What would you call a little-changed, 100-year-old home in Naples that has become increasingly surrounded by modern mansions and urban bustle? Paul and Eileen Arsenault endearingly call their retreat on a large parcel at the corner of 12th Avenue South and Gordon Drive the “Banyan Arts Social and Pleasure Club.”
Dorothy Edwards
Eileen and Paul have lovingly preserved their century-old property, which they affectionately call “Banyan Arts Social and Pleasure Club.”
Built in 1918, their home is located in the Naples hotspot where Naples awoke as a resort town — where the first hotel and iconic pier were born. Of course, many of Naples’ turn-of-the-19th-century cottages have made way for newer, slicker abodes. But Paul, a contemporary impressionist in Naples since 1974, and Eileen have had a long commitment to historic preservation and the region’s natural environment. They’ve lovingly embraced their property’s legacy as a turnstile retreat for visiting writers, artists and others — the property includes three 950-square-foot cottages.
Among celebrated overnight guests and drop-in visitors: poet Robert Frost, third-generation New England painter Emile Gruppe, Key West mystery writer Laurence Shames, artist Richard Segalman, James Jones, author of “From Here to Eternity,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, and Rebecca Wells, famous for her Ya-Ya Sisterhood series. They are proud that Florida environmental champion Nathaniel Reed was a guest; Eileen is president of the Audubon of the Western Everglades.
These and others have met the Arsenaults through their vast network of Collier County creative types or discovered the rentable cottages for extended stays through word of mouth.
“We’ve had a lot of good people,” Paul says. “It’s been a terrific oasis as Naples has been unfolding.”
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Dorothy Edwards
The second floor of the home serves as guest room and studio, accessible only by exterior stairs.
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A Seminole-motif mosaic tile table under the banyan tree is ideal for al fresco dining.
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Dorothy Edwards
Just outside the home of Paul and Eileen Arsenault in Naples.
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The focal point of the backyard patio between three historic cottages is the Steve Coenen memorial fountain, named for a long-time friend who installed it after a terminal cancer diagnosis. Paul put the finishing touches on it, including the mosaic tile work.
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The backyard patio is a shaded, secluded oasis for relaxing and entertaining.
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The Arsenault’s home is cozy and intimate, filled with a collection of works by local artists, gifts and meaningful souvenirs from their travels and visitors. “Everything has a story,” says Paul.
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The home of Paul and Eileen Arsenault in Naples
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Dorothy Edwards
The home of Paul and Eileen Arsenault in Naples
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At the end of a six-week painting trip in Vietnam in 1995, Paul bought this painting from an artist, who captured a portrait of his wife opening her kimono to the sun on a warm spring day. Paul had run out of canvases and donated his paints to the artist.
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A model of the Canadian schooner Bluenose is a nod to Paul’s grandfather, who owned and captained a schooner from New Brunswick.
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The home of Paul and Eileen Arsenault in Naples
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Dorothy Edwards
The gracious screened porch, which also includes the dining room, affords a tranquil view of the landmark banyan tree.
he Arsenaults are trying to contact their eclectic range of guests and visitors for a 100th anniversary gathering in December.
Cultural crosscurrents
There are other cultural crosscurrents, such as the landmark banyan tree planted shortly after the home’s construction — a sapling provided by horticulturist Henry Nehrling, whose nearby gardens evolved into the Naples Zoo. In the 1930s, the Arsenaults’ kitchen operated as a toy shop selling kaleidoscopes, Seminole dolls and “Snow White” paraphernalia. Recently, the Arsenaults came across a 1920 calendar of events for the Naples Hotel, which opened in 1889 and would be across the street from the Arsenaults, if it was still in existence. The calendar calls the intersection Oceanview Junction.
The home was built by wealthy entrepreneur Norman Prentis “N.P.” Sloan, who owned productive silver and gold mines in the West. Arsenault has been told that their seven children lived in the main house while the parents shacked up in a cottage. Sloan built another cottage that served as Naples’ first private real estate office. During the Great Depression, N.P. Junior took over the real estate business, making his first sale to Phillip and Eleanor DuPont Rust. The couple erected a tall security wall around their Palm Villa at the corner of Broad Avenue South and Gulf Shore Boulevard after the shocking 1932 kidnapping of Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s baby.
