Elegance Regained

By Susan Caba

Photography by David Kreutz

Windermere Place, an enclave of 31 stately homes just a half-mile from Forest Park, was once the equivalent of Ladue for prominent African-American families in St. Louis, at a time when the city was more segregated. Doctors, public officials, developers and bankers built or bought the houses around the turn of the 19th century. The neighborhood remained an enclave of well-to-do and well-known black St. Louis leaders well into the last century—boxer Sonny Liston lived on one corner, in number 1, and Chuck Berry lived at number 13. Donnell Smith, a board member of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, has restored the luster to number 6, a three-story buff brick mansion built in 1905 at a cost of $14,000.

A dramatic entry—set off by leaded glass windows in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright—separates the expansive living room from the more intimate dining room, with its restored woodwork and ceiling beams. Pocket doors, hardwood floors and five wood-burning fireplaces (in the living room, dining room, den, library and one bedroom) are some of the features that date to the house’s origin. An updated kitchen, with Viking appliances, granite countertops and floors, and maple cabinets, puts the house squarely in the modern age. If the interior is meant for entertaining on a large scale, the exterior—with a new swimming pool—makes the outside equally inviting.

The 5,200-square-foot house has six bedrooms (plus two other rooms now used as a den and a library), four bathrooms, new plumbing and a new roof. Other houses in Windermere Place have also been updated; the neighborhood has the feeling of old prosperity that slipped a little, but has regained its footing, with more improvement ahead.

Address: 6 Windermere Place, Central West End

Asking price: $599,000

Agents: Jim Bokern & Angela Brock-Bokern, The Bokern Realty Group, 314-276-9813 or 314-853-3822