Photography by Alise O'Brien
Pat and Carol Schuchard’s Richmond Heights home is decorated in a manner one would expect of these two gifted artists and seasoned home renovators. With artistic flourishes throughout, the home holds a stylish mix of modern and historic furnishings, resulting in swoon-worthy spaces just waiting for a gathering of friends and family.
The Schuchards—the business minds behind such historic event spaces as Bevo Mill and the Boo Cat Club—love to entertain with dinner or a cocktail in the comfort of their home. Their former residence, a warehouse on Hodiamont that also served as their art studios, could hold up to 150 guests in the open space across a single floor. The new house is amply spacious but doesn’t offer that kind of room. Long sightlines connect the ground floor spaces, and enchanting vignettes, mounted with the eye of an accomplished designer, create enticing places for conversation. The living room features a comfortable seating area facing a fireplace with Gothic details; the large dining room table, which Pat built for Carol as a birthday present when the pair lived in Colorado, has plenty of room for friends and their large family—between them they have six children and nine grandchildren.
“That was one thing I really wanted: a house that could accommodate a big group of people, because our warehouse was huge,” says Carol. “This is a perfect entertaining house. We like to have a comfortable space to bring people.”
Photography by Alise O'Brien
Elvis and Bevo, the couple’s two French bulldogs, greet visitors in the soaring two-story foyer with an original Art Deco mosaic floor. An enormous wrought iron chandelier hangs overhead. When the couple first moved in, most of the light bulbs in that fixture were burned out. In a daring DIY maneuver, involving plywood and the railing of the circular staircase, Pat replaced each bulb with ones that will last a solid 20 years. “I was just about crying,” laughs Carol, recalling the memory of her husband laying planks across the two-story drop, then climbing up to screw in the new bulbs.
Another fixture, this one much more modern, casts a soft glow around the space below. The Ingo Maurer–designed chandelier, made with dozens of sheets of rice paper notes, looks like confetti suspended in air, a celebratory moment caught in time, which Pat describes as perfect for the space.
“I think it works really well on this floor,” he says. “I mean, these are all things we don’t plan out, but [the mosaic floor] looks like a bunch of heavier pieces of paper, big heavy confetti.”
Art purchased and created by the couple gives life to each of the rooms. The home is brimming with inventive details: decades’ worth of paintings, sculptures, textiles, and works in other media are constantly being rotated in and out of rooms. Art even makes its way outside the home. Cast iron animals made by San Antonio-based Modernist sculptor Ken Little are nestled into both the foyer and the landscaping near the front door.
“The place never stays the same. We’re always changing things,” says Pat. “Carol’s making new work all the time and putting it in here. And so you’ll see things leaning up against the wall and some things in the kitchen. We’re always kind of messing with the space.”
Photography by Alise O'Brien
Currently, two large portraits of Pat’s parents, painted more than 25 years ago, are waiting for the right place to hang. The couple have discussed swapping out a set of kitchen cabinets for the large frames, but the stove below would make the location less than ideal. The space is already home to two long-time fixtures, a galvanized funnel lampshade and an antique workbench that acts as a kitchen island. When they bought the house in May 2020, the original island was the very first thing to go.
“We always like the idea of making something better by subtracting,” says Pat. “The first day we were in here, we tore out the kitchen island and a tile floor.” Says Carol, “We went from the closing, and Pat took a crowbar and came right over here and took out the island.”
Other renovations included painting over dark woodwork to lighten up the interior spaces and reworking the landscaping, which has become one of the couple’s favorite things about the property. A creek winds through the backyard, and mature trees surrounding the neighborhood add to the verdant setting, even though the neighborhood is just moments by car from I-64 and South Hanley. In front of the house, a large cherry tree shelters a small balcony off a hallway across from the primary suite, creating a shady spot that’s blocked from the view of passing cars. Soon, they hope to expand the entertaining space in the backyard, where an original elaborate wrought iron deck and stone kitchen are already in place.
Photography by Alise O'Brien
“It really is something,” says Pat. “We walk every day with the dogs, and this is just such a mature landscape back here. You can see it in the scale of the trees. They go back 100 years or more, back to when the area was built. This house was built as a summerhouse, and of course that was before anything, before Highway 40.”
The neighborhood sprung up in the 1920s and is full of manor houses with interesting details. The Schuchard’s is marked by its slate-clad turret and rounded staircase, which Carol immediately recognized when they first toured the home.
“I raised my kids in a Maritz & Young house in Clayton, and I loved it and really hated leaving it,” she says. “I walked in [to this home] and said, ‘I know that staircase.’” Indeed, the Schuchards’ home was also designed by the prolific local architectural firm in the late 1920s, and Carol instantly fell for it. Pat took slightly more convincing, but as with most things, the couple eventually found themselves equally committed.
“We’re almost always on the same page with stuff, especially design, but Carol loved the house, and I didn’t,” says Pat. “She loved it so much. I thought, Well you better look at it again.”
“We’re both obviously really visual people, and, I don’t know, it just felt like the perfect container for our lives,” says Carol. “And it is.”
More than two years after they moved in, the couple is still awed by the space. They’re still doing projects, like replacing damaged molding and repairing a window sacrificed when their daughter accidentally ended up locked out with the dogs on the second-floor balcony. But there’s no buyer’s remorse here.
“We just love everything,” says Carol. “Just about every day, I walk down those stairs in the morning and say to Pat, ‘Did I mention I love this house?’”
