Three years ago, architects Susan Bower and Stephen Leet were at a crossroads. Their two sons had left the nest, and they were entering a new phase of life. “We started thinking about the house because it has multiple levels,” says Bower. “After your knees start to give out, you have the conversation: ‘Are we going to sell it and move into a condo?’ We decided that we like it here, and we were going to stay and accommodate this house.”
Bower, principal of Bower Leet Design, took the lead on designing an addition for the home, acting as both client and architect—a process she says was at once fun and anxiety-inducing. “When there is no client or, in my case, the architect is the client, the outside set of parameters is removed,” says Bower. “The dialog becomes a monologue, and the constraints are missing.”
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
Leet, retired professor of architecture at WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design, acted as Bower’s sounding board throughout the project. “In any creative endeavor, it’s always good to get the idea out and to hear the reaction,” she says.
Built in 1955, the original house was designed by architect Nolan Stinson and served as his family residence. Bower and Leet are only the second owners; the couple purchased the property in 1996 from Stinson. Designed with low tongue-and-groove wood ceilings, wood-paneled interior walls, and a board-and-batten wood siding façade, any addition to the home would need to respect its historic architecture, while offering elements of universal modern design.
“We never wanted to ‘match’ this house exactly, and it doesn’t make sense—you can’t build a house like this now because it wouldn’t meet code,” Bower says. “We wanted a counterpoint to the existing house. It’s a matter of balance to get the two things to harmonize.”
The first step in the process of building the addition, Bower says, was to determine where it would go. They decided the west side made the most sense for the home’s layout, and the land there is less encumbered with utility services, such as electrical and sewer lines. Adding the new wing on the west side of the existing L-shaped house also created an enclosed courtyard for their patio and garden, which was previously open to the view of neighboring homes.
After choosing the location, Bower and Leet began planning a year in advance, selecting the trees that would need to be removed and the ones that would stay. They decided to keep a large maple in the center of the courtyard and hired M&P Landscaping to root prune the tree and fence it off during construction.
The addition was designed to give the couple what they felt was missing from the original house, including a mud room that opens to the carport, a powder room, main-floor laundry, built-in storage, a primary bedroom with a private shade porch, and a spacious primary bath with a zero-entry shower. Bower worked closely with Nate Markway of Markway Construction to complete the work.
Although the addition has taken on its own identity, the choice of materials was made with the main house in mind. “There are a lot of decisions in the addition that are comments on the original house,” says Bower. “For instance, most of the original house is wood siding. It’s a maintenance issue that is ongoing. Brick is so much easier, so that was the decision for the exterior. Because the house is gray, the dark charcoal colored brick made sense.”
Bower worked with masonry experts at The Harlan Company to incorporate various sizes and patterns into the brickwork. The shade patio off the primary bedroom features breeze-block brick walls for privacy, but they still allow light to shine into the space.
“I’ve always loved patterns, and brick patterning is something you see a lot in St. Louis,” says Bower. “The Garden Council Building in south city was designed by Fred Dunn and Nolan Stinson, who designed our house. There is great brick patterning on the building and breeze blocks built into the fencing, so it turned into an homage to Stinson. The light patterns are beautiful, and they change throughout the year.”
Inside, a new mudroom creates a transitional “bridge” between the existing house and the new wing. Because it had to fit under the original cantilevered roofline, it still has low ceilings—but once it clears, the ceiling rises up with north-facing clerestory windows, bathing the hallway and new powder room with light.
The focal point of the powder room is a pin-oak log that extends from floor to ceiling and acts as a natural backsplash. Bower’s brother salvaged the log from a tree that her father planted near the Kentucky farm where she was raised. When she brought it to Markway, it was 18 feet long and weighed 1,800 pounds. “After throwing out a dozen other ideas, we thought it should support the sink in the powder room,” Bower says.
Off the powder room, the layout of the rest of the addition features two lanes of circulation on each side, leading to the cozy bedroom. One side includes a small, built-in vanity and a bank of built-in closets and drawers. The opposite side includes the side-oriented primary bath. A connecting hallway midway between them houses the laundry and mechanical systems, and each are hidden behind modern, soft-close barn doors.
This kind of easy access was one of the addition’s key considerations. “One of the reasons it came up was aging in place,” Leet says. “It’s a pretty compact house, and that’s changed—now I can walk more. It’s fantastic. And I really love the way it frames the backyard.”
Says Bower, “It’s better than I imagined.”
