These seductive spaces use detail, mood and nuance in ways the moderns forgot
By Stefene Russell
Photographs by Katherine Bish
Places with a past—places with an air of romance and useless beauty—remind us there’s more to life than the practical. Enter their rooms and you soften, relaxing into their elegance, leaning toward your companion ... “You know why Larry Forgione came here from New York?” asks the affable bartender. “It was for this room.” If you’ve not yet crossed the threshold of An American Place, let us explain what lured a New York chef who once cooked for Princess Grace to St. Louis. First, there’s the history; completed in 1917 as the fourth hotel in the elegant Statler chain, the building is lavish even by Gilded Age standards. The hotel is now the Renaissance Grand, and Forgione’s restaurant is housed in what was once the grand lobby. The Botticini marble walls and floors and the old marble telegraph desk to the left of the bar are original, as are the Corinthian columns, arched floor-to-ceiling windows and gilded railings running along the mezzanine, but the ceiling panels and the enormous brass–and–frosted-glass chandeliers—two of the most stunning details—are not.
“It sat empty for 15 years,” explains general manager Frank Malone, “and there were attempts to burn it down. There was smoke damage, there was water damage and the ceilings were yellowed.” Historic Restoration Inc. re-created each ceiling panel, taking casts from the remaining bas-relief and using the original designer’s notes and drawings as a guide. The pattern, loosely based on a French Renaissance theme, includes cameo scenes— courtships, coach rides—set off with backdrops painted the original Wedgwood blue.
Tables, chairs and banquettes were custom-manufactured to match the original furnishings, and even the palm trees in their stone pots are based on the hotel’s original décor, but carefully chosen modern touches give the room a vibrant, usable feel. A rectangular LED light fixture, for example, hangs over the bar in the new Indigo Lounge. Controlled by a computer program, each panel is constantly cycling through shades of blue, from deep violet to turquoise to periwinkle. It’s novel but subtle and makes sipping a cocktail here feel like an event.
Malone says lighting is a huge part of creating the atmosphere throughout the restaurant. “It’s different at 5 o’clock than it is at 8 o’clock,” he says. “It’s designed to throw shadows in a certain way, to create certain hues and colors, to shoot up and project different levels of light, to create a certain mood.” And how to describe the mood? Imagine the giant shadows of palm trees projected on marble walls; silken turquoise drapes hanging from windows taller than the average South City bungalow; low, golden lighting, sofas and small tables arranged around a free-standing fireplace; a dining room fit to host the Algonquin Round Table; a baby grand near a vintner’s cabinet; double banquettes covered in tapestry fabric and lit by tiered fixtures. What it all adds up to is too exciting to call nostalgic, though there’s a hint of nostalgia’s sweetness. It’s turn-of-the-century elegant, ’20s glamorous, ’60s innovative—and, though the overall effect has the power to create the impression that you’ve been transported to another time and place, it’s all aught-six, a brand-new thing.
The old Terminal Rail Hotel in Union Station, now the gloriously romantic Hyatt Regency Hotel, was inspired by the medieval city of Carcassonne, in the south of France. The Grand Hall features 65-foot vaulted ceilings and columns decorated with scagliola (plasterwork built to look like marble) mosaics and giltwork. On the arches, women carved in bas-relief hold torches, the flames rendered in orange, backlit glass. In the hand-cut, Tiffany-glass allegorical window, three Grecian ladies represent San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis, the three main railroad stations of the time.
The original 66 rooms that made up the Head House are now Regency Club suites, and, with tapestry chairs, four-poster beds and marble tiling in the baths, the rooms feel more like Paris apartments than hotel rooms. The Station Grille, the hotel’s original restaurant, has also been restored to reflect its history as a Harvey House, a chain restaurant often found in turn-of-the-century train stations.
Baileys’ Chocolate Bar—located in a 19th-century building in Lafayette Square—pays homage to its roots, displayed in a white-on-black aerial map of the neighborhood during the 1870s. Drawn by a college friend of proprietor David Bailey’s, the map shows Bailey’s respect for the building’s history and refusal to get too sentimental about it. After Blake Brokaw closed his version of the Chocolate Bar, Bailey stepped in and transformed it from arty concept coffeehouse to sexy, grown-up nightspot. His girlfriend’s brother, Tyson Rinderknecht, lent his carpentry skills, and he and Bailey rebuilt everything, tearing out the dessert cases and replacing them with a full bar. The girlfriend’s sister, who works as an interior designer with Playboy Chicago, stepped in, sourcing antique chandeliers and silk padded walls for the dining room and wooden chairs upholstered in deep red velour throughout. The palette is red and gold: dark red walls, gold trim, gold male and female statuettes standing on either side of the front door. “My cousin inked the French posters,” Bailey says, “and the paintings across from the bar were done by a college friend, K.T. Johannes. She painted them with a thinned cocoa mixture on porous paper. When the candles are lit, the flowers are out, the lighting is warm and red and comfortable, everyone looks good in this room.”
If you drive west on Manchester until it turns into the quainter-sounding Highway 100, you’ll find St. Albans, where you can buy penny candy at Head’s General Store or sit under a century-old cypress on the banks of Tavern Creek. On the other side of that creek is Malmaison, a restaurant housed in a nearly 200-year-old barn. The oldest portion of the building was constructed as a cabin in the 1820s, and when current owner Datra Herzog took over the restaurant in 2004, the first thing she did was remove the acres of red velvet that hid the original log-and-plaster walls. That velvet was hiding dark wood doors and windows that were installed in the late ’20s by the Johnson family, owners of the International Shoe Co. “They opened it up as the Old Barn Inn, a place for the wealthy to go to get out of the city and out of the heat,” Herzog explains.
In the ’80s, Simone and Gilbert Andujar converted the building to a high-end French restaurant named for Napoleon and Josephine’s country estate. Herzog showcases the building’s features—fireplaces, wood floors and Ste. Genevieve limestone—and creates a wine-country feel outdoors in the garden. The new vestibule off the side of the building was modeled on a Paris Metro stop; the main dining room is somewhat modeled on a ski lodge in Vail, Colo. “People say, ‘Oh, this reminds me of France,’” Herzog says, “but I have German clients who say it reminds them of the wine gardens there. Some people say Napa. It just reminds them of whatever they want to be reminded of.”
