Uncovering a Beaux Arts Mansion s Secrets Touring Trabert Manor

Murder, mayhem, and mischief might make for a good story, but few would wish tragedy upon themselves. Hi everyone, Ken here. Welcome to This House. Today, we are making our grand return to in-person house tours by exploring an exquisitely maintained Beaux-Arts style mansion. Make sure to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an exciting episode of This House. When the Poitsky's emigrated to the United States from Germany, the family settled down in St. Louis. Their 12-year-old son, Henry, quickly set out to find a job, working as an apprentice to a wagon-maker. By 1886, he had saved up enough money to go into business for himself, co-founding the Poitsky & Collins Carriage Work Company. He became incredibly successful, gaining a net worth of $500,000, the modern equivalent of nearly $17 million. He was not shy about his newfound wealth, and was known for boasting about his money while courting Anna, whom he eventually married. As a wedding present for Anna, he purchased a premier lot in the Compton Heights neighborhood and hired architect W.J. Janich to design for him a towering three-story Beaux-Arts style mansion. Coming inside, we arrive in the entry hall. The first thing that captures us about this space is the plethora of ornate woodwork. Let's take a look at some of these finer details. First, let's look up past the crystal chandelier to see its light reflected on the egg and dart molding wrapping the exposed ceiling beams. Now let's shift our focus to looking at some of the other details in this space, such as the wainscoting that meets with this ornate millwork. Behind the vast arcade with ornate relief work ascends the staircase towards its landing with a stained glass window. We're going to see that in more detail soon, but first let's head into the parlor and see this room. Now this is not the original fireplace, however, it is believed to be possible that part of it is salvaged from the original. This room sustained a lot of damage from leaks, so most of it was replaced to match with the original millwork. We can take a look at this historic photo of this room and it's really hard to make out those details, but one thing that we can see is that these columns are present in that picture and perhaps they extended all the way to the ceiling with the same white Corinthian capitals that we've been seeing throughout. Continuing our tour, we are now going to step inside of the dining room and this is the largest room on the first floor of the house. Let's take a moment to look out over some of these beautiful details. The dining room table, which is perfectly set, gracefully denotes the elegance of the space, with half-height wood paneling rising up the walls below coffered ceilings and three chandeliers centered above the dining room table. To this side of the dining room is a rounded bay window. We can imagine a piano once gracing this space playing live music for guests as they dined at the table. There are some really interesting details to point out here. Come take a closer look at this. We have rounded radiator covers curving with the walls and if that's not enough to play into this theme of the house circle, we also have rounded windows over here with rounded panes of glass. It's these little details that truly make a house appear as magnificently as this one, something we don't find in much new construction today. Let's head on down to this end of the dining room and check out these curio cabinets. All of these wood pieces that you're seeing were most likely made by hand in early machines around the turn of the century. One such thing that is just really intriguing here is the fact that this curio cabinet is fit so perfectly that it creates a vacuum when you open it. The sound it makes is just so satisfying. Continuing our tour, we will now make our way to the library and I do want to point out that this room can be closed off with pocket doors and these just glide so beautifully. I've never really seen pocket doors of this age that have the kind of traction that these do. So follow me on in here and let's start looking around while I tell you the next part of the Puitsky story. Anna admitted to her friends that she had only married Frank for his money and began moving her family into the mansion. This caused tensions to soar, leading to countless domestic disputes. St. Louis police were called to the house so many times to break up fights that they adopted the code, we have a Puitsky, to refer to domestic disturbances all around the city. Continuing our tour, we are going to pass through this store to the side to arrive in the butler's pantry. This is what used to be the butler's pantry, there are still some remnants of that around. Let's take a moment to look at these cabinets on the side. We can imagine the maids and staff that ran this house coming into the butler's pantry to fetch fine china and glasses for dinner guests. This has been opened up to become the actual kitchen itself and it continues straight forward around this curb. We can go ahead and glance around this room, the door to the exterior still has its transom above it, but for the most part this kitchen has been modernized. The owner has done something really special, if we look up on the ceiling, this art installation is called Spilling the Tea. Let me know your thoughts on this down below in the comments section. Let's go ahead and continue our tour this way and we will check out the original powder room. We can look in here and see the half-height marble slabs traveling up the wall with a porcelain pedestal sink next to a pocket radiator sitting above a tile mosaic floor. Continuing down the service hall back towards the