29 Washington Terrace

29 Washington Terrace was designed by Jerome Bibb Legg in the Palladian Neoclassical style. Legg has made a name for himself by this point, having designed several other mansions in the Central West End and Midtown in the 1880s and 1890s, with one example at Taylor and McPherson, and another on Olive Street in Midtown. The mansion has 25 rooms and has over 11,000 square feet of space. The original owner of the house was William Cullen McBride, who was an oil magnate that spent a part of his fortune purchasing the mansion in 1908, and hired ten servants to help keep up the house. During McBride’s ownership of the mansion, it became known for the lavish, over the top parties that were often thrown here. The most famous of these was the “Night in Venice” ball, which was held for his daughter in 1921. For the ball, a man made moat was constructed in the third floor ballroom that held a number of gondolas which transported guests across the party area. After the McBride family had sold the mansion, the next prominent owner of 29 Washington Terrace was an organist at the Fox Theater named Stan Kann, who purchased it in the 1960s. Kann also liked to throw extravagant parties, and installed a 40 seat movie theater in the basement, which has since been removed. Perhaps the most famous person to visit the mansion was comedian Johnny Carson of The Tonight Show, who had a party thrown for himself and 400 guests by Kann in 1965. Another notable guest during Kann’s ownership was Phyllis Diller. In 1972, Kann sold the mansion, but later returned to the mansion in 2005 as a guest on an HGTV show in which the mansion was featured. Today, the mansion has been well preserved, and is considered to be one of the most valuable houses in St. Louis.

HABS survey photo of 29 Washington Terrace

Interior photo from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch