New owner sought for landmark home in Ste. Genevieve

STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. -- One of the oldest private homes in Missouri's oldest city is up for sale. It wasn't supposed to be that way.

Bernard Schram, 86, and his wife, Vion Schram, 90, had planned to deed the Jean Baptiste Valle home in Ste. Genevieve to the community. But declining health and mounting medical bills have changed their mind.

They're asking $325,000.

"It's heartbreaking," Bernard Schram said. "But the truth is, we can't afford to live in it. Not anymore."

George Washington was president when Valle built the estate in Ste. Genevieve. When the house was later renovated, riots over slavery raged on the Missouri-Kansas border and foreshadowed the Civil War, still 10 years off.

"As with most old towns, the history of Ste. Genevieve is built on as much BS as it is truth," said Schram, a former reporter-turned-publicist and globe-trotting author of dime-store novels. "But the truth is, this is a pretty unique house."

French colonial architecture abounds in Ste. Genevieve. But some historians say few houses in Missouri can rival the historical significance of the Jean Baptiste Valle House.

Valle was the city's last commandant appointed by Spain and, after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the first appointed by America. He was also one of the richest men in the territory, thanks to large land holdings and massive lead-mining and fur-trading operations.

He built his house in downtown Ste. Genevieve around 1794. Legend has it that he received house guests there of national and international renown until his death in 1849.

Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the naturalist John Audubon and the Marquis de Lafayette are believed to have visited, as was Greece's deposed King Otto I, who overstayed his welcome by several weeks.

John Dalzell, an expert on Ste. Genevieve's colonial heritage, said the unusual design of the two-story house makes it an architectural treasure.

Like other French homes in Ste. Genevieve, the Valle House was built from thick oak beams and vertical logs smeared with an adobelike compound of mud, sticks and horse hair called bousillage.

An expansion in 1850 added a second floor and decorative touches to produce what Schram calls a "Creole-Victorian amalgam." Dalzell says the changes created "a more important and much more interesting building."

Now, the house and just about every antique furnishing and oil painting in it are for sale.

A spokeswoman for Armbruster Realty Co. of Ste. Genevieve said she has had several inquiries about the house. The chairs and tables, portraits and knickknacks that span just about every period of the last 200 years will be sold at auction.

Leon Vion, Vion Schram's great-grandfather, bought the Valle House in the 1860s. It has been in the family since. Bernard and Vion Schram took it over in 1966.

Although the house has never been open to the public, the Schrams frequently entertained scholars and visiting VIPs, often putting them up several nights in the home's period bedrooms. They saw it as continuing a custom set by Valle, and they wanted to ensure that tradition would continue after they were gone.

"We used the house as a hospitality center for the whole town. I guess you could say that all the dignitaries freeloaded off of us," joked Schram. "Still, I hope the next owner continues that. I would like to think that they would use it for the best of the community."