Couple with Subway ties sell Seven Hills home
In designing their multimillion-dollar dream home to be built in lush Seven Hills, Rick and Ruth Sender had a list of specifics: a pool that “intruded into the house as much as possible,” a professional kitchen with high-gloss cabinets deep enough to hold large baking trays and five sets of dishes and a library to house 3,000 books, as well as a large collection of sports memorabilia.
Natural lighting was important, as were ample views of the Strip and surrounding mountains. Unique stone would be sourced from Utah.
Quinn Boesenecker, principal of Pinnacle Architectural Studio, was the project’s architect, who would spin out a 6,786-square-foot, two-story home rich in mixed natural materials repeating inside and outside the home. Dramatic, angled rooflines and large cantilevers interact with the interior spaces, thematically connecting the sprawling home. The pool flows up into the home, dividing the first floor and creating a visual centerpiece that further interplays the indoor-outdoor living experience. To access the best views, the entire lot was lifted so that the line of sight was above the wall.
Construction on the project, a creative blend of function and aesthetics down to the last detail, began in 2009 and was finished in October 2011, complete with a two-story library, a floating spiral staircase, a movie theater and a three-stop elevator.
“The cool thing was that, at the time, he wanted something nobody else had,” Boesenecker said. “Everybody wants something unique. His rooflines and stonework are completely unique. And there is a lot of glass. It’s really open. As soon as you walk in, you’re looking back out.”
That is exactly how the home, beyond the gates and circular driveway, is first experienced. The oversized, heavy glass front door opens to a large foyer with a grand piano and artwork on every solid wall, all of it downplayed by the view directly ahead: an outdoor pool leading directly into the home’s form, dividing its first floor and serving as a centerpiece.
Its edges are level with the limestone tile covering the home’s interior and exterior spaces. Moreover, its minimalist, curvilinear lines and river-like shape are contoured with the shape of the house.
Above is the polished, dark wood ceiling custom designed for inside and outside the home, cementing a more visceral experience of indoor/outdoor living. Beyond the palm trees bookending the pool’s elevated fire feature is a view of the mountains in the distance.
And that is only the entrance to the Senders’ dream home. The state-of-the-art movie theater is built like that of an actual movie house with the tiered seating, interior design, sound system and custom lighting.
A three-stop elevator accommodates anyone unable to walk steps, and a two-story library housing memorabilia and photographs on its first level is filled with books on the second level in an open lofted space with a small reading area. The formal dining room with its star bouquet chandelier, large picture window, custom ceiling and built-in cabinetry twinkles with high-gloss finishes.
Custom stone fascia, walls and columns (inside and outside) blend with the Utah stone, which was hand-chiseled and fitted on-site. It was a $550,000, eight-month project, resulting in dramatic depth and texture to the home’s experience.
In the kitchen, the grains of the high-gloss African bubinga wood used for the cabinets, island and wraparound bar were matched for seamless continuity and define the open space floor plan of the kitchen, the living room and another dining area in a bay wall made of glass and extending into the pool. The living room’s wet bar is backlit onyx, and the entire room is where the conversion of materials and elements is showcased through the wood ceilings, stone fascia (with small steel sculptures of climbers scaling it, inside and outside), a copper artifice, glass walls that open and close and limestone flooring with inlaid tiles.
“The architect really believes in mixing materials to create a much natural effect,” Rick Sender said while standing in the room filled with the couple’s eclectic art collection.
The trait of mixing materials is also one of the Senders’, who were successful in business, growing, expanding and making their money in Subway franchises. It was Rick Sender who had the copper artifice added, post architecture.
A framed print of the 1932 photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” featuring New York construction workers sitting high above the city on a steal beam during the construction of Rockefeller Center, hangs in the room. A sculptural rendering of the workers on break, sits on the copper artifice above the living room.
The couple’s art collection is a mix of contemporary, traditional, abstract, realistic, figurative works, landscape and exotica wildlife they’ve collected in their 50 years together. And the home’s color palette is essentially their own, Sender said.
While his wife is a baker and a cook who loves the kitchen, his favorite room in the home is the movie theater.
“It’s equipped with Dolby Atmos,” he said. “You literally hear helicopters flying over your head, and when it rains you feel like you’re going to get wet. It’s pretty incredible. I love my theater. I’m in there two to three hours every single day.”
Other unique perks of the home include the floor of the master bath, which was designed and installed by the same person who laid the floor at The Venetian hotel and created in their bath a smaller version of the cube optical illusion tile pattern that goes back centuries. The window above the large tub has special gas in its panes that turns it opaque. A heart-shaped sink in the master coffee bar was installed at the request of Ruth Sender, and the urinal in the master was installed at Rick’s. Mature citrus trees grow on the property.
The couple moved to Las Vegas in 2002, living at first in Summerlin and then Mountain’s Edge before settling into their current home with four-car garage in Seven Hills. They selected that area because of its greenery and the friendliness of the community. Their new home, smaller and easier to maintain, is only a mile and a half away. They said they are content with saying goodbye to their dream home they loved so much, knowing they’ll bring their creativity with them to the new home.