This dramatic design was dictated by one key element: the lake surrounding it.

by Christy Marshall / Interior Photos by Meghan Lorenz; Exterior Photos by Triple Reed Photography

When Kevin Voges bought 62 acres outside Millstadt, Illinois, in 2021, it took him the proverbial “New York minute” to pick where his dream Mountain Modern Mountain house would go: the peninsula jutting straight into the lake.

“This house was all about designing for the land,” he said.

Dave Schaub was hired as the architect and he, in turn, brought on the interior designer Amy McCoy of McCoy Design Studio and G. Terbrock Luxury Homes as the builder with Gary Jokerst supervising. Just the architectural plans took seven months; the building took another three-and-a-half years. “It was the hardest house I’ve ever built,” Jokerst said.

As Kevin Voges envisioned, the 8,000 square-foot house and the landscape combine into a single entity with views of the lake on three-and-a-half sides of the house. His inspiration came from the Martis Camp Homes found in Lake Tahoe. As you drive up, you can see straight through from the front to the backyard, aka the lake. Nearly every room, including the master bath, looks out onto the water. The floor-to-ceiling 10-foot windows fronting the great room accordion into each other leaving the space open to the deck outside.

The view at night of the Voges’ Mountain Modern Lake House

“It’s a seamless transition to the outside from the living room,” McCoy said. “So that's really what it's about.”

The lake, now known as Lake Lori Ann in honor of Voges’ late first wife, had its own history. Built in 1941, it was called the Millstadt Swimming Lake. On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer, a bus would bring the locals from the town to swim in the lake.

An open-floor plan, the great room lets the outside in. The wall of windows envelope into each other leaving the space open to the patio outside. The chandelier with rock crystal was commissioned for the space.

The lake house is built of steel and concrete. Intentionally. Voges owns a steel company called The Material Works based in Red Bud. He explained that a large house is built with beams that weigh 35 pounds-per-foot; here some beams are as big as 150 pounds-per-foot.

Constructed by Terbrock, the iron work was erected by the members of the United Iron Workers. Middendorf, also a commercial subcontractor, framed the house in 10 months. The concrete is a mainstay of the Modern Mountain house designs that Voges saw and loved in Lake Tahoe. “I call it the boarded look,” Voges says, adding the board-formed concrete was commissioned for the house.

The choices of interiors from the colors to the materials chosen were drawn from the natural elements of the site. It’s seen in the use of cedar in the ceilings, the marble backsplash, the thick granite countertops, the live edge of the wooden table, the walnut floors, organic shapes and a color palette of soft muted colors.

“There's a lot of materials that you would find in nature,” McCoy says. “There's marble. That's a 3-inch-thick granite top on the island. There’s a live-edge dining table. It's all organic shapes ... The key was to use natural materials to bring the outside in.”

“I mean, everything you look at in here, it was Amy,” Kevin Voges says. “And then Stephenie [Kevin’s wife]. Amy and Stef worked together as a really great team.”

In the master bath, mirrors are suspended from the ceiling so not to distract from the view. The marble, from Global Granite, is shades of soft greens and gray.

The granite from Global Granite was a must-have for the designer, Amy McCoy. All the vanities are lit underneath.

The freestanding tub is located at the entrance to the bathroom.

Also a pilot, Voges’ office and music room (which he’s dubbed the “muffice”) pokes out into the lake like the wing of an aircraft.

Bedrooms for a son and daughter and an exercise area are on the lower level, along with an entertaining area. Vegetation is planted so that one can view the multi elevated layers of planters from the interior of the house.

Kevin and Stephanie Voges wake up and fall asleep looking at the lake. The walnut floors are by Historic Floor Company.

The house’s beginnings started out on a sad note after Voges’ late wife, Lori Ann, was diagnosed with an incurable breast cancer in 1992.

“In early 2021 she asked, ‘What are you going to do if God takes me early?’” Voges recalled. “And I said, ‘I need an airstrip because I have a bush plane, a little house and a lake.’ She said, ‘Well, let's find it.’ Then I said, ‘No, let's not.’ We were going to Siteman Cancer Center three days a week.”

Lori Ann urged him to go ahead; that the project would be something to look forward to.

“I prayed against it,” Voges said. “I prayed that God would put detours in our way if it wasn't His will. And it kept getting easier. So that was my answer from God.”

As you drive up to the front of the house, the view flows straight through the house.

Note the dramatic use of materials tapped for the powder room.

Regrettably, Lori Ann Voges never saw the house of her husband’s dreams. She died five months after they purchased the acreage. Then Kevin was, as he says, “swept off his feet” by his new wife (and an old Voges’ acquaintance), Stephenie. They got married in October of 2022. They sold their house in St. Louis in May 2023 and moved to Millstadt in July 2024. The combined family has five grown children. There is already a playroom furnished and awaiting future grandchildren.

Kevin Voges named the house and land Miles’s Meadows (milessmeadow.com), using Stephenie’s middle name, Miles.

The live-edge table in the kitchen was found on Etsy and was shipped from Canada. The cabinetry was designed by Carla Farris at Beck Allen Cabinetry.

This summer large swaths of the surrounding land will be awash in wildflowers, meadows planted last year. And those flowers will be seen clearly from inside the house.

It was designed specifically for that.

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