STYLE : INTERIORS : Jungle Look
A ranch-style house in the jungle? In the Valley ? It may sound odd--unless you’re author, naturalist and conservationist Arnold Newman. Over the last 26 years, Newman has turned his Sherman Oaks home into an Amazonian habitat inside and out for his wife, two kids and menagerie of dogs and cats, birds and turtles, fish and frogs, snakes and lizards.
A stand of towering bamboo marks the slate path to Casa de la Selva (literally, House of the Jungle). Inside the front door, with its saber-toothed tiger etched in glass, a man-made stream surrounded by bromeliads, palms and other tropical plants cuts through the living room. “We wanted a feeling of exotic tropical splendor carried in from the garden,” says Newman, whose life’s work has been dedicated to saving the rain forest. (His latest book, “Tropical Rainforest,” surveys endangered regions and offers ways to ensure their survival).
To fulfill Newman’s wish to draw the outdoors in, Pasadena interior designer Edward Turrentine expanded the living room by four feet, replacing a sliding glass door with a wall of windows. He also added indirect lighting and spotlights to illuminate plants, a fog system for simulating the jungle atmosphere and sprinklers over the stream so that Newman can enjoy tropical downpours whenever the spirit moves him. Outlined by faux rocks, the stream is filled with koi and albino red-eared turtles. Fossils from Newman’s extensive collection are everywhere: Presiding over the room is the 8-foot, 4-inch skeleton of an 80,000-year-old European cave bear, and along the stream bank is the skull of a 40 million-year-old brontothere (an ancient relative of the rhinoceros and elephant) that has been rigged to emit a fine mist from its open mouth.
Other Tarzanesque touches include sofas and chairs reupholstered in ripped leather, a loveseat of salvaged burl wood and leopard-print cushions, and a toilet painted to resemble an alligator head. If the best houses reflect the people who live in them, Newman and Turrentine have created a place as exotic as any rain forest.
