Sutter-Meyer House

Sutter-Meyer House Trivia

 
  • The William Sutter family built this farmhouse in 1873 and sold it 2 years later.
  • The Sutter farm was purchased in 1875 by Roman Meyer, a German immigrant.  Members of his family lived in the house for the next 94 years, until the death of his son, Edward Meyer, in 1969.
  • In the 1870s, the US economy was suffering a severe financial depression following the Civil War — the Great Depression of the 1930s paled in comparison.
  • In 1873, the farmhouse was still within the geographic boundaries of the city of St. Louis.  St. Louis City and St. Louis County became separate in 1877.
  • The original address of the farmhouse was 6805 Olive Street Road — formerly the Old Plank Road. 
  • The founder of University City, E.G. Lewis, was a 4-year-old child living in Connecticut when the farmhouse was built.
  • In the late 1800s and early 1900s, St. Louis City public school children visited the neighborhood immediately west of the farmhouse, Roth Grove, for school picnics.  This was considered a country adventure.  The children arrived on the Creve Coeur streetcar, traveling north from the Loop, and disembarked at what is now the corner of Vernon and Ferguson Avenues.  They marched parade-style to Roth Grove with flags and cymbals.
  • Sutter-Meyer Society board member Joan McCormack has lived in her Roth Grove house for 78 years.  Arriving as an infant, she subsequently married and reared her family in the same house.