stair hall, we will stop by the maids stair and just take a peek up here. Off to this side is the dumbwaiter, but I've heard that this doesn't work properly so we're not going to open it up and check it out, but it's just really interesting to note that it is here in this house. Let's make our way forward and arrive back in the stair hall. Don't you wish you were here to see this house in person? It is just so beautiful, there is a way that you can see this house in person. On May 13th and 14th, you will have the chance to tour 12 of the historic houses in the Compton Heights neighborhood, including this one and the Magic Chef Mansion, which we featured previously. There will be beer gardens and bratwurst along the tour, which is expected to attract thousands of people. Get your tickets today and start planning your visit to see one of the largest collections of well-maintained Gilded Age mansions in the US. The link to the event is down in the video description. Now, let's head upstairs. Making our way up the bifurcated staircase, this is the landing where the stairs split to go to the second floor stair hall. Here are two identical null posts, and these are centered on a magnificent stained glass window. We will continue up the staircase to arrive in the second floor stair hall. Here we can see that it is acting as a seating area, where the owner has incorporated 100 year old rugs in every single one of these rooms. These all look surprisingly fresh for their age, but these are just those fun details to keep an eye out for as we explore the second floor. As we explore each of the bedrooms on this floor, we will notice that they are each themed. For example, this is the Haunted Bedroom. As we look around, we can see dark works of art paired with whimsical and somewhat unsettling abstractions, which just adds so much interest to this space. Now, attached to this room is a Jack and Jill bathroom, which will lead us to the Art Deco Bedroom. Come on through here, and we'll just make a quick pit stop to see this beautiful space. Continuing along, we will arrive in the Art Deco Bedroom, and we are noticing for the first time that the millwork in this room is painted, which is not necessarily a historical inaccuracy as many of the less expensive woods would have always been meant to be painted, especially if this would have been a maid's room or something of that nature. Cutting across the stair hall, we are now going to make our way into the final guest bedroom that we will be seeing today, so let's just go ahead and take a quick look around. This has more of a mature theme, so you might notice that a couple of the paintings are blurred. They're really fun, but I can't show them on YouTube, unfortunately. One of my favorite features of this room is that it has a terrace that goes out over the Port Cochere. Out on this terrace, we can see just how much the owners truly love this magnificent house. When they purchased it, there were over five layers of decrepit roofing material just stacked on top of each other. They stripped all of that out. They got rid of all of the decomposing material. They replaced the wood paneling along the edges here. They threw down astroturf, and let's just take a look out here. This is gorgeous. Just so you're aware, if you're not familiar with St. Louis, having one acre in the city is just completely unheard of, so being able to enjoy this much open space, not being cluttered up to other buildings, is just something we don't see in most neighborhoods. Coming back inside from the terrace, we arrive in the final bathroom we will see on this level. Once again, there are these half-height marble slabs on the walls, and this leads us out to a seating area. This is just a really nice private retreat on this level. It's a place where you can escape everyone else in the house and just kind of have your own peace of mind. There are some really interesting details here, such as another terrace, but to get out there, we're going to open this Jefferson window, and while we're exploring out there, we're going to go through the next chapter of our story. As the years went by, Anna filed for divorce, attempting to kick Henry out of the mansion and take his fortune. Henry wanted to work through their problems, but Anna was unwilling to budge. After dozens more visits from the police to break up disputes between Anna and her family, Henry had enough of his wife's shenanigans. He filed for divorce and kicked her out of the house. She attempted to break in on several occasions, so he hired armed guards to camp out on the home's many terraces, which we are seeing right now, to make sure that Anna could not infiltrate the house. During the divorce proceedings, which lasted only 10 minutes, the judge granted Henry a divorce. Finally, Henry could enjoy his life in peace, or so he thought. Let's explore a few more rooms before we uncover the mysterious circumstances of Henry's passing. Arriving at the third floor stair landing, there are several rooms on this level that we are not going to be seeing today, however, one room I can show you is the former ballroom, which currently acts as the owner's bedroom. To get there, we're going to come through these glass pane doors. These open up, they slide back, so that this entire opening can allow several people to come in at once. This room is absolutely massive, and I know that on camera, it's just not going to do it justice. This ballroom extends from one end of the mansion all the way to the other. The owner currently has a full living room set up, with plenty of space to walk around all the furniture, and then a bunch of dead space between the bed and the living room set up. Making our way out of the ballroom, we are now going to cut back