Rene LeMeilleur House - Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
Posted by: BruceS
N 37° 58.735 W 090° 02.578
15S E 759722 N 4207602
Historic house now used as gift shop and access point to next door house museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.
Waymark Code: WM5EFY
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 12/28/2008
Views: 13
"Rene LeMeilleur House. 101 South Main Street. 1820. Property
type: Anglo-American timber-frame building. This house is a one-story,
timber-framed, side gabled dwelling with front and rear galleries. The front
gallery rests on a rubble wall. Regularly spaced, chamfered porch posts support
its roof. Two doors are placed on either side of the center line of the east
facade, and two doors are also placed on the west elevation. The building is
fenestrated with twelve-over-twelve, double hung, sash windows, most of which
are flanked by louvered wood shutters. The side walls of the house are sheathed
in clapboards, while the front wall and rear walls are covered with beaded,
tongue and groove boards. The roof is sheathed in wood shakes, and a painted
brick chimney rises from the north end of the roof ridge. A second stove
chimney, square in plan, rises from near the middle of the west roof slope. The
house has a limestone rubble foundation. With its heavy timber framing, the
house represents a transitional example of the use of French vernacular design
elements with Anglo-American construction techniques.
This house was built by a grandson-in-law of Louis Bolduc. The building was
raised to two stories in height in the 1850s. In his report on the 1966-1967
restoration of the house, architect Ernest Allen Connally described the original
appearance of the house based on building fabric that he studied:
It was a one-story frame house, with an attic and cellar. There were open
galleries completely across the front and the rear. Still French in general
concept but American in detail, it was an example of the transition from the
French colonial tradition of building to the American style a transition that
was distinctive of the Mississippi Valley in the early nineteenth century. The
Bolduc-LeMeilleur House was a large house of its type-37 feet across the front
and 41 feet deep over-all well built and richly furnished inside.
LeMeilleur died shortly after the house's completion, and it passed to his
mother-in-law Catherine Bolduc, the widow of Etienne Bolduc. It was subsequently
acquired by Jean Baptiste Valle who gave it to the Sisters of Loretto in 1837.
They occupied the building for many years.
Connally's restoration included removal of the house's second floor and an
attached brick store building. The second story and store are shown in a
photograph reproduced in a recently published book on Ste. Genevieve and are
partially shown in a photograph from the collection of the State Historical
Society of Missouri." ~
Historic District National Register Nomination Form