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Oakland
DESCRIPTION: Oakland is an historic house in the Italianate Villa style designed by architect George I. Barnett, the first European-trained architect in St. Louis. Located in south St. Louis County, it was the country home of St. Louis banker Louis A. Benoist and his wife. The home was built in 1853 and is similar in form to Missouri Botanical Garden founder Henry Shaw's country home, Tower Grove House, which was also designed by Barnett. Barnett later designed the Southern and Lindell Hotels, the water tower on North Grand Boulevard, the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City and many of the homes in Lafayette Square. Oakland is the only Barnett-designed building in St. Louis that has not undergone structural changes.
The home is owned and operated by the Affton Historical Society and serves as its headquarters. Oakland is a popular site for wedding, receptions, meetings and parties.
ADDRESS: 7801 Genesta Ave., St. Louis, MO 63123
LOCATION: Affton (South St. Louis County)
PHONE NUMBER: 314-352-5654
WEB SITE: www.afftonoaklandhouse.com
GETTING THERE: From downtown, take I-55 South to the Bayless Avenue Exit (Exit 201A). Turn right on Bayless and drive .2 miles. Turn right onto Union Road. Stay straight to go onto Morganford Road. Take Morganford one mile to Seibert. Turn left on Seibert and proceed one mile to Heege Road which is a slight right turn. Take Heege about .5 miles to Genesta. Turn right on Genesta and take it to Seth. Turn left onto Seth and drive to the end where the entrance to Oakland is located.
HOURS: 2-4 p.m., the third Sunday of the month, April through September. Other times by appointment. Oakland is also available for weddings, receptions, meetings and parties.
LUNCHEONS: The Ladies of Oakland, dressed in period costume, serve catered luncheons to groups of 25-64 with reservations two weeks in advance. Lunch is served at noon following an 11 a.m. house tour.
Individuals may attend open luncheons given several times a year from April through November at Oakland. Cost is $13.50 which includes a tour of the house. For further information on the luncheons, call Delores Pape at 314-849-4929.
ADMISSION: $3 per person.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Oakland overlooks a small lake Benoist called "Mirror Lake." The lake is no longer part of the estate and is privately owned.
- The entrance to the grounds is flanked by stone pillars with a 200-year-old oak tree nearby.
- The house was built of white limestone quarried on the estate. It has 24-inch thick walls.
- Oakland has an Italianate tower with a lookout landing. The tower is topped by a finial.
- The home's gable ends feature dentils, and elaborate scroll brackets support the wide overhanging cornices.
- An arched opening overhangs the house's double doors and the foyer is separated from the central hall by another set of double doors with the words "Oakland Farm" etched in the doors' glass.
- The elegant parlor and the library have 14-foot ceilings and alcoves set off by Corinthian columns and ornate frames.
- Pocket doors divide the parlor from the library.
- Five sets of French windows (double doors) run the length of one wall of the twin parlors and open onto the veranda where weddings are often held.
- Sarah and Louis Benoist's second son Edward scratched his initials and the year "1870" in the last French window in the library, and they can still be seen there.
- The dining room is furnished with items belonging to the Benoist family.
- The country-style kitchen has been adapted with modern conveniences so food prepared by caterers can be served from there for luncheons, receptions and other special events. Cabinets from the Affton High School chemistry laboratory hang on the walls.
- The staircase to the second floor is "freestanding," supported only by the wall to which it is attached and leads to three bedrooms--the master bedroom, the Rose Room and a bedroom used by the Ladies of Oakland Craft Society. A back stairwell leads to a fourth bedroom which is over the kitchen. The Rose Room and the master bedroom are decorated with Benoist family belongings.
- The grounds include an herb garden in the back of the house where volunteers have planted herbs which the family would have grown when they lived in the house.
- A large flower display on the south lawn is in the shape of a wedding cake, and bridal photos are often taken with the display in the background.