The Arsenaults also added a wall along one side of their property 10 years ago to buffer Gordon Drive noise. “That was the model I used for my place because of the inundation of idling trucks and intensity of commercial traffic,” he says, adding that it “created courtyard charm.”
Dorothy Edwards
The Arsenault’s home is cozy and intimate, filled with a collection of works by local artists, gifts and meaningful souvenirs from their travels and visitors. “Everything has a story,” says Paul.
In addition to the wall, there have been a few other modifications along the way. Long ago, the interior staircase in the main house, which is about 2,300 square feet including the porches, was removed to create upstairs and downstairs rentable apartments. It has never been replaced. The upstairs guest room/studio is reached by an exterior stairway.
Eileen began renting in 1982, and Paul moved into a cottage the following year. They married, and in the late 1980s, there was talk of demolishing the buildings to make room for a parking lot. The Arsenaults scrimped and saved, going in with the renter of the third cottage, to buy it.
“I loved the house from Day One,” Eileen says. “It has so much character, and it’s a great place to live.”
The couple has enclosed the porch on one cottage and added central air to the cottages and split air-conditioning units for the main house. They modestly renovated the kitchen, though Eileen cooks on a 1920 gas stove, which she operates with aplomb.
“Eileen is a brilliant and successful hostess — a gourmet, organic cook. She does a remarkable job with a stove she can’t monitor the heat on,” Paul says, noting the house has “a certain museum authenticity.”
Made of Dade pine, the board-and-batten home has strong bones that have survived its share of massive storms. And, Paul says, it’s haunted. Several guests have sensed some type of vortex portal, and he has, too. Visions of the Native Americans who dug a nearby canoe canal to connect the Gulf of Mexico to Naples Bay have emerged, and Paul reports they’ve had “somewhat dramatic paranormal activity and the rattling of doors.” It doesn’t bother him, though, because he wills the forces away with “You had your shot. This is our time here.”
Now, the Arsenaults are haunted by the future of their retreat at 1188 Gordon Drive. In May, the Naples City Council approved the development of the Old Naples Hotel to replace the long-vacant Third Street Plaza. Plans for the 109-room hotel include a spa, two retail shops, café and rooftop pool. The location isn’t far from their home and the Arsenault Studio & Banyan Arts Gallery on Third Street. The resort is expected to be operational by 2021; as a result, Paul says, they are in a “state of unknown.”
Recorder of history
Arsenault graduated from art school in Boston and saw South Florida as a deckhand on a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ship. He moved to Naples in January of 1974 to begin his career as a formal painter — developing his signature style and becoming a recorder of historic Naples buildings through his street and cottage vignettes.
In the mid-’70s, the Naples scene “was diverse — on the edge of the Everglades wilderness. [Drug] smuggling was going on but that was a certain period and circumstance of Naples’ geography,” he recalls. Paul borrowed chicken-wire screens and set up his first show on Third Street South at Swan Court (Campiello’s courtyard). He sent out press releases and the local television station covered the event. Life in Naples “was very simple. There was nothing to do,” he says.
The still-ritzy Third Street South district was developed as a resort destination by Julius “Junkie” Fleishmann of the Fleishmann Yeast fortune. “I’m on the same block now but paying big rent,” notes Arsenault, 66. Eileen, 67, runs their gallery.
Paul was involved in the early efforts to refurbish the Naples Depot and has created a book to raise funds for the Naples Historical Society. He continues recording on canvas the quaint alleys, cottages and establishments that comprise a Naples that is fading into the 21st century. Earlier this year, he curated an exhibition about coastal trade from Naples to Key West featuring some of his early paintings, posters, artifacts and folk art at the Marco Island Historical Museum.
He’s been painting along the region’s shores so long, he recalls an art reception at the Collier Inn on Useppa Island when “raccoons were living in the lodge.” He’s curating a new exhibit for Ave Maria. “I’ve been a historian in the paintings I’ve been doing,” he says. “In the 1970s, I had the curiosity and motivation to paint the scene early on and things are gone or real different now. Getting out and about in those early stages has given me a terrific opportunity to paint a more poetic time of the waterfront.”