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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
For Christy Ford Schlafly and her four siblings, the property at 4 Deacon Drive in Huntleigh provided an ideal setting for their childhood. The cavernous two-story home featured old-fashioned dumbwaiters that the kids used for quick rides between floors and endless secret nooks in which to lurk during marathon games of hide-and-seek.
“If you didn’t want to be found, you weren’t going to be found,” says Schlafly.
The property was also home to horses, peacocks, chickens, an indoor beehive, and as many as 19 puppies at one time, says Peggy Barnhart, another sibling. Their father, William Ford, worked as an engineer but also raised show-quality German shepherds, and the family maintained an open-door policy that kept the house swarming with activity.
“It was really a fun house to grow up in, and it was unlike anybody else’s,” says Barnhart.
Though the home may have seemed more menagerie than museum, it also holds historic value as one of a handful of houses designed by St. Louis native Charles Eames, who, with wife Ray, later became better known for the molded plywood chairs that helped define the era of Midcentury Modern design.
But the house, named the Meyer House for its original owners, was one of Eames’ earliest commissions and helped attract the attention of designer Eliel Saarinen, says Genny Cortinovis, assistant curator of decorative arts and design for the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Photograph courtesy of peggy barnhart
Saarinen offered Eames a fellowship to study architecture and design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1938, the year the Meyer House was completed. It was there that Charles met Ray Kaiser, and a design partnership with Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen, Eliel’s son, first took hold.
“It was kind of this catalyst to bring him to the next step in his career,” says Cortinovis.
The Meyer House, which Eames designed with Robert T. Walsh, pays homage to Saarinen through its use of severe wall planes, softened somewhat by brick construction that adds texture, says Michael Allen, director and architectural historian for the Preservation Research Office in St. Louis.
“There’s also a keen attention to situating the house on the landscape to draw interior and exterior together through careful placement of large picture windows that offer the interior stunning views,” says Allen.
The 7,000-square-foot home, originally commissioned by John and Alice Meyer, was also one of the few in St. Louis with textiles and furnishings designed specifically for its spaces. Eames designed the metalwork throughout the property and enlisted St. Louis artists and artisans, including Emil Frei, to create the home’s stained glass windows.
“It was a collaboration of the leading artists and designers in St. Louis at that moment,” says Cortinovis, “so I would say it’s important for Eames’ career, it’s important for the history of St. Louis, and it’s important as a kind of global look at design in the 1930s.”
Through small personal touches around the house—such as the musical notes from Alice Meyer’s favorite symphony, etched into a handful of the building’s exterior bricks—the house offers a glimpse into the sense of whimsy that’s more evident in the designer’s later work.
Though the Fords, only the property’s second owners, respected its pedigree and hosted Eames at the house on several occasions, it was first and foremost a family home.
“What made it fun was my parents,” says Barnhart. “They wanted a durable house, and they got one. They loved it and lived in that house for 50 years, but they didn’t consider it a work of art. They considered it home.”
The Meyer House is scheduled to go on the market in February.
