Maplewood History: See For Yourself: Ultra Rare Images of our First Pioneer’s Home, the Sutton Mansion!

More Extraordinary Images From The Collection Of The Missouri Historical Society

A Tale of Two Albums – Part Four

By now, if you have been following this site all along, you may be saying to yourself, What now?  More Ultra Rare images?  Just how many Ultra Rare images can one find before they become less than Ultra Rare?  I don’t know the answer to that.  But I can say that after 20+ years of doing this Maplewood history gig, I know an ultra rare image when I see one.

I also know rare and rarer-than-rare images and you may too depending on how long you have been reading my blog.  If you are fairly new to this scene, you might like to take a look at some of the other rare images that have come to light.  Just click on this sentence.

The first real home on the property, that one day would become Maplewood, was the Sutton Mansion.  It was an important building historically for many reasons.  Probably the number one reason was that it had been the birthplace of St, Louis County.

The mansion was also interesting architecturally.  It was a very large and solidly constructed building of the vernacular.  Most likely raised from nearby stone and timber with no ornament on the exterior.  And yet it was beautiful enough to inspire a well-known area artist called Vic Vac to make a lovely drawing of it.

The mansion existed from 1832 until the deteriorated remains of it were razed in 1954.  What a tremendous loss.  These rediscovered images give those of us who would have loved to have seen the original building a chance to learn more about it.

This beautiful drawing of the Sutton mansion was done by Victor Vacarezza, known as Vic Vac, who was an artist who worked for the Globe Democrat newspaper for 50 years.

This was the first image that I ever saw of the mansion.  There is a copy in the collection of the Maplewood Public Library.  At that time, I didn’t know that William Lyman Thomas, author of the 1911 History of St. Louis County, was the son-in-law of James Sutton.  If you want to know more about the Sutton and Thomas families, here is a link to 28 posts about them.

I had mostly low quality images of the mansion from newspapers and copy machines until this trove of stunning images was discovered in the Varilek collection a few years ago.  Keep in mind, the foreground is where modern day Manchester Road is today.  The address was 7453.  Dobb’s Tire is currently at this location.

Look what turned up on page 40 of Album One.  Ultra rare … another gold nugget from the rich vein of Maplewood history!  This image shows the west end of the Sutton mansion.  No names or a date with it.  The columns on the front porch are solid wood with chamfered edges.  The chamfers appear to be stopped on the lower end with a detail known as a lamb’s tongue.  This would be fairly typical for a country house built in 1832.  This image was probably made about 1912, I’m guessing.  The house was about 80 years old.  The builder, James Sutton, had been dead for about 35 years.

On page 41, you’ll have to look closely, but that is the Sutton mansion behind the ladies headgear.  Speaking of which, there are quite a few photographs in both albums of women with wild hats.  I’ll post some later.  Don’t fail to see the dog that ran past just as the shutter clicked.  The shape of the tops of the pickets can be useful to determine a location as we’ll see later.

This image was pasted to page 42.  Two of the ladies of the wild hats pose on the front porch steps of the mansion.  One half of the street number 7453 is visible on the front door.

Also on page 42 is this image of a young woman in costume playing some sort of an instrument.  Anyone recognize her costume?  This might be one of the outbuildings on the Sutton farm.

This one is on page 42 as well.

Then on page 44…Wow!  Super Jackpot!!  That is the Sutton mansion in the background.  I’m going to bet that the small building is the office of Dr. W.L. Sappington.  Bear in mind that this is very close to where a White Castle restaurant is located today.

This blurry but very important photograph is on page 46.  The house on the left is that of Dr. Sappington and his wife whose identity I may have gotten wrong earlier.  She was the granddaughter of James Sutton, not his daughter as I previously thought.  The house is in very many of the photographs is both of these albums.  I’ll run then all in a post later.

On page 47 is this image of three couples, well decked out, standing next to Dr. Sappington’s office building.  He must be one of them.  By the shadow we can tell that the photographer was the missing big hat lady.

Also on page 42, the lady rider, seen in the earlier photos, poses with her horse by the Sappington home.

I’ll close with this third image also from page 47.  Boys will be boys.

If you missed my first post in this series, you can link to it here.

If you missed my second post in this series, you can link to that here.

If you missed my third post in this series, you can link to that one as well.

Thanks again to the kind folks at the Missouri History Museum on Skinker.

Well, we’ve had plenty of rain, the coming sunshine is going to be much appreciated.  Enjoy.

Doug Houser       May 6, 2025