11475 Lilac Ave
St. Louis, MO 63138, USA

11475 Lilac Avenue, St. Louis, MO, USA

On the National Register of Historic places, this architecturally significant 1858 Victorian Italianate is on 4.5 acres of landscaped wooded bliss. This unique property boasts an 1858 post & beam barn (6600 SF) that has been transformed into an amazing entertainment facility with many choices of venue...a corporate retreat, destination resort facility, catering venue for weddings, reunions, conferences, banquets or wineries! Other structures: carriage house, summer kitchen, gazeboes & more round out this enchanting estate. Lovingly preserved & rehabbed The Larimore House offers unlimited opportunities for your business or private estate. Beautiful architectural details abound with 21st Century updates. The main house (5000 SF) features elegant parlors & bedrooms with a gas fireplace in each room, baths, kitchen & a one bedroom apartment with an outside entrance. The original cook's fireplace is still in operation via gas logs. A widow's walk & cupola crown this magnificent structure.

Listing agent: Bjaye Greer of Red Key Realty St. Louis

National Register of Historic Places - The Larimore Plantation

Excerpt from the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form:

In its early years, the Larimore Farm was fairly diversified. Five hundred of its then 800 acres (1850) yielded 4,000 bushels of corn as well as substantial amounts of meadow hay, rye, sweet potatoes, orchard products, grass seed and beeswax and honey. · Farm stock included sheep (300) for wool production and swine (150). Commensurate with the general trend towards increasing specialization in the business-oriented climate of farm operations emerging in the mid-19th century18, Larimore had focused his efforts by 1860 on cutting back on diversity and marketing a greater amount of meadow products, especially hay, which provided gross receipts of $24,000 in one year. Cash valuation of the farm increased from $40,000 to $80,000 between 1850-60.

Sixteen slaves, including four male hands, worked on the farm and Larimore's holdings, which were exceeded only by that of St. Louis County farmer James Bissell, and possessed the highest total valuation of land per acre in the area.

As Civil War racked Missouri the Larimore Farm continued operations. When emancipation freed the farm's blacks is unknown, general emancipation for Missouri's blacks was granted January 11, 1865; certainly the Larimore Farm's proximity to St. Louis led to freedom for the black farm workers at or before this date. It is interesting to speculate how much of an effect the war had on the farm operations; apparently it had insufficient effect to dramatically alter the farm's increasing status as a model property. Within the nineteen months between the end of the Civil War and the farm's being signified as "The Model Farm" little enough had changed to seriously compromise its position as one of St. Louis County's premier farm operations.

James Denny has noted the transitional states in Missouri's antebellum architecture. Among Denny's more interesting discoveries is the transition occurring in the early-mid 1850s among homes of Missouri's landed elite. The double-pile house of this era begins to be more commonly covered with a sloping hip roof, featured deeper halls providing a dramatic setting for the central hall staircases and contained dividing parlors with sliding doors opening to create double parlors. Denny makes an interesting note:

"The succession of styles theory would dictate by the overwhelming power of its own logic that these double pile houses be labeled either Greek Revival, or Italianate, depending on how swayed one is with the ubiquitous brackets or the low pitched overhanging hip roofs... What we are witnessing is something far more subtle in a state like Missouri where the pull of tradition was so strong and architects so far away. These double pile mansions are nothing new. In many ways they simply bring us full circle in an almost ritual re-enactment of the first two centuries of architectural development in the upper South --a process that began like ours with hall-and-parlor houses which culminated, like ours seems to, in the double-pile Georgian form."

Once the observer looks past the bracketing and low pitched cupola the Larimore House references the conservative nature of Missouri building traditions. This farm dwelling, touted as a model farm residence of the progressive agriculturalist, was not a dramatic departure from the past. It sits securely enmeshed in the building precedents set in the antebellum period, it reassuringly mixes a measure of innovation with the characteristic pattern of design preference found in the middle two quarters of the 19th century.

It is interesting, and significant, to note that no other premium farm property of the era was accorded the notoriety the Larimore property was given. The motivations behind this designation se- clear, it was to recognize the quality of the property and use it as an example for the wider agricultural community. There is no small irony in the fact that even as the premium was given Larimore was beginning to systematically disassemble his holdings to realize dramatic profits from his initial investment. The various structures and buildings associated with the property have not withstood time and increasing urban encroachment. The house and its immediate environs remain the only tangible link to the lofty status once signified by the Midwest's premier agricultural showcase.