HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
Growing up in Palm Beach, designer and tastemaker Amanda Brooks was always intrigued by a wood-shingled place of worship with a pink porch. A veritable local icon, The Old Church had been transformed into a fantastical family home by celebrated interior designer, Mimi Maddock McMakin. Amanda takes Cabana on a tour.
BY AMANDA BROOKS | ROOMS & GARDENS | 13 JANUARY 2025
Garden Room, The Old Church @ Ashley Hicks
Much about Palm Beach has changed since I was a child growing up there in the mid-70s. The ficus hedges are more manicured, the parcels of 'jungle' have been cleared and populated with large houses, most of the mom-and-pop shops have been replaced by global brands, and the beaches are swept clean of any seaweed before the sun comes up. But The Old Church remains the same.
Built in 1894, the land for the Bethesda-By-The-Sea Church (the first consecrated building on the island) was donated by Henry and Genie “Ducky” Maddock who lived next door in “Duck’s Nest,” a house they had shipped down on a barge from Brooklyn. The church - facing both the intracoastal waterway and the public walkway that is known as The Lake Trail - served its official purpose until 1925 when a larger, more formal version took its place in the center of town.
In the ’50s Henry’s son, Paul, bought what had become known as The Old Church. His daughter —and current Church resident, the celebrated interior designer Mimi Maddock McMakin—remembers that her childhood bedroom faced the church, and she used to draw the blinds in the evening because the spooky image of the vacant building scared her. That would all change in the 70s when Mimi and her family were offered the chance to live in the church.
The Old Church, Palm Beach © Ashley Hicks
Transforming this wood-shingled place of worship into a happy home was a group effort. Almost 50 years ago, Mimi gathered a group of friends to lay the hand-painted Portuguese tiles that still remain on the iconic “Pink Porch” today—a sunny room decorated in every shade of pink and green that still defines the essence of Palm Beach style. Another friend hand-painted large, graphic diamond patterns on the floor of the master bedroom.
The house today exudes an eccentric, casually-curated style. Much of the furniture, woodwork and even a whole bedroom is hand-painted by local craftspeople with personal motifs—favorite flowers, childhood pets, inside jokes about Mimi’s lack of interest in cooking and even her favorite quote “Love Conquers All” adorns the doors entering the old nave of the church.
The most recently occupied room in the house—the original nave of the church itself—is perhaps the most extraordinary. Until the late ’90s, this room seemed just too massive to occupy and was used mostly for storage and also for epic games of hide and seek played by Mimi’s two daughters and their friends, myself included. The offer to use this room as a location for a friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner prompted the transformation.
The room began to take shape as a large entertaining space with separate seating areas for dining and lounging; Mimi adopted the philosophy of “buy anything you love, then find a place for it.” The most recent additions are massive gold and silver metallic stars that hang from the ceiling. They were contributed by events designer Bronson van Wyck, a family friend who borrowed the church for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary and hung decorative constellations, installed a stage and hired the Pointer Sisters to perform.
Despite the large scale of some rooms, Mimi refers to The Old Church as a “memorabilia-filled cottage that is rooted in sentimentality and belongs to not just my immediate family but to every friend and member of our extended family who has spent time here”. I myself can testify to that—as a close family friend and former neighbor, the Old Church holds many of my most important memories from my childhood and teenage years. There must be at least twenty people who feel the same emotional attachment to this house as I do.
Mimi attributes this to changing very little about the house over the years. “If you don’t change the rooms, it’s almost as if time doesn’t pass.” This inclusiveness extends to uninvited visitors as well. Mimi often offers tours to people who wander into her house thinking it is still a church. Brooke Astor and Leonard Lauder are amongst the people who have happily sat in Mimi’s front yard facing the Lake Trail thinking they were sitting in a public space, enjoying a break from their walk.
Palm Beach may have drastically changed over the years, but in Mimi’s care, The Old Church has stood still in time and remains a comfort to us all.
A version of this article was first published in Cabana Magazine Issue 20
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