Photography by Alise O'Brien
Mary Ann and Tom Thomson always wanted a house in Provence, France. They never got one. Natives of California, they dreamed of a home on the beach. Nope. Not in Missouri.
Instead, they came upon a circa 1814 home in Clarksville, 1,200 square feet of French charm with a view of the Missouri River. Dubbed “The Cottage,” it’s their personal slice of paradise.
“I think our blood pressure goes down about 22 points once we get on Highway 79,” Mary Ann says. “We start to relax knowing that it’s so peaceful here. Even work isn’t work.”
St. Louis residents, the Thomsons looked for months for a second home, hunting first in Hermann and Elsah, Ill., before a close friend, Lois Rinedollar, told them: “I know where there is a little house you will love.”
“We came out that day,” Mary Ann recalls. “It had to be the coldest day of the year. It must have been January. We walked in and knew immediately.”
Tom, an architect, believes the house—one of the oldest in Clarksville—was originally a one-room fort with a log enclosure for animals. It was used by the river traders in the early 1800s and later, was converted into a boarding house. Through the centuries, logs were replaced by bricks, a second story was added, the exterior was covered in stucco. By the time the Thomsons sauntered in, “it was filled with lawn mowers, egg crates, storage of all kinds,” Mary Ann says. “No one had lived in it for years.”
That vintage vibe struck the right chord with Tom and Mary Ann: “We wanted that old European feeling. That was what we loved about it.” They put in new ceilings, electrical wiring and plumbing; replaced some windows; and ripped out a second bathroom to create a porch. They also added two cocktail party–sized refrigerators—and that was about it for modern renovations. In fact, to assist the aged look along, Mary Ann and Tom attacked the walls with their own putty knives, chipping away even more plaster.
“A house talks to you. It tells you what it wants to be,” Mary Ann says. “This one just lends itself to that Old World charm. Since we love our house, we have tried to preserve that feeling of old so people could tell what it had been like years ago.”
Much of the original remained. They pulled up the linoleum on the second floor to find pine floors with an original hand-painted, checkerboard pattern.
Downstairs, they punched the living room fireplace out so it also opened into the dining room. Upstairs in the master bedroom, the Thomsons pulled down the wallpaper on the bedroom ceiling and left it as is. “We just love that, but somebody else would probably vomit,” Mary Ann says, peering up at the rough and unfinished surface. “It spoke to us.”
Friends like Bruce Burstert, a decorator and faux painter based in Kansas City, and the local blacksmith, Darold Rinedollar, helped.
As a stylist and reporter for Meredith Corp. (working primarily on Traditional Home and Better Homes and Gardens), Mary Ann was working with Burstert on a photo shoot in Santa Fe when she lamented that a scheduled story had fallen through. “He said, ‘We can do your house,’” she recalls. “I was so amazed. He didn’t drive at the time so he came on a train with his little satchel. I told him, ‘Whatever you do, I will be so grateful.’ He wanted to do it. People pay him a lot of money to do their houses and he just came here.”
Burstert ragged over the peeling plaster and painted faux scenes everywhere: paneling on the walls, a trompe l’oeil door and bull’s-eye window above it complete with birds flying; painted columns on the sitting room walls; a faux limestone floor in the dining room; marbled woodwork and mantel; stenciled and embellished old pine floors. His artful touch shows up all over the house.
“The bedroom almost feels like the inside of a shell, with its pinks and yellows,” Mary Ann says. The rooms on the second floor are 12-foot cubes—12-foot ceilings, 12-foot square. “It is a very comforting-size space, 12 by 12.”
Rinedollar bent iron to make the kitchen’s pot rack, dining room candelabra (with real candles), curtain rods, hooks, a lamp, exterior arch, trellis, garden obelisk, even the bed in the master bedroom. “Darold made it for someone else but it wouldn’t fit in their bedroom,” Mary Ann explains. “So we got it.”
With the discerning eye of an artist and magazine stylist, Mary Ann filled the house with pieces hearkening to another time, another place. “I love something with character. It’s hard to describe but I know it when I see it,” she explains. “I love worn paint on furniture, anything that smacks of Europe. I also like to play off of it with glass. I don’t like everything to be totally old—I like the freshness of glass vases.
“Wherever I am, I am looking for something that has some charm, that is comfortable, that is practical.”
She and Tom found it, away from the sea, 4,224 miles from St. Remy de Provence, on a hill near a river in Missouri.
