Author Vivian Gibson lives less than a mile from the site of her first childhood home, a three-room shotgun-style house in the former Mill Creek Valley neighborhood.
A casualty of one of the city’s “urban renewal” developments, the house—and surrounding homes—were torn down in 1959 to pave the way for the construction of U.S. Highway 40 (now Interstate 64) and, more specifically, the Jefferson offramp. That vibrant but segregated working-class Black neighborhood is now gone, but Gibson keeps its memory alive in her elegant home: A black-and-white image of the house hangs on the living room wall.
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.
“It was part of our makeup to make things beautiful,” says Gibson, 73, who shared the Mill Creek house with extended family. “My mother was an artist, so even though our house was not beautiful, she would sit there and make beautiful things for other people. We had a sense of how to make beauty.”
Gibson is the author of the 2020 memoir The Last Children of Mill Creek. Now in its second printing, the book tells the story of her early years in Mill Creek and the people who made the neighborhood a tight-knit community. Even after her time in Mill Creek came to an end, life gave Gibson plenty of material from which to draw inspiration. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and, as a newlywed, lived in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. These influences also inspired the design of her home—one that’s authentically her own.
“I like pretty, but I also like comfort,” she says, opening up her ninth-floor condo inside the OYO Hotel to a reporter. “I have a very intimate relationship with my things, but I don’t want this to be a museum. I want to look at everything, but I also want to be able to put my feet up and enjoy living in my space.”
Gibson’s collection of teapots is displayed throughout the condo. The writer’s late mother, Frances Ross, was also a collector, and Gibson has continued the tradition with a number of her own pieces, including an ornate Arthur Wood teapot from England and a decorative copper pot that she purchased in Morocco. The pots, of varying shapes and sizes, serve as a memorial to her mother, she says.
Surrounded by calming shades of green on the walls and on the bed linens in the primary bedroom, Gibson does most of her best writing early in the morning. That often means waking at 3 or 4 a.m. to write by hand, typically for hours at a time. She keeps a notepad on her nightstand so she can capture her ideas whenever they may arise—and before they vanish.
Growing up in such a small house, Gibson recalls, meant that one’s only truly personal space was his or her bed. She remembers watching her mother create a makeshift workspace in her own bedroom: After her father, Randle Ross, left each morning to work the first of his three jobs, driving a truck for the St. Louis Public Service Company, Frances would lay a piece of muslin over the mattress and crochet elaborate pastel hats for churchgoers. “She’d do everything she had to do; then, at night, she folded up that muslin and put it in a suitcase that she’d slip under the bed.”
Gibson uses art to help tell her life story. In 1978, she moved with her then-husband, a banker, to Liberia and grew interested in African art. Today, ebony busts of African women adorn the mantelpiece, and African masks flank an abstract triptych by an unknown French-Vietnamese artist. Four African baskets, each with a unique aesthetic, adorn the dining room wall. The largest, of wood, features an abstract design in shades of brown and mahogany. The rich, warm colors are mirrored in a series of prints and paintings, primarily by Black artists. A particular favorite of Gibson’s, a chalk piece by Alex Corbbrey titled “Beginnings,” depicts a pregnant woman and a man cradling her belly.
In writing The Last Children of Mill Creek, Gibson sought to convey the rich interior lives of her family and neighbors. Their surroundings, though humble, did not limit them, or her.
“They were like everybody else. They had hopes and dreams and they loved beauty and loved music,” she recalls. “I blossomed from that space, just like anybody else would. I’m just like anybody else.”
