Elegant Erica

Erica Swagler

Today I’m thrilled to share the elegant and charming Erica Swagler. Erica’s home was featured here in my August 2020 piece The Colors We Live With.

Erica recently celebrated her 46th birthday and lives in Alton, IL a historic town on the Mississippi River about 30 miles north of St. Louis, MO. And as her Instagram moniker says she is Living In A Landmark - she along with her husband, two daughters ages 17 and 11 and adorable cat Phoebe reside in the historic 1830’s Lyman Trumbull House.

Erica tell us a bit about your childhood: I was an only child in a creative and musical household. We didn’t have a lot of money in our family, but I think that, along with being the only (child), really forced me to be creative and use what I had. My mom and grandma both modeled this way of life too. We always lived in old houses and when I was 4 my parents purchased a condemned historic house here in Alton. For 10 years they restored it room by room. I didn’t always like living in an old fixer-upper but, I definitely developed an appreciation for old houses, history and historic preservation. I was that girl that wanted to help my mom and dad with house projects. I loved to paint and remember climbing exterior scaffolding to remove old shingles so my parents could restore the clapboard siding underneath. One time my dad let me help sand down a plaster repair patch on their bedroom wall and I literally sanded it down to the scratch coat. My mom wasn’t too thrilled with my dad about that!

Did you decorate your bedroom while growing up? Yes. But, funny thing is I am known in my family for always having a very messy bedroom - I’m not sure that is a design trend that many people want to promote, but looking back I think that may have been part of my creativity. I really enjoyed building “clubhouse” spaces in the yard and the attic of our Victorian house growing up. My mom enjoyed decorating our family home and I know I inherited that love from her.

What did you study in college: I attended college at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville where I earned a BM in Flute Performance. My husband and I met in college - we were both music majors. While getting my music degree I got the decorating/design bug after visiting an old store located in our college town. The second story was one open space with old wide planked floors and huge old windows. I would lay in bed and think about how I could make over that space. Shortly after graduating and getting married I looked into design schools here locally and in Chicago. I wanted to focus on historic design to assist clients in choosing period appropriate fixtures, wallpapers, etc for their old homes. I never got that degree, but kinda wished I had.

Images of the Big Room

How long have you been in your home and what led you to purchase such a notable historic property? We purchased our home in 2006 after touring it during our town’s historic house tour. I had been having the itch to move from our first house and wanted “a project’. I recall walking through the front door and getting goosebumps. Since I am passionate about historic preservation and history, this house was a dream.

You were working on the Livingroom walls in 2020. Please share what work you’ve undertaken during your tenure at the Lyman Trumbull House? Yes. The living room or “Big Room” as we call it, was our 2020 Quarantine Project which entailed scraping peeling paint, repairing plaster walls and allot of painting. The list of projects is too long to list, but we are always trying to preserve as much original as possible. Our most ambitious work, and really a pet project of my husband, is to restore the original wood windows throughout the home.

Erica what is your design philosophy? I know you redo furniture - taking on sewing slipcovers for a settee as well as a lovely sofa for the Big Room yourself: I truly believe that a house tells you how it should to be decorated. And especially old houses. I think it’s important to be sensitive to and aware of architecture styles and time periods. I’m certainly not constrained by either of those things but, they definitely inform my design choices. And I love to experiment with items I get from estate sales and thrift shops. My husband calls our house my lab since I’m always experimenting and trying different things. That’s the fun of it for me. Because of the ongoing expense of old house projects, we have not had a big budget for furnishings and decor so thrifting and making over second-hand pieces has made it possible for me to have more for less. I have admired slip-covered furniture for years and just couldn’t ever justify the cost for someone to make them, and really not allot of seamstresses want to make them because of the work involved. I just decided to go for it one day. My first slipcovers were for a pair of wooden arm chairs about a year and a half ago. I have since recovered our settee and camel-back sofas.

Would you share what your favorite space is in your home and why: With over 2000 sq ft of living space that’s a tough one. I like a lot of different rooms here and I think it varies with the time of year and how we use the spaces. I really love the light in this house and find myself drawn to our front parlor because of the large windows. The sunroom that I made over last year during quarantine with a slip-covered settee is also a favorite. I set up my laptop on an old painted secretary and work and teach Zoom flute lessons in that space.

“In a culture obsessed with youth and perfection, I wish we could celebrate and honor more those with age, experience and wisdom.”

— Erica Swagler

I know you’re a vintage dealer - please tell us about Country Meadows: Country Meadows is a local (Alton, IL) antique shop which has been in business for over 30 years. I have been a dealer there for a little over 2 years under the name Landmark Vintage. My focus is on vintage decor, art and furniture. Its an eclectic mix of items that I try to display and style in a way that hopefully inspires customers to try them in their home. I love to style my home and I could arrange items in my booth all day. I would some day love to do that for retail store windows or own my own vintage shop.

I was thrilled to be contacted by a Country Living Magazine style editor regarding one of my collections that she had seen on IG through the hashtag #MagpieMonday. As someone who grew up reading Country Living (with a stash of past issues in my basement) it was a dream experience and I feel lucky to have been seen among so many talented people with accounts on IG.

Erica has been published in The National Trust for Historic Places

Any plans for 2021 you wish to share with my readers: I would like to continue growing my vintage shop - Landmark Vintage - maybe a larger both space could happen later this year and continue to work on house projects with the goal of scouting my home for feature magazine publications.