Chasing a Dream

When you move into a condo with high ceilings and panoramic views, your life gets airier. You hold a few cherished objects close and let the rest flutter away. Mornings, you slip on a thick robe and step out onto the terrace that wraps around your condo. At the end of the day, you look to your left, where the sun is setting in rosy streaks, then swivel right and watch the downtown lights come on.

While the view outside beckons, the interiors at The Chase are equally captivating. Following you will see what happened when three designers—Arlene Lilie, Tim Rohan, and Kimberly Reuther—tackled three different condos at The Chase. Each one is a master’s drawing, every line graceful, where less means more.

Arlene Lilie

Arlene Lilie Interior Design

You draw a quick, unconscious breath when you step into this 17th-floor condo and see the staircase curving upward, beyond it a wall of windows. Then you look left and see a huge lithograph by Russell Young inspired by real mug shots of Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Mike and Barb Quinn had seen the print hanging in the window of Arlene Lilie’s Central West End shop for months. “One night, we were walking back from dinner at Dressel’s, and they weren’t there and my husband freaked out,” Mrs. Quinn remembers. “Arlene’s daughter said, ‘Those weren’t for sale; they’re my mom’s.’”

Mrs. Lilie smiles; she’s never heard that part of the story. Luckily, the print was from a limited edition, and she was able to get the Quinns their own. “Everything started with the Russell Young,” she says. “Here’s a couple that’s very with it. They’re open to this more contemporary look.” Mrs. Lilie suggested dramatic light fixtures, even a boldly overscaled cut-velvet paisley print for the sofa. “They liked it all,” she says, “and little by little, their whole plan became more contemporary.”

The wraparound terrace mattered most to Mrs. Quinn; she was willing to lose her big backyard, but not her connection to nature. Mrs. Lilie bordered the windows with pure white drapes (105 yards of fabric, all told). “Imagine strips of color there,” she suggests, grimacing.

Because the front of the condo is a single large open space running north to south, Mrs. Lilie used three coffers in the ceiling to define three “rooms”: one for dining, one a living room, one a casual family room. A simple, oversized, shaded light fixture hangs in each of the three living spaces, both separating and connecting them.

The custom-built cocktail table is “one big dynamic piece, not a lot of little knickknacky things,” says Mrs. Lilie. Its glass top displays what’s on the shelf below and reflects light from the crystal sconces. In the family room, Mrs. Lilie added touches of bright red in the art, pillows, and drum tables. “The challenge here was to get a lot of seating without it looking too crowded,” she says. “And the room is open to the kitchen, so you can watch TV while you’re cooking.”

Above all, this condo is “about the views,” which are eastern, western, and southern. “I get up at 5:30 in the morning, and nothing is going on, and I watch the fog rising from the lakes in Forest Park,” Mrs. Quinn says. “It’s a very magical place to live. At dinner you can pretend you are anywhere. I pretend Paris.”

Tim Rohan

T. Rohan Interiors

Tim Rohan’s clients were leaving a big, gracious home in Webster Groves. Its reassuring familiarity had lulled them for decades as they raised their kids. They’d collected country antiques, made a homey nest.

They were ready to shake up their lives a bit. Go urban. Leave enough open space to live lightly.

Their unit was one floor below the penthouse, and when the renovation began, it was a concrete shell. “Inside the wall, we found all the old drainpipes from the original terrace of the penthouse, one floor up,” Mr. Rohan says. “It was an excavation!”

He and his clients chose arched doorways, a barrel-vaulted hallway, dark wood floors to balance the sun-

bright, open rooms, and a stepped-down design for the crown molding and fireplace to echo the Art Deco details of The Chase. Then, after two years of planning and construction, they were ready to start filling the space.

“The first thing you noticed was the view,” Mr. Rohan says, “so we needed a fairly simple, monochromatic color palette, so your eye wasn’t pulled in too many directions at once. I let the color come from the art and the throw pillows”—brilliant multicolored silks—“and kept the furniture neutral.

“Antique and contemporary,” he repeated like a mantra, waiting for his mind to resolve and integrate the juxtaposition. Upscale upholstered furniture would bridge the styles, its pale curves softening contrasts until they felt deliberate. He mixed early-American walnut pieces with curved sectionals and stone-colored chenille chairs, and he lacquered the candy-apple-red wooden chairs black to make them subtle.

