On Saturday, October 10, from noon to 6 p.m., ModernSTL is opening seven mid-century modern houses across Olivette, Ladue and Creve Coeur for its Mid-County Modern Home Tour. The stops stay secret until the tour begins. According to Ladue News, several of the houses were designed by two St. Louis-born architects, William Bernoudy and Isadore Shank.
In Ladue, houses like these are easy to drive past for years without seeing them. The same deep, wooded, set-back lots that hide them from the street are what drew modern architects to Ladue after the war. The tour lets you see inside for one afternoon. The rest of the year, you have to know where to look.
A Rural Town Until the Builders Came Back
A National Register nomination prepared for the Czufin House on Dielman Road gives the clearest account of how Ladue ended up with so many modern houses. It describes a town that kept its rural character through the 1930s and then built homes quickly after World War II. By then the city of St. Louis had little undeveloped residential land left. The suburbs offered larger lots and room for newer styles. Commercial building materials came back after wartime production, and car ownership made a house on a wooded lot in mid-county practical.
According to the nomination, zoning setbacks, open space, wooded lots and secluded siting helped keep Ladue's residential character spacious. For an architect working in the Frank Lloyd Wright tradition, that was close to ideal. A house could sit among the trees, open to its own land, and turn away from the street. Those same features are why so many Ladue modern houses barely register from a moving car.
Two Architects Who Got to Ladue by Different Routes
Bernoudy and Shank took different paths, and both ended up building on these lots.
William Bernoudy, by way of Taliesin
Washington University's archive records that Bernoudy, born in 1910, left the university after two semesters in a pre-business program. In 1932 he joined the first class of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship and studied there for just under three years. Back in St. Louis, he and Edouard Jules Mutrux built a practice focused mainly on homes. Henry Bauer later joined them, and Bernoudy kept designing after the partnership ended. The Czufin nomination estimates that his 50-year career may have produced more than 350 designs. That count covers residential and commercial projects together.
Isadore Shank, by way of Europe
Shank, born in 1902, graduated from Washington University in 1925. An AIA fellowship took him through Europe and North Africa, and he practiced in St. Louis from the 1930s through the 1960s. A 2007 St. Louis Magazine profile credits him with about 140 buildings in all, and notes that homes were his specialty. Many St. Louisans know his work without knowing his name. Ladue News points out that Shank also designed the two-toned geometric DeBaliviere Building at Delmar Boulevard and DeBaliviere Avenue.
Shank is tied to one Ladue street in particular. He and a colleague, Jim Auer, laid out the Graybridge subdivision. Seven houses went up there before World War II, and Shank designed five of them, including his own family home on Graybridge Lane. So Ladue had a small modernist neighborhood before the postwar boom began. Shank's homes also reach beyond Ladue, into Hampton Park in Richmond Heights and into Frontenac.
The Order It Happened In
The documented Ladue work follows the same timeline as the land story.
- 1932. Bernoudy joins Wright's first Taliesin class.
- Around 1940. Shank's house on Graybridge Lane and the Talbott-Mutrux House on Sumac Lane are finished, both before the war.
- 1950. Bernoudy builds his own home on Litzsinger Road.
- 1950–51. The Czufin House goes up on Dielman Road, one of the early Bernoudy-Mutrux designs.
- 1950s. Harris Armstrong designs the Fred Evens House on Litzsinger Road and the Louis S. Sachs House on Dromara. The county dates the Sachs House to 1956.
- 1956 and 1960. Shank's Siegel House on Sherwyn Lane and Limberg House on Fordyce Lane are built.
- 1958 to 1965. The Ethical Society buys land on Clayton Road and opens a Harris Armstrong meeting house there.
The records don't always agree on dates. St. Louis County's mid-century modern inventory, compiled in 2007, dates the Graybridge Lane house to 1940, while St. Louis Magazine says it was finished in 1941. The Ruth Schweiss House on Daniel Road, a Bernoudy-Mutrux design, is listed as 1955 by the county and 1952 by Preservation Research. Even the firm's early milestones are recorded differently. The Czufin nomination dates the Bernoudy-Mutrux Architects period from 1946, while Washington University's archive places the formal offices at 7 Forsyth Walk and the Bernoudy-Mutrux name in 1947. Houses built to be private, on lots built to be secluded, left a thinner paper trail than a downtown office building would. Most of what is documented about Ladue's modern houses still comes from that single 2007 county survey.
The Modern Building Anyone Can Visit
Nearly all of Ladue's mid-century modern architecture is in private homes. The most visible exception is on Clayton Road. The Ethical Society of St. Louis history says the group bought land at 9001 Clayton Road in 1958 for $35,000. It then raised money for a modern meeting house designed by Harris Armstrong, which was completed in 1964 and dedicated in 1965. The building's sweeping, upturned roofline was meant to symbolize "the Society's aim to bring out the best in the human spirit." The wood-paneled auditorium was built for strong acoustics. It also houses the first baroque-style tracker organ built in St. Louis, given in 1965 by member Genevieve Hail in memory of her husband. The county inventory dates the hall to 1961 and gives its address on Ladue Road, a reminder of how loosely these buildings were first recorded.
The building has grown over the years. A west wing finished in 1999 added meeting rooms, offices, a bright entry lobby and an elevator. From the street, the roofline is still the first thing you see.
How Saturday Works
The October 10 tour is a self-guided drive. The details:
- Check-in: First Church of Christ, Scientist, 10939 Ladue Road, Creve Coeur. Its prow-shaped roof makes it a stop in its own right, and it will be open to visitors.
- Tickets: $50. Show your confirmation email at check-in to get your ticket and map.
- Hours: Noon to 6 p.m.
- At each house: Homeowners and volunteers will be on hand to answer questions.
- Where the money goes: Proceeds support the ModernSTL Preservation Fund, which helps conserve mid-century modern architecture across St. Louis.
ModernSTL has opened Ladue-area modern homes to the public before, including an "Atomic Ranch Open House" in Ladue Estates in May 2012. In the Ladue News coverage, organization president Nathan Wilber called this year's lineup "some truly outstanding ones."
Seeing the Rest From the Street
Every other house named here is a private home. Graybridge Lane, Sumac Lane, Litzsinger Road, Dielman Road, Daniel Road, Sherwyn Lane, Fordyce Lane and Dromara are residential streets, not stops on a route. The county inventory is a 2007 survey, so it doesn't confirm what each house looks like today. For a closer look, the October 10 tour, with its owners' permission, is the way in. The Ethical Society's roof on Clayton Road is visible any day of the year.
If you own one of Ladue's mid-century modern houses, its architect, its documented history and its siting are part of what makes it valuable, and part of what should be presented carefully when the time comes. Thompson & Richardson can help you gather that provenance and plan how to present it to buyers looking for exactly this kind of home. Request a Private Home Consultation.