ESPECIALLY FOR KIDS: Children will enjoy two special events held at Oakland each year. The historic home is turned into a Bunny Hutch during the Easter season. Children can watch a puppet show, listen to the story lady, make a craft, visit the live mouse and rabbit house, enjoy a treat and have their photo taken with the Easter Bunny. In December, Oakland becomes Santa's House where children can enjoy a puppet show, have cookies with Mrs. Claus in the kitchen and visit with Santa.
WHAT'S NEW: Coach lights were recently installed on the side lawn and herb garden to provide lighting during the weddings performed there. The lights are copies of streetlights near Benoist's home in the city. The building's balconies have been restored and the walls in the foyer and the hall way will be restored to a wood grain similar to what it was originally. The south veranda which used to be wood has been replaced with a stone floor which is more like the original.
WHAT'S COMING UP: The home is being fitted with new draperies in the Rose Room and the building's wood shutters are being restored and returned into place. Wrought iron gates, befitting a country estate, have been commissioned.
ANNUAL SPECIAL EVENTS: In addition to the Bunny Hutch at Easter, there's a Santa's House event during the Christmas season. A craft festival is held each October with lunch served in the country kitchen, a raffle and a homemade baked goods sale.
HISTORY: The land where Oakland stands was part of a Spanish land grant of about 6,000 acres. Kenneth McKenzie bought about 3,000 acres of the land in the 1840s and divided them into tracts to sell.
In 1852, Benoist, at the age of 51, bought several pieces of the property which would later become the 476-acre tract upon which he had Oakland for Sarah, his third wife. He had nine children by his former wives, and he and Sarah, who was just 19 when they married, had nine more.
Benoist was born in St. Louis in 1801, three years before the land became part of the Louisiana Purchase. His father, Francois Benoist, had been a prosperous fur trader in Montreal before settling in St. Louis. The family traced its history back to the 15th century, and King Louis XIV of France declared the nobility of the family in a document he issued in 1706. Louis' mother, Catherine Sanguinette Benoist, was a member of St. Louis' early families.
Louis Benoist was educated at Dominion College in Kentucky where he studied medicine.He later switched to law and opened a law office in St. Louis where he practiced for a few years before he went to Europe where he lived for several years. He returned to St. Louis to open one of the city's first real estate and brokerage firms. His business evolved into a banking firm, and his success brought him great wealth. He also opened a branch in New Orleans which was equally successful.
Benoist hired architect George Barnett, a British-born, European-trained architect to design his country home. The house, a smoke house, servant's quarters greenhouse and landscaped gardens were completed by 1854.
Benoist's house listed several slaves on the 1850 and 1860 slave censuses, and during the Civil War, Benoist and about 60 other Southern sympathizers were fined by Henry W. Halleck, a Union general.
After the war, Benoist helped found the Missouri Historical Society and the Philharmonic Society of St. Louis.
While the Benoists lived in the house, French missionary Pierre-Jean de Smet was a frequent visitor, and he spent the summer of 1866 there. Father de Smet gave the oldest Benoist child a beaded jacket and other items believed to be gifts to de Smet during peace negotiations with Sitting Bull. The family has given the gifts to the Affton Historical Society to display in the house.
Another well-known visitor to Oakland was writer Kate Chopin who is said to have met her husband at a ball at Oakland. Oscar Chopin was in St. Louis to work at his uncle's bank. Soon after their marriage in 1870, the Chopins moved to New Orleans. When her husband died 12 years later, Kate Chopin supported herself and her children by writing short stories. Her novel "The Awakening," now considered a significant piece of feminist literature, was controversial and caused the writer to be ostracized.
Louis Benoist contracted cholera in 1867 on a business trip to Cuba and died there. Benoist and other family members are buried in Cavalry Cemetery.
His wife, who was 36 at the time, married James Murrin, her husband's business partner, later that year and had two more children. In 1869, Oakland was damaged by fire but the building was repaired.
Sarah Benoist Murrin died at Oakland in 1872, and Oakland became the property of the Benoist children. The oldest daughter raised the family after her mother's death. Murrin moved to Chicago where he remarried.
