Freelance writer Barbara Karth is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Richard Leo Johnson is a photographer and musician in Savannah, Georgia.

The sun makes sparkles on Pop-Pop’s lake,” says Stephen and Jackie Rabinowitz’s four-year-old granddaughter, KT. Delightful words that Jackie enjoys repeating—and they’re right on target. Sterling Lake adjoins the Rabinowitzes’ property at Ford Plantation just south of Savannah. It connects to the Ogeechee River, then the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean.

Named after automaker Henry Ford who chose it as a winter home in the first half of the 20th century, this former rice plantation has a long history of owners both before and after Ford. In the 1990s, a group of investors bought the 1,800-acre property, developed it as a community of high-end homes with a club house, a fitness center, a Pete Dye golf course, a marina, plus tennis, squash and equestrian facilities—all the amenities one could desire.

When the Rabinowitzes saw the 6,000-square-foot model home at the Ford Plantation, with its pediments and porches, they abandoned their search for a retirement home. The stately home was designed by Atlanta architect Jim Strickland of Historic Concepts, who drew inspiration from the historic antebellum homes of Beaufort, South Carolina, just up the coast. “This is very much a Beaufort type of house,” says Strickland of his design. Those neo-Georgian homes, he explains, were approached by water early on and later by land so the front and the back façades were equally elegant. Porches wrapped around three sides. Strickland drew on the past, taking the space that would have been a porch and turning it into a kitchen, much as what would have occurred over generations as food preparation spaces were moved into the main house. Connecting hallways spanning the length of the house culminate in suites at either end; the master suite is on the left and an office is at the opposite end. Three upstairs bedrooms provide sufficient space for guests.

Inside, Strickland broke with the past to accommodate the contemporary preference for large, open spaces. Instead of positioning the living room on one side of a center hall and the dining room on the other, he shortened the foyer and hallway so that living and dining rooms share one space to take full advantage of the water view. On the lake, egrets, herons, woodstocks and coots take flight or glide across the water—a view Strickland maximized throughout the house.

The interiors of the home had been decorated as a show house by New York designer Thomas Jayne for Town & Country magazine. After purchasing the property in 2001, the Rabinowitzes wanted to make it their own. Jackie Rabinowitz recalls a dinner in Cincinnati with her designer friends, Nancy Robinson and Julie Rushing of Nancy Ross Interiors, when she pulled out a copy of the magazine and told them that she and her husband had just bought the house. “Just to see their reaction…” she pauses. “They knew immediately what to do.”

The designers and their client first toned down Jayne’s high-voltage palette of bright blues, greens, reds and yellows with earthier Low Country colors, including various blue-greens reflective of the property’s lake and moss-draped live oaks and pines. Striped wallpaper in the entry hallway was stripped away to reveal the magnificence of the grand, double staircase. It was replaced by a yellow damask print accentuating the dramatic repetition of the stairs’ cantilevered curves. Stephen Rabinowitz, a retired corporate executive, says he is impressed by “the engineering intricacy of [the structure]...and it still passed the safety thrust test.”

Not all of Jayne’s décor was eliminated. The New York designer encouraged Jackie Rabinowitz, who consulted him before redecorating, to keep the four armchairs in the living room for their scale and proportion, and she had them reupholstered. The sofa went upstairs to the guest room and several antique pieces were traded for others more to the couple’s liking.

In the dining room, the couple selected a mahogany table and upholstered chairs to create more formality. Bamboo chairs that were previously in the room were moved to the side porch around the long maple dining table from the couple’s contemporary Cincinnati penthouse, one they had painted a custom blue-green to withstand the weather and blend into the home’s new color scheme. “We call it the most expensive picnic table,” laughs Stephen Rabinowitz.

For a while, the homeowners considered covering the floors with Oriental rugs, but kept the wool sisal, simplifying the décor while highlighting the moldings and architecture. Jackie Rabinowitz became the curator for their artwork, hanging paintings, photographs and etchings from the couple’s previous home and her husband’s former office.

In the kitchen, Strickland’s concept of homes growing throughout the years comes across in walls sheathed in exterior siding that convey the impression that this room was once a porch. The floor is identical to those on the other porches and the ceiling is paneled to reinforce the concept. Though historically styled, the kitchen is outfitted with SieMatic cabinetry, granite countertops and the latest stainless-steel appliances: a Thermador range, a Sub-Zero refrigerator and 400-bottle wine cooler, a Bosch dishwasher and two Fisher & Paykel dishwasher drawers. Next to the wine cooler, one door opens into a pantry for storing pots and another opens to reveal a pastry kitchen, where Jackie Rabinowitz produces delicious chocolate cakes and cheesecakes. In the breakfast room, adjacent to the kitchen, the couple selected a table of antique river cypress, a replica of one in a Savannah home made famous in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Theirs is the second of a limited edition of six. 

At the opposite wing of the house, the homeowners decided to keep the hand-painted, silk wallcoverings in the master suite after several discussions with the Cincinnati designers. “It is a little more sophisticated than any bedroom I’ve had. I call it my grown-up bedroom,” Jackie Rabinowitz says with a smile. The dressing table remains but is used as her desk with files stored underneath the skirt. Silk-upholstered chairs were re-covered in more durable, softer-toned cotton. The silk duvet is lined in cotton for grandchild-proofing the bed. As the grandchildren grow and the house is filled with family, this suite will be a private retreat for the two; even now, they spend a lot of time here, they say.

The couple epitomizes the emerging baby-boomer definition of retirement life and grandparenthood: warm, chic, energetic—and not quite retired. Stephen Rabinowitz serves on the boards of three public companies. Jackie Rabinowitz is a trustee of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah and a member of the Savannah Music Festival’s board of directors. When not working, they enjoy playing golf, fishing with their grandchildren and entertaining in the rooms now made their own. “It doesn’t feel like a showplace [anymore],” says Strickland. “It feels like a home.”