Maplewood History: Ultra Rare Images of a Missing Bank Building Are Found!

In 2014, on this website, I created four posts about the Bank of Maplewood.  The Bank first occupied a building on the northeast corner of Manchester and Oakview Terrace.  I found numerous photographs of that building and references to it in our archival records.

See also: Maplewood History: The Bank of Maplewood-Part 1, Maplewood History: The Bank of Maplewood-Part 2, Maplewood History: Bank of Maplewood-Part 3, Maplewood History: The Bank of Maplewood-Part 3 (continued)

Later, the bank occupied a building located one block west of the original.  Their new building was located on the northeast corner of Manchester and Sutton.   Again, photographs and references to this building were easy to come by.

Then one day while I was poking around through the myriad treasures in the historic section of our library, I noticed an unfamiliar building in the letterhead of an old bank document.  Since the distance in years between the two known buildings wasn’t that great, I hadn’t considered that there may have been another building that existed between them.  But there it was on the letterhead.

So I included it in my posts.  I wondered if it had burned.  Many buildings did in those days.  I still don’t know whether or not it burned but I now have two, newly found, old images that definitely prove it existed!

This is an image of the first Bank of Maplewood building that once stood on the NE corner of Oakview Terrace and Manchester.  We have no shortage of information about this building, some of which you will find in the links to the 2014 posts included later in this article.

This is the third Bank of Maplewood building that was once located at the NE corner of Sutton and Manchester.  It was constructed in 1926 as one can, no doubt, tell from the photograph.  We have no shortage of information about this building, either.

Then one day I happened to notice the building in this letterhead.  I wondered how could there have been a third building in the fairly short period of time between the other two?  Since the first appeared in the 1904 Suburban Journal, I just assumed it was recently built, because there wasn’t much of anything around here earlier than that.

A closeup of the drawing in the letterhead.  I love the way the artist scaled the people and the vehicles way down in order to make the building look bigger.

Lately I have been slowly digesting two early photo albums from the collection of the Missouri History Museum.  They were donated by Margaret Sappington Townsend.  I don’t know much about her yet but we will.

The first image that stopped me in my tracks was this one.  Under higher magnification, I could make out enough letters on the facade to determine that this was an image of the missing bank building.  Exciting!  The men are unidentified.

And then… a few photos later…jackpot!  There it is the missing bank building.  Perhaps the bank business was so good that they outgrew it in just a short time?  The intersection is positively identified as is Aunt Gen.  What more could one ask for?

Folks, I have been pursuing this Maplewood History hobby of mine since 2002.  I have looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of historic photographs.  Images like these last two are rarer than rare.  They are ultra rare.

Much thanks to fellow Maplewoodian Lauren Sallwasser, an archivist of the photographs and prints and the other very helpful people at the Missouri History Museum library on Skinker.

Stay tuned.  There will be much more to come.

Happy Springtime!

Doug Houser        March 14, 2025

This link will take you to my other posts about the Bank of Maplewood.