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Photography by Alise O’Brien
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The assignment was plum, but the problem was perplexing for the architects of Mitchell Wall Architecture and Design and senior designer Colleen Ertl of Diane Breckenridge Interiors. How does one design a house for Lindenwood University president Jim Evans and his wife, Lois, that is both comfortable for them and chic enough for entertaining the school’s bigwigs?
Basically, you design two houses in one 9,200-square-foot building. One has a dining room that looks like a modern take on Downton Abbey and a living room in a style that would work inside a Ritz-Carlton. The second sports a cozy kitchen and breakfast nook, hearth room, master-bedroom suite, and casual living on the lower level. In total, the house has four bedrooms and eight bathrooms.
“It is an interesting cross between a personal residence and something that is used for entertaining in a more commercial way,” says Ertl, Allied Member ASID, who’s also vice president of design at Diane Breckenridge Interiors.
Carol Wall of Mitchell Wall notes that the house’s architecture is “Collegiate Gothic,” a style found frequently on Ivy League campuses. The dining room seats 14, with a coffered ceiling, a large fireplace, and a wall of French doors that open to a small balcony.
“I love that dining room,” Ertl says. “I want to eat in there all the time—as I am sitting on a bar stool at a table in my kitchen. It is a very formal dining space, but it is very comfortable.”
The room is used for formal occasions, donor entertaining, alumni get-togethers, and dining with the university’s board of directors. The color scheme brings together browns, greens, blues, cream, and spots of gold.
“We wanted it to be traditional in style but still have a current air to it, so it didn’t feel old or stuffy,” Ertl says. “There are some pretty classic pieces. We wanted it to be timeless.”
The inlaid floor visually connects the dining room to the living room. There, the color scheme is repeated in an area rug. Wall says the living room’s design is in the vein of a great hall, with a dark, wood-beamed ceiling and an elegant fireplace.
“We wanted the furniture to be comfortable and inviting and not look so stuffy and hard,” Ertl says. “In some respects, it needs to be formal, because it is a receiving place for events, but they say people come in and just plop down.”
The question remains: How do you keep a house like this from looking more like a fine-furniture showroom than someone’s home?
“You have to put in some personal touches,” Ertl says. “In the ginormous [15-foot-tall] bookshelves, there are photographs, things that are personal to the Evanses and to the university.”
What isn’t pictured here is the home’s antique piano, which has been at Lindenwood for decades.
“It is just fabulous and the focal point of the room,” Wall says.
One personal touch the residence lacks, however, is an animal that might shed or, God forbid, drool. Ertl concurs that as comfortable as the house may be, it falls way short of pet-friendly.
“You would have to have [serious] words when you do a cream sofa and they have pets,” she says.
