History of Maplewood From The City Archives
In the year 1752, which is getting close to over
250 years ago, a man named Charles Gratiot left Lausanne, Switzerland
and came to America. By 1777 he had established himself as the
principal merchant of Cahokia now in Illinois. Soon Gratiot decided to
move across the river to St. Louis in Spanish territory. It was here
that he married Victorie Chouteau, daughter of Madame Marie Therese
Chouteau, one of St. Louis's founding families. Gratiot and his family
thereafter lived at the northwest corner of First and Chestnut Streets.
One of Gratiot's ledgers is still in existence. He wrote down, with a
goosequill pen and in a beautiful hand, wrote transactions of that
early day and in it, can still be read, sales of almost every type of
merchandise, from sacks of flour to flagons of rum.
But
Gratiot was not content to be merely a merchant. He wanted to
accumulate as much land as possible while it could still be obtained
for the asking from the Spanish Government, and in 1798 we see by the
original document still preserved in our historical Society in Forest
Park, where Gratiot petitioned the Lieutenant Governor to grant him a
tract no less than a league, or three miles square. This league square
extends from Kingshighway to Big Bend Road and from the middle of
Forest Park almost to Arsenal Street and thus includes much of our
present day Maplewood. On this 5440 acres Gratiot promised to and no
doubt did raise wheat, hemp, corn and tobacco. He died in 1817 leaving
his real estate to his children.
Two years later, in 1819, a
New Jersey man named James Sutton came to St. Louis to assist his
brother, John Sutton, with a blacksmith's shop established at Second
and Spruce Street in St. Louis. The brothers Sutton were not only
horseshoers, but were also clever iron manufacturers as well. They made
iron nails and induced people to use them instead of the wooden pegs
that had previously held the timbers of a house together. They proved
that iron tires on wooden cart wheels were really worth the price as
were also iron ploughshares, harrow teeth, iron railings, iron locks,
and many other metal items that we now take for granted. They wrought
the iron railing in front of our State Bank and convinced the
authorities that iron locks instead of wooden beams should be used on
the doors of the new jail at the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut
Streets.
Community Center in 1941.
James Sutton, wanting to pursue real estate,
purchased 334 acres from the Gratiot heirs (1826). The land was in the
southwestern part of the league square originally purchased by Graitiot
and was purchased for a dollar and a bit ($1.125) per acre (A bit was a
half of a quarter of a Spanish silver dollar that had been cut into
small change with a cold chisel). Sutton added 51 acres to this
purchase in 1848 paying $7.50 per acre.
Sutton constructed a
log cabin and moved on to his land, living first near the present
Commonwealth Avenue. Then the "Road to Jefferson City by way of
Manchester" was opened through the northern part of Sutton's land and
he decided to build a home and a storehouse on a high point on the
north side of the road near his western line (7453 Manchester). A
blacksmith shop was built across the road and soon we read that a road
was opened "from Sutton's blacksmith shop to the big bend of the
Meramec". This of course is our Big Bend Boulevard which is thus shown
to have derived its name not from any "big bend" in the road but from
the big bend in the river (Meramec) to which it led.
Sutton
had some interesting neighbors. Just west of him there lived a rather
prominent lawyer, Charles S. Rannells by name. He owned all the land
west to Hanley Road and south for quite a distance, having bought most
of it from Mrs. Ann E. McElderry, for $15.00 an acre. Rannells called
some of his settlement Laclede, for Pierre Laclede Liquest, founder of
St. Louis, and from this a station of that name was established on the
Pacific Railroad. This location is later where Edgebrook Road (now
entrance to Deer Creek Park) can be found, but the road leading north
and south from the former station is still called Laclede Station Road.
The "brook" often referred to in accounts of this area is the Deer
Creek branch of the River Des Peres marking the southern boundary of
the present-day Maplewood (The River Des Peres of the Jesuit fathers,
who had for a few years maintained a mission church at the mouth of
that stream). In this part of the present Maplewood the Cartan family
also owned a large acreage. North of the Sutton property was a tract
owned by the Gay family called East Laclede. It was developed by Brown
Real Estate Company as Zephyr Heights. Other active realtor offices in
Maplewood are those of Krodinger, Skinner, Mahler, O'Gorman and Leahy,
and the Maplewood Citizens and Peoples Bank.
Another neighbor
west of Sutton's place was Henry Bartold. He came from Germany in 1835
and in 1840 with his brother Frederick built a stone roadhouse and
tavern on Manchester Road near Deer Creek. For years his place was
called Bartold's Grove because of its popularity with picnic parties,
and the first post office in the neighborhood, the Valley Post Office,
was located here. Valley School was one of the first schools in the
neighborhood.
Another of Sutton's neighbors, who lived to the
north, was Jean Baptiste Bruno, a Frenchman who was a market gardener
and for whom Bruno Avenue is named. Jerome, Weaver, and Folk Avenues
are for three states attorneys who prosecuted bribe takers.
In
1876, the limits of the City of St. Louis were extended to their
present location. This limit line shows no consideration for the
buildings in Maplewood, but ruthlessly bisects many of them. It cuts
off the eastern triangle of the Brownson Hotel and runs right through
the middle of the old Maplewood Theater, (now gone) putting the
projection booth in Maplewood and the screen in St. Louis. On one
street, however, the limits do not interfere with the house. This is
along Limit Avenue which was plotted with half of its width on either
side of the limits line (St. Louis on the east and Maplewood on the
west).