During 1876, Esther Benoist Nast, Louis' daughter from his second marriage, frequently visited Oakland with her children and she came to St. Louis from New York after her husband disappeared. The Nasts' son Condé later became editor of Vogue, Vanity Fair and House and Garden magazines.
During the 1880s, Theodore Benoist, one of Sarah and Louis' sons, bought out the other heirs. At this point, Oakland was no longer out in the country as St. Louis grew and spread southward.Theodore Benoist married Mary Hunt, granddaughter of Ann Lucas Hunt, and the couple lived in the home until 1890 when Benoist sold Oakland to Robert Brookings, another St. Louis millionaire.
Brookings, a Baltimore native, had moved to St. Louis as a teen and joined his older brother working for the Cupples Co. Brookings' success as a traveling salesman caused Cupples Co. to offer him a partnership in the company.
When he bought Oakland, Brookings also had a home in Lucas Place in the city. He used the farm for entertaining and soon took to raising horses. He bought Aristides, the first Kentucky Derby winner, intending to breed race horses at Oakland. In 1987, a statue of the stallion formerly of Oakland was unveiled at Churchill Downs.
Brookings retired and spent the next 30 years as president of the board of trustees of Washington University. He later moved to Washington, D.C. where he established the Brookings Institution, a non-profit agency to study the economy and government policy. With the city limits beginning to encroach on Oakland, Brookings sold the estate in 1893 and moved to another estate on the Mississippi River in Jefferson City. Oakland's new owner was Joseph T. Donovan, a local real estate man and Civil War veteran who held an annual picnic for the children of St. Mary's and St. Joseph's Orphanages on the grounds of Oakland.
Donovan's business dealings took a turn for the worse, and he tried unsuccessfully to convince David Francis and other community leaders to use the farm as the site of the 1904 World's Fair. Brookings regained ownership of the estate but three years later he sold it to Willard Winner who planned to build large homes on the site in a development he wanted to call Merylwood Estates. Winner, however, couldn't raise the funds to do so and only one house was built.
Then the farm was subdivided, and a large portion of it was bought by a Kansas City coal operator who leased the house to the Metz family rent-free in exchange for repairs on the building. They lived there from 1916 to 1919, and the next year Lakewood Park Cemetery Association, Oakland's final owner before the Historical Society rescued it, bought what was left of the estate. The house became the administration building for the cemetery, and the pocket doors between the parlor and the library were removed to make a chapel. Pews were installed and services were held there. Glass doors installed at the front of the house allowed caskets and mourners to move out of the house to the driveway where cars awaited them to transport them to the final resting place. The cemetery superintendent lived in a cottage behind the main house but he later moved into quarters upstairs at Oakland, and the dining room became the cemetery office.
During the 1940s, Benoist's youngest son and his daughter visited Oakland frequently. But as the years went by, the cemetery association could not longer afford to maintain the home and it fell into disrepair. Soon it was announced Oakland would be sold. Elizabeth Christy Benoist, Louis' Benoist's granddaughter, held a reunion on the grounds in 1972 to focus attention on the estate's plight. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, a Benoist descendant, covered the event.
The next year the Affton Historical Society was formed after more than 300 people responded to an ad asking for $2 in membership fees from people concerned about saving Oakland. The group's goal was to purchase the estate by the county's bicentennial year--1976.
Through fun-raising efforts and a federal grant, the sales contract was signed on Oakland's porch on Oct. 22, 1976. Through the years, the Society has spent more than $200,000 to restore the house, and restoration efforts continue today.
HANDICAP ACCESS: Entry to the home and the first floor are handicapped accessible. The second floor is not.
WHERE TO GET LUNCH: Visitors can drive a short distance west to Watson Road or south to Lindbergh Blvd. where there are several restaurants.
WHAT'S NEARBY: Nearby is Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, Grant's Farm, Laumeier Sculpture Park and Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center.
PUBLIC RELATIONS CONTACT: Nancy Herndon Ulrich, curator of Oakland House and director of the society, historicdzn@aol.com
Readers should call 1-800-916-0040 to request a free copy of the Official St. Louis Visitor Guide or point, click and explore St. Louis at www.explorestlouis.com
