Photography by Sam Fentress
The sky—the changeable western sky—slides by outside Ted and Lana Pepper’s penthouse, demanding attention. Seen through windows so large they disappear, it seems serene at first, and then abruptly darkens.
Lana Pepper knows this mood. “I bet there’ll be a storm in about an hour,” she says. “I’ve become an expert.”
She and Ted had no intention of moving until they saw the sky from the unfinished space being added to the roof of the old Luyties building on Laclede. Lana saw it first, when a friend brought her along and told her the developers were “building a new house on the roof.” She went home and told Ted.
“We then started the conversation about selling the house and moving,” she recalls. “Ted said, ‘I need two more years.’ But we both had such an emotional response to this space that he said, ‘Let’s start the ball rolling.’”
Many months later (having sold their Kingsbury Place house so quickly they had to live in a friend’s carriage house for a year), the two are standing outside on a terrace larger than many city yards.
“This is what got us here,” says Ted, indicating with his arm the sweep of outdoor space. “This and the tremendous sunsets.”
Lana is watching clouds begin to billow on the horizon.
“Even on a boring-sky day, something happens,” she says. “It can be completely overcast and gray and then, at the last minute, there will be a streak of sunset. There’s always something going on in the western sky.”
They could have chosen the eastern-facing penthouse, with its view of the Arch, but, she adds, “We knew we would kick ourselves every afternoon when we missed a beautiful sunset.”
Inside, they’ve made the sky just as constant a presence.
Lana studied their photos of the Italian Mediterranean coast and used them to select the golden-toast colors of the main living space, the deep blue at one end of the dining area and the sage green used in the master bedroom. Just back from Peru, she had two of her living room walls painted a burnt red (and completed it just hours before the photo shoot). Earthy umber and ochre upholstery, textured metal and granite surfaces, and a light maple floor evoke an Italian landscape. The changeable sky fits nicely into the picture.
The Peppers—he’s a radiologist, she’s a founding member and former managing director of the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis—furnished their previous home mostly with antiques in a traditional style. But there is nothing Old World about their new space.
Contemporary art, light floors and the high, angular lines of the ceiling create a modern framework. Sleek couches and a row of gas jets for a fireplace—form follows function, no fake logs here—continue the theme. By contrast, a Mexican colonial table, a painted trunk, a Dutch buffet all stand out like folk art. Whimsical high-tech lighting fixtures are the jewelry that finishes the look.
The Peppers entertain a lot. With 4,000 square feet inside and 2,400 more out on the terrace, there’s more than enough room to entertain many dozens of people at once. Yet the spaces are cozy enough for small parties—the dining room actually feels enclosed, and on the terrace, a trellis shelters another table.
This isn’t a wide-open loft. Partial walls and a clever layout both connect the public rooms and separate them from one another. As with the floor plans of more traditional homes, a guest enters into the formal space of the apartment. The kitchen and family room are more private, tucked (if spaces that large can be said to be “tucked”) around a corner.
The three-story Art Deco building was home to Luyties Homeopathic Pharmacy Co. from 1915 until 2001, when developer Andrew Murphy bought it to convert it to residential lofts. Murphy’s grandfather had once owned both the company and the building. Murphy’s company, AM Properties, has now created 18 condominiums in the building. They range in size from 1,300 square feet to twice the size of the Peppers’ unit. The property also includes an attached 35-car garage.
Because they purchased the property before the roof house was finished, the Peppers were able to make changes in the floor plan. The first was to reduce the size of the kitchen and hide it from the living room with a wall that wasn’t in the original plans. (The Peppers’ friend, architect Gyo Obata, helped with the alterations.)
“It was huge; it was way too big,” says Lana. To further hide the kitchen during more formal parties, she had a scenic artist from the Rep and Opera Theatre create two oversized pieces of abstract artwork on shades. They hang over the counter that separates the kitchen from the breakfast room. Rolled up, they’re hidden. Unfurled, they create a striking screen.
(When they moved in, Lana used one of the paintings to block the sun that streams through the living-room wall of windows in the afternoon. The large painting was hung from the ceiling, appearing to float in the view of the sky. She has since had a shade installed outside.)
Both serious and not-so-serious art is evident throughout the apartment. William Shakespeare peeks around the corner of the family room in the form of a giant portrait on a silk curtain. A side foyer is something of an art gallery and features a Degas artist’s print of a ballerina that Lana bought at a garage sale because she admired the frame. A friend and former St. Louis resident, artist-architect Werner Maassen, painted the large contemporary Napa Valley landscape that hangs over the fireplace.
Nature, too, is evoked in various ways. The Peppers had seven skylights cut into the roof. Their only regret is that they didn’t have them made even bigger, since they are up so high. From the living room, the round window in the dining area looks like a full moon against the deep blue walls. And in the powder room, the stone vessel sink looks like it was carved from desert rock. When the lights are low, it glows.
The master suite is a skybox, with window walls on two sides looking out to the terrace and the rooftops beyond.
It’s clear that the expansive terrace—and the access it allows to the outdoors—turns the condominium from just a vast apartment to a house in the sky. The Peppers have divided it into “rooms” that complement those inside: a kitchen, a dining area under a trellis that will eventually be covered with clematis and trumpet vines, a private bamboo garden outside their bedroom and a general entertaining area that, in early summer, features peonies in full bloom.
“It feels like it’s so much higher than it actually is,” says Lana, looking out at the St. Louis Cathedral under a cloud-tinged sky.
Her husband jokes that even a little smog can be a good thing: “A little pollution makes for great sunsets.”
“It feels like Italy…” Lana begins.
“…Rome, Florence or Milan,” says Ted, finishing her thought. “This is what got us here…this, and the tremendous sunsets.”
