer. Then I call a contractor and say, ‘Get over here!’”

In keeping with Westbook’s mantra, “I never met an interior wall I didn’t want to tear down,” Irvington architect Randall Kipp turned the confining spaces into a single great room, uniting the kitchen, living room, dining room, and sitting area. A twenty-foot-long accordion glass door bordering the living room leads to the enlarged wrap-around porch, sizeable enough to occupy four additional seating areas.

Kipp doubled the size of the house by adding a third, gabled wing to the north side. This allowed the inclusion of a formal entrance and an A-frame office/library. “To the person sailing into the creek,” explains Kipp, “we envisioned the house appearing to them as a small, quaint hotel, like something that might have stood there a century ago.”

Since The Hope & Glory Inn made a big splash with its popular shabby-chic interior design, it was a natural for Westbrook to return to interior designer Lisa Sherry (of Lisa Sherry Interieurs in High Point, N.C.), to decorate his own digs.

Sherry created an inviting, eclectic space where mahogany and ebony hues exist harmoniously with durable earth-tone fabrics, as well as wooden, silver, and bamboo details. It’s a look that Westbrook describes as “Ralph Lauren meets Out of Africa.”

“Bill has a lot of antiques and loves the cottage look,” says Sherry, “but I wanted to take him into the new millennium, creating a classic modern style, mixed with a few of the things he loves. And the twist is how it all mixes together.

Kipp created a whimsical wooden wall with a zigzag cut that surrounds the fireplace, delivering intrigue in terms of shape and shadow. Sherry made the space inviting with two overstuffed white sofas blanketed in classic linen slipcovers and accented with zebra-stripe and leopard-print throw pillows. The mantle, a single plank of teak, is fixed above an industrial, zinc fireplace. “When it came time to put the interior together,” recalls Westbrook, “Lisa told me to stay away for twenty-four hours. When I left, it was an empty house, and when I came back, it looked like this! It was like Christmas had come early.”

While there’s a water view from nearly every room in the house, the best place to watch the action on the creek is from the dock, where Westbrook keeps his brilliant blue-hulled motor boat, Glamour Girl. Even from here, you need not look far to see Westbrook’s fingerprints. Adjacent to the dock is an osprey nest, which Westbrook trimmed with a white gingerbread border that nicely complements the house’s architectural detailing. “Isn’t it sick?” Westbrook asks rhetorically. “I’m afraid I art direct everything.”