Going from the U.S. Army to a career in interior design may be an unexpected transition, but Ward Lariscy did it seamlessly and with flair.
“I was upset that my classmates from college were all out working in the design field, and I was sitting in the Army – at least I wasn’t fighting,” said Lariscy.
Months after graduating with his bachelor’s degree in interior design from Auburn’s School of Architecture, Lariscy was drafted by the Army in 1963 and spent two years at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. He tried his best to express some of his creativity while in the Army, decorating service clubs where soldiers would spend their free time.
Lariscy during his time in the Army, 1963-1965
Lariscy’s skill with a typewriter spared him from combat, and he spent his time as a clerk typist for Army captains. One of his superiors had such confidence in him that he’d leave blank spaces in his letters to colleagues and trust Lariscy would do a good job filling in the rest.
Lariscy has always treasured travel. In 1957, he took a class trip with approximately 150 other Savannah High School seniors, traveling by bus to Key West and taking a ferry to Havana, Cuba. He remembers attending a dogfight with his class, watching laborers harvest coconuts in the countryside, and hearing news of a revolutionary named Fidel Castro waging guerrilla warfare in the mountains of eastern Cuba.
Lariscy on a senior trip to Cuba, 1957
When he got out of the Army, the first thing Lariscy did was take three months to travel extensively across Europe and North Africa.
“I knew I would never be able to do much travel, because when you got a regular job, you’d probably only get two weeks off,” Lariscy explained.
In time, he’d discover just how wrong he was about his limited travel opportunities.
In 1966, Lariscy moved to Jacksonville to take a job with Ruth McGuire Interiors, earning $75 a week. A year later, he took a job as fashion director at May Cohen, a department store located in the current City Hall building downtown.
He first lived in an apartment just north of San Marco Square, taking the bus to Hemming Plaza each morning to get to work. He later moved into a home on Balis, where he has lived for the last 52 years.
Twice a year, May Cohen sent Lariscy on antiquing trips to North Carolina and New York, where he met Princess Grace in 1979 at an invitation-only party promoting a line of sheets she’d designed. His work travel eventually expanded to include regular trips to Europe and East Asia, and Lariscy found himself on marathon flights from New York to Tokyo, Manila, Hong Kong and Taiwan with a connection in Anchorage.
In his decades as an interior designer, Lariscy’s notable projects include Mayor Jake Godbold’s office, the Garden Club of Jacksonville in Riverside and color selection for the seats at the old Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Contrary to the minimalist contemporary aesthetic he describes as the “Restoration Hardware” look, Lariscy doesn’t shy away from bold color schemes.
“I was kind of known as a traditionalist with a modern twist to it, and it’s always big in color and pattern,” said Lariscy.
In 1981, Lariscy opened his own shop in San Marco Square – The Wardroom – selling gifts and antiques. Now one of the longest tenured tenants in the Square, Lariscy still welcomes customers in with his checkered fleur-de-lis wood floor and signature bow tie. And in a touch of old-school department store charm, The Wardroom will still wrap your gifts for you in-store.
These days, Lariscy doesn’t go antiquing as much as he used to, but you can still catch him at the shop. He’s gotten into making his own greeting cards, available for purchase at The Wardroom. His cards feature everything from Trevor Lawrence at Waffle House to pictures of birds he took at Fort Mose State Park. Lariscy finds he now prefers the peace and quiet of Fort Mose to the crowds and bustle of nearby St. Augustine.
“It’s not touristy, because nobody knows about it – it’s fantastic,” said Lariscy.