Your Guide to Ladue's Mid-Century Modern Homes Tour

"We love giving the public a peek into exceptional midcentury modern homes, and we are fortunate to have some truly outstanding ones lined up for this year's tour," ModernSTL president Nathan Wilber said in a press release announcing the group's Mid-County Modern Home Tour. "Peek" is the right word. The tour runs Saturday, October 10, from noon to 6 p.m. It covers seven houses across Olivette, Ladue and Creve Coeur, and ticket holders won't learn which houses until the tour begins.

Ladue's modernist houses are hidden mostly by where they sit, not by any secrecy. The French Normandy and Tudor homes along the main roads shape the city's reputation. Its mid-century work is concentrated on a few quiet lanes, and nearly all of it is in private hands. Saturday's tour is one of the few ways inside. A building on Ladue Road is another, and it opens every Sunday morning.

The Saturday Logistics

The tour is self-guided and you drive it. Here is how ModernSTL sets it up:

1. Buy a ticket in advance through ModernSTL's online shop. The listed price is $50.
2. Check in at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 10939 Ladue Road in Creve Coeur. Show your confirmation email and you'll get a tour ticket and map.
3. Go inside the church before you leave. Its prow-shaped roof is one of the most recognizable on Ladue Road, and it is open to visitors as part of the tour.
4. Drive the route at your own pace before 6 p.m. Homeowners and volunteers will be at each property to answer questions.

All proceeds go to the ModernSTL Preservation Fund, which supports the conservation of mid-century architecture in St. Louis. ModernSTL's event page says the route includes commercial buildings as well as homes, though the previews don't name them.

Ladue News has shared one clue about the homes. Several were designed by two St. Louis-born architects, William Bernoudy and Isadore Shank. Shank also designed the geometric, two-toned DeBaliviere Building at Delmar Boulevard and DeBaliviere Avenue, so many St. Louisans have seen his work without knowing it.

A County List That Reads Like a Street Map

You won't get Saturday's addresses ahead of time, but Ladue's modernist history is already on paper. In June 2007, St. Louis County's Historic Buildings Commission compiled an honor roll of mid-century modern architecture, organized by municipality. The Ladue section has 16 entries. Ten of them are on just four streets.

The other six are scattered. They include a 1936 house on Warson Terrace by Wm. P. McMahon & Sons, a 1939–40 house on Log Cabin Lane by Nagel & Dunn, and Bernoudy-Mutrux designs on Sumac Lane from 1940, Daniel Road from 1955 and Dielman Road from 1951.

The list also lines up with the tour. Bernoudy's name appears on four of the 16 Ladue entries, alone or with his partner Mutrux, and one of those is the house he designed for himself on Litzsinger Road in 1950. Shank's entry is also his own house, on Graybridge Lane, dated 1940. The two architects the tour previews highlight are the two most closely tied to Ladue's early modernist houses. Several of these homes are older than the label "mid-century" suggests. Shank's house, the Talbott-Mutrux House and the Persons House all predate 1941.

Apart from the Ethical Society hall on Ladue Road, the entries are private homes, and the list is 19 years old. It is a historical record, not a report on how any house looks today. The county's own document says National Register listing doesn't protect a property from demolition or alteration, except where federal funds are involved. Only one Ladue entry, the 1951 Rudolph & Dorothy Czufin House on Dielman Road, carries a National Register notation. For most of these houses, preservation depends on their owners. That's why proceeds from an event like Saturday's go to a preservation fund instead of a plaque program.

Litzsinger Road, Where Two of the Houses Took Other Paths

Litzsinger Road has more entries than any other Ladue street on the list, and two of them have gone in unusual directions. One is the 1961 Aaron Fischer House, designed by Gustel Kiewitt. In 2007 the county noted it as "now Litzsinger Road Ecology Foundation."

The organization is now called the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center. The Missouri Botanical Garden manages it as a site for science teaching, environmental literacy and stewardship, working with educators and students through research and field-science programs. It isn't open to the general public, and visits require an appointment. Its current address is 9711 Litzsinger Road, not the 9733 number the county attached to the Fischer House. Its September/October 2026 newsletter describes years of restoration work clearing honeysuckle and winter creeper from the grounds, and says native plants have come back.

The Missouri Botanical Garden occasionally offers a tour of the site. One took place on Friday, September 5, 2025, from 10 to 11:30 a.m., and the Garden's calendar is the place to look for the next one.

The other is Bernoudy's own house at 9590 Litzsinger Road, which sits on the same stretch as the Armstrong-designed Fred Evens House. On a single road, the 2007 list records an architect's own home, a teaching landscape, and work by two of the region's most-cited modernists.

The Armstrong Building You Can Walk Into on Sunday

Ladue's best-known modernist houses are private, but one of its major modernist buildings is open to the public every week. The county list includes the Ethical Society Meeting Hall at 9001 Ladue Road, designed by Harris Armstrong. Armstrong also designed the Evens and Sachs houses on the same list, so this is the one place in Ladue where his architecture is open to anyone.

The Ethical Society of St. Louis invites visitors to its Sunday Platform at 11 a.m., which runs about an hour. A Forum runs from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. The Society's visit page says guests are welcome to explore the building, and its homepage says no particular beliefs are required. Today's Platform, on October 4, is "The Ethics of Shared Sacrifice in the Arts."

Sources differ on the building's date. The county's 2007 inventory lists 1961. The Society's own history says the Armstrong building opened in 1964 and was dedicated in 1965. The 1961 figure may reflect when the design began rather than when the doors opened, but neither source says so. In 2025 the Society hosted a talk on its past and future building projects, including sustainability and accessibility. The building is still in active use and still being looked after.

A Two-Day Plan for Seeing It

Saturday's tour and a Sunday visit to the Ethical Society fit together well, and the drive between them is short. Both the check-in church and the Ethical Society are on Ladue Road. Attending both gets you inside more of the area's modernist architecture than the drive past a hundred hedges ever will. That includes two of the public buildings and, if the previews are accurate, houses by the two architects who appear most often in the early part of Ladue's modernist record.

Litzsinger, Graybridge, Dromara and Trent are residential streets, and the houses on them are private homes. The tour is the chance to see a few of them from the inside, with the owners there to talk about them.

A house with a named architect behind it raises questions a standard comparable sale may not answer. If you own one of these homes and want a clear, unhurried read on how its design and condition shape its value, Jill Azar & Jacque Mileusnic are glad to walk through it with you. You can start with a free home valuation or explore more about Ladue.