across the third floor stair hall and head into this hallway. This is going to take us back towards the maid's room. At one time, the head maid for this house would have lived in this bedroom, with a wood-burning stove over to this side. Something that is convenient about this room is that it does have its own terrace, so if we turn around, we can see these double doors that open out onto the patio. This gives us a really good view of the backyard, and it would have been a very private setting for the maid to perhaps enjoy a nice summer's night outside. Let's make our way downstairs to meet the owners and tell them about the surprising things that we uncovered about the fate of Mr. Powitzki. Ted and Justin, when I first met you guys, you did not know how the story of Mr. Powitzki ended, and I found some really fascinating information. Are you ready to hear about how it all ends? For us, the story had ended with them exhuming the body, and that's where it went dry. So as you know, with the advent of the auto industry, a lot of carriage makers saw themselves go out of business as cars became more popular than horses and buggies, and more attainable for the middle class. So when Mr. Powitzki refused to budge, he kind of saw himself losing out on money. He ended up losing the house, moving to a smaller home in Maplewood, which is much further out in the suburbs. His son, Henry Jr., started to notice that his father's fortune was dwindling. So Henry Jr. decided to confront his father about his spending habits, as he noticed that his father was pulling money out of the stock market and investing in land down in Florida, buying hundreds of acres. Henry Jr. goes over to his dad's house in Maplewood, and he has a sit-down conversation with him, tries to talk to his dad about his spending and all of this. His dad says that he's planning on selling the house, moving down to Florida, he's linked up with these investors in Chicago, they're going to go develop Florida's coast down around Miami, and they're going to make a whole bunch of money. But in order to make a whole bunch of money, he has to spend almost all the money that he has left. His son just does not like this at all. He decides to contact a lawyer, they go and visit his dad on Saturday. On Sunday, his dad is dead. And what did he do? So something that Henry Jr. and his lawyer did with his dad on Saturday was apparently they changed his will. They wrote out all the other beneficiaries. Henry Jr. then added to the will that only a specific coroner would be the one to perform the exam on the body. Really no mention of the son at all in any of the research that I did. So this is all new information, shocking information. Bob performs the exam, he says there's been no foul play at all. It looks like Henry Sr. just took his own life. But there were so many suspicious circumstances, including the changing of the will at the last minute. And then the will wasn't even notarized until seven days after Henry Sr. had passed away. Now Henry wasn't planning on taking his own life. He was planning on going down to Florida and making his next million dollars. So there's just this question of, did he take his own life? Or was he murdered and was his estate stolen by his son? I just assumed there was just, I don't know, like a little bit of money. The son ended up inheriting the equivalent of about $10 million worth of real estate down in Florida. He did, however, have some consideration for his four grandchildren, leaving them each $5, which I know we're talking about old-timey money, but that's maybe $100 in today's money. It's not much to write home about, especially when one kid's getting about $10 million. Here's the crazy part is that we moved here from Miami. Like it all, like we were drawn to this house. I just, like this whole story is so fascinating. If you ask, honestly, how many houses in St. Louis, I mean, I know their old house does not equal tragic story, but it almost is synonymous with this house. Well, they did call it a Powitzky anytime there was a domestic dispute in St. Louis. There is that. What's it like living in a house like this? Historic homes are really emotional for some people. You have the side that gets very adamant that it should stay the same. Like we always laugh about decorating and things like that. What are you going to decorate? You realize this house has gone through every design fad, so what does it really own? So do you think this will be your forever home? Well, we've always told people, matter of factly, that we were just caretakers of this home. And I think that's the interesting part about historic homes. It was here well before us. It'll be here well after us. We're just caretakers for a certain amount of time. And our responsibility is just to leave it better than we got it. And at some point, you have to determine what you're taking on and what you're leaving for the next owner, because it can consume you. Ted, Justin, thank you so much for opening up the doors to your house. I've got to tell you, it has been a lot of fun doing a deep dive on the history and reading about all these outlandish stories about the Pivotskys and their time here. No, thank you. Truly, thank you for finishing the story and giving us the information that we couldn't find ourselves. And we're so appreciative. For so long, it kind of dangled out there and we didn't know what happened or into the details. So thank you. Oh, my pleasure. And everyone at home, I really hope that you enjoyed this tour. I know it's been a while since we've done an in-person house tour, but if you enjoyed this video, let me know down below in the comments section. And while you're there, hit that subscribe button. I'll see you next time on This House.