Photograph by Alise O'Brien
This is the kind of house that has old Turkish bath vessels as hand-wash basins. Nestled near the end of a winding Ladue lane, it was designed in 2009 by Lauren Strutman Architects and was the winner of At Home’s House of the Year award in 2012.
“A beautiful home full of casual elegance” is how the owners describe it. That is thanks, in part, to Janice Rohan Hulse, owner of Park Avenue Design (10 S. Brentwood, 314-863-0095).
Although the house is glitteringly new, the wealth of antique and architectural features and Rohan Hulse’s finely tuned interior design lend a distinct feel of age and authenticity.
“Because the couple has such a love of antiques, it was important to start off with a placement plan, to know where the furniture was going, and to see through the rooms,” Rohan Hulse says. She paid close attention to the way the rooms flow into one another. Spaces connect tonally. Colors complement each other from one room to the next, as does the lighting. The walls themselves are works of art. The Venetian plaster painting technique means there are no hard edges. Rather, the walls have a soft, sculpted appearance and oftentimes, a luster from the addition of faintly glittery powdered stone and a covering of wax. The color is integral to the plaster, Rohan Hulse explains.
“The use of Venetian plaster was also a way of bringing a rusticity to the house,” Rohan Hulse says. “Combining that rustic material with more formal elements provides interesting contrasts.”
Contrast is also evident in the placement of furniture and artwork—an abstract expressionist painting by Helen Frankenthaler, for example, in between a pair of old gilded architectural plumes. Or antique corbels at the open entrance to the modern kitchen.
There is a certain regality that comes from the art, furnishings, and sumptuous materials: limestone floors in the foyer and downstairs bathrooms, walnut floors in the living and dining rooms, chocolate marble in the loggia. The blisteringly white kitchen is striking for its enormous arabiscato marble island and plaster-coated hood. In the family room, a recessed tray ceiling of Louisiana pecky cypress provides the warm feel of a log cabin, as does the beautiful fireplace, with its imposing mantel of mixed stones. This latter feature is the handiwork of St. Louis stonemason Jack Clark, as are the cast limestone mantels in the living and dining rooms. The medieval-style chandelier and colossal kitchen pot rack are also the work of a St. Louis artisan, Stu Barragan of West County Forge.
Objects have traveled across the world to get to this house. Antique chandeliers shipped from Florence, a silvery nickel-plate bath from London, coach lanterns from Provence, drapery fabric from China. Much of the furniture comes from Jules L. Pass Antiques.
“I am very motivated by fabrics,” Rohan Hulse says. The draperies and upholstery are stunning: Osborne & Little printed silks by Nina Campbell in the master bedroom and, in the dining and living room, woven damasks from Italy. As for her choice to use the same drapery fabric in both rooms, Rohan Hulse says, “It worked well for tying the four sets of French doors together, as all are seen from the front of the house.”The choices in wallpaper are exquisite. Take, for instance, the shimmery chinoiserie in the powder room. Nina Campbell again. Or the hand-painted flowers and birds in the dining room.
The walls of the master bedroom on the first floor are charcoal, almost black. Again, there is depth and luster to the finish, reminiscent—with that little twinkle of stone—of a night sky.
“This luscious bedroom was designed to be like a room in a castle,” Rohan Hulse says. “It has 12-foot ceilings.” She used creamy picture molding to accentuate the spaces and anchor the fine pieces of furniture. The huge hand-painted bed is barely visible beneath its cloud of embroidered fairy tale bedding.
The dreamy master bathroom next door has even higher ceilings, but the room is soft and warm, romantic with its ruched silk Austrian shade and serene sage hue.
“Yes, there is a definite royalty to the house,” Rohan Hulse says, casting her hand about all the gold leaf, the beautiful 17th- and 18th-century pieces. “But it is balanced. Nothing is overdone.”
