From the time she was a teen, Kristin Frieben Whittle wanted to live in a gracious home. She envisioned it as an airy loft filled with family and friends, a place with enough space to display the art and curious objects she’d collected throughout her life.
She held fast to her vision after graduating from college and then law school. Even while running her own one-woman law firm, she spent weekends scouring neighborhoods in search of properties.
In 2004, Frieben Whittle found her future home. “I was driving around Overland when I saw this warehouse with 10 beautiful arched windows,” she recalls. “I took my mother on a walk-through, and she said, ‘Kristin, please don’t buy this building.’”
Eighteen offices and a low drop ceiling cluttered the space, leaving it with a maze of corridors and little natural light. “The building was a mess,” Frieben Whittle says. “The roof leaked, there was asbestos, it was full of debris—but I could see it had great bones.” She bought it, she says, “for a good price.”
Constructed in 1924 by Southwestern Bell as a switching station, by 1947 the building had undergone three additions. Over time, it was sold and resold, then sat vacant until 2004, when Frieben Whittle bought it. During a 10-year negotiation to change its zoning, she had the structure stabilized, the roof replaced, custom windows installed, and the interiors stripped down to the brick. Since 2017, Frieben Whittle has lived and worked from a home office there as a lawyer and as a mediator for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
この記事は DesignSTL の Jan/Feb 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は DesignSTL の Jan/Feb 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Cut from the Same Cloth
“Turkey Tracks” is a 19th-century quiltmaking pattern that has the appearance of little wandering feet. Patterns like the tracks, and their traditions and myths, have been passed down through the generations, from their frontier beginnings to today, where a generation of makers has embraced the material as a means of creating something new. Olivia Jondle is one such designer. Here, she’s taken an early turkey track-pattern quilt, cut it into various shapes, and stitched the pieces together, adding calico and other fabric remnants as needed. The result is a trench coat she calls the Pale Calico Coat. Her designs are for sale at The Rusty Bolt, Jondle’s small-batch fashion company based in St. Louis. —SAMANTHA STEVENSON
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How a little log cabin went from being a home to a guest house
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With the help of interior designer Robert Idol, a Kirkwood couple creates a home that pays homage to the past, yet feels just right for their modern young family.
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Painter and gardener Lauren Knight branches out.
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Letters, icons, and illustrations that speak in a hand-drawn language
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Audra Noyes, of the Saint Louis Fashion Fund Incubator’s first class, opens an atelier in Ladue.