When the new county was organized, a Maplewood man, Henry
L. Sutton, son of James C., was chosen as its chief executive officer,
or presiding justice of the county court. The first three meetings of
this body were held at the Sutton home on Manchester.
Then in
1877, the patriarch of the neighborhood, James C. Sutton died. He left
nine children and his land was divided between them. One of the
daughters, Mary C. Marshall, seems to have been the first to think of
selling her tract for a subdivision, for in 1890, she sold to a company
organized by Theophile Papin and Louis H. Tontrup, two St. Louis real
estate men, and managed by Robert H. Cornell. They plotted the land
into blocks and lots and named their subdivision Maplewood. This was
because of the fact that they planted maple trees along their streets.
These streets were also named for trees and shrubs; Maple, Elm, Myrtle,
Hazel, Vine, Arbor and Flora. The street on the west line of the
subdivision was named Marshall and the one on the East line Sutton. In
some unexplained manner these names were later transposed and remain so
located to this day.
Then the daughter of James C. Sutton,
Sarah Harrison, opened up Maple Lawn, west of Sutton Avenue, and Kate
Thomas started Ellendale, so named for one of her daughters. A son,
John L. Sutton sold some of his land on the north side of Manchester to
the Lohmeyers who laid out Lohmeyer Heights and Charles W. Sutton sold
his land south of the railroad to Moses Greenwood, an active real
estate man, who laid out the subdivision which he named for himself. So
"Greenwood" was not named for the forest located there, but for the man
who subdivided the forest. Greenwood's plan for naming his streets was
most unique. He simply took famous cities of the world and brought them
to his subdivision. So we now see in Maplewood a Picadilly from London,
Unter der Linden from Berlin, Commonwealth from Boston, Manhattan from
New York, and Oxford and Cambridge from the well known university cites
of England.
During this period transportation to the suburban
area was by the Missouri Pacific's "accommodation" trains, with station
or "depots" called Ellendale, Maplewood, Sutton, and Laclede. In 1896,
an electric streetcar line reached Maplewood and the population of the
place increased tremendously. The same year, The St. Louis Meramec
Railroad Company operated a trolly line that ran from downtown St.
Louis to the Sutton Loop. This was known as the Manchester Line.
Churches were organized and stores and banks as well as library and a
city hall appeared on Manchester Avenue. In fact, so many business men
came to Maplewood that they could organize a business and civic club
which is still prospering. This club became famous for its annual
baseball game between the "hefty" businessmen and the "slim"
businessmen. The organization was the Fats and Leans.
A fire
in January 1908 at the Banner Lumber Company resulted in nine buildings
being destroyed. The citizens of Maplewood felt that the St. Louis City
Fire Companies could not provide sufficient fire protection so the
community decided to incorporate, doing so in May 1908, primarily to
provide fire protection and schools. The schools later became
self-managing and self-funding. Some of the prominent citizens that
have been mayor include: Arthur J. Crum, F.E. Guiber, Charles S.
Goeblein, Milton G. Fink, Charles Stewart, John D. Schuster, Eugene
Burks, Charles S. Humphreys, John D. Fels, Frank L. Martini, and Arthur
A. Poetting. With Maplewood growing, a second trolly line was built in
1921 on Yale Ave., the "City Limits Line" began operating a north/south
route.
Maplewood continued to develop rapidly
throughout the next several decades. Known as one of the shopping
meccas of St. Louis County, Maplewood's downtown business district
bustled with commercial activity throughout the 1940's, 1950's, and
1960's. Maplewood also boasted its own school district which it later
shared with the southern portion of the community of Richmond Heights
to the north.
During the 1960's and throughout the 1970's,
Maplewood suffered the same fate as most older, inner-ring suburbs.
Many people moved to newer communities in west St. Louis County.
Maplewood's downtown also suffered from the advent of the shopping mall
and the burning of Goldie's Department store which had been a major
anchor store in the shopping district for years.
Some of the
names from fifty years ago are; Bernstein, Blood, Colby, DeWitt,
DeYong, Elder, Fuller, Gordon, Grumsley, Hall, Harrison, Haakel,
Hunziker, Jocoby, Keith, Kleinschmidt, Leon, Marshall, Piggott,
Robrbach, Roseborough, Seymour, Snodgrass, Speer, Spencer, Tillman, and
Wise. In Ellendale we find Arndt, Brockman, Cape, Carreras, Charles,
Cornell, Crutsinger, Dugger, Eddy, Foster, Maltby, Martin, McDowelll,
Menges, O'Neill, Overholt, Robensberg, Randall, Rowe, Sander, Scharr,
Shatrick, Smith Steven, Thomas, and Thompson. In Fraser Park we find
Ames, Baker, Cookson, Delzell, Foster, Fuller, Loker, Lethem, Maquire,
March, Roper, Schweizer, Stone, Woods, and Young.
Today
Maplewood is experiencing an influx of new blood as many young couples
are taking advantage of the good home buys that can be found in
Maplewood. Similarly, the city is seeing many businesses take advantage
of low retail rental rates and property values. The Chamber of
Commerce, the creation of the Special Business District, revision of
the zoning code, and creation of the Maplewood Community Betterment
Foundation are all indications of Maplewood's desire to build on its
past and move toward the future. Community leaders are always looking
for and implementing new programs designed to continue this growth and
provide quality services for the best quality of life possible.
Copyright
2005 City of Maplewood. All Rights Reserved.
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