Two custom-made wrought-iron tables echo each other at either end of the condo. One is topped by the decoratively pierced metal circle from a 19th-century air return; the other uses the return’s rough-textured wrought-iron outer circle to frame beveled glass. With that as the living-room cocktail table, he added black Barcelona chairs first bought in Paris. The owners had seen World War II looming and emigrated to this country. Mr. Rohan purchased the chairs from their granddaughter in New York, knowing they’d be perfect for this condo.

Mr. Rohan custom-built the dining-room chairs, shushing them so they wouldn’t steal the table’s thunder. He made them tailored, very simple, and exquisitely comfortable, and he chose a royal blue to pick up the colors in the couple’s oriental rug.

In the foyer, he made a marble parquet, basket-weaving the marble with trellaged wood. A tiny rubber membrane was inserted under the hardwood floors, so heels wouldn’t clack. A sound system went into the ceiling, encased so the sound did not travel to the floor above.

“We showcased the antiques like they were artwork,” he says.

An odd niche in the foyer became the home for a metal sculpture of Adam and Eve, and suddenly looked as though it had been carved out for that very purpose. Another weird, closetlike space became a wine refrigerator, concealed behind doors.

The unit was shaped like a U, its kitchen in the center. So Mr. Rohan constructed two soldierlike cabinets, enclosing the Sub-Zero refrigerator, the pantry, and the microwave. He curved the kitchen island, softening its edge and tucking bar stools under one side. Around the corner, he placed a wet bar.

“It was like living on a boat; you had to utilize every piece of space,” he says. He chose corrugated aluminum bases for the kitchen cabinets, corrugated glass for their windows.

Now it was time for the delicate negotiations. “One basket, one duck,” Rohan teased the couple. Then he relented. Yes, 12 of the duck decoys could find a place on an upper shelf in the library. They would, in fact, add interest. The point, after all, was not to abandon old loves, but to make room for new ideas.

Kimberly Reuther

K Designs

Kimberly Reuther’s client wanted art to be the focus in her new condo. She wanted its rooms to be bathed in light. She wanted to feel carefree.

She’d been living in a two-story house in Des Peres, cut up into rooms with a center hallway, utterly predictable. Now her kids were grown, and just as she and her husband were ready to begin enjoying retirement, he’d been diagnosed with cancer.

Now he was gone. Alone in a big house, she asked herself, “What am I doing out in the county?”

Since moving to The Chase, she’s noticed her taste changing: “It’s more eclectic now,” she says, and a bit more adventurous. She no longer feels burdened by everyday chores and responsibilities. “I don’t cook,” she says cheerfully. “And I can just pick up and go at the drop of a hat. There’s no yard to worry about, and there are people who will water your plants if you leave town. It’s very freeing.”

Up on the 10th floor, she feels entirely safe. And she likes the openness of a single living area. “I don’t feel closed in,” she says. “I love to sit and watch the storms roll in.” In sunny weather, she loves to run out to a restaurant, boutique, bookstore, or coffee shop on the spur of the moment. No need to even grab car keys; everything’s within walking distance.

The client loves the shotgun design. Her bedroom is on one end of the condo, a guest bedroom on the other. Kitchen, living room, and dining room are in the center.

She and Ms. Reuther chose Mirage flooring in espresso, wanting a contrast with light furniture. They warmed the living room with a cream felted-wool shag rug. The client brought in an old tavern table she’d inherited from her parents, who were antiques dealers. She filled the condo with photo graphs her husband had taken, the first joy of his early retirement. Then, her heart anchored, she started making fresh choices for herself.

One of her favorite purchases was a Brazilian cherry-wood countertop for the kitchen island. Then Craft-Art called, worried sick: They might have to cut the wood to get it into The Chase. She sighed and started trying to figure out where a seam would be least offensive. But the delivery guys managed to keep the wood intact after all: “They took windows down in the back of the building to get it in!”

In the dining room, Ms. Reuther had two Chinese puzzles to solve. The table—a new take on Mission, softened with more detailed carving—was off-center to the light fixture. She fooled the eye with an asymmetrical centerpiece. Then she had to create an easy pathway between the dining room and the kitchen. She found stools that slid neatly under the counter. Afterward, she moved the host and hostess chairs away from the ends of the dining table, slip-covered them in apple green, and set them against the wall, where they flank the buffet regally.

Everything fits.