Anton Meyer building in 1961 and the same corner in 2021

Then & Now: Anton Meyer Buildings

Thanks to Cherokee Service for their support.

Anton Meyer came to West St. Paul in 1883 from Bavaria and became one of West St. Paul’s first contractors and builders. He built his family home at 1051 Stryker Avenue and built a structure next to it for his business. His son later expanded the building to include a grocery store on the ground floor and apartments above.

The Anton Meyer building and home on Stryker Avenue in 1961 (Photo credit: Dakota County Historical Society)

That building on the corner of Stryker and Arion housed a succession of businesses, including Meyer Grocery, Philip Simon’s Meat Market, Becker Grocery (as pictured here in 1961), and finally Blue Trunk, a used clothing and costume shop that catered to area theater productions in the 1970s.

The Anton Meyer Contractor & Building facade, revealed in 1982 (Photo credit: Dakota County Historical Society)

In May 1982, the corner buildings were demolished, revealing the original Meyer carpentry storefront. The brick facade was left standing for a few days for the neighborhood to marvel at.

The same corner in 2021.

Today, nearly 40 years after the buildings on the corner were demolished, the corner still remains vacant. The Anton Meyer home at 1051 Stryker is still in the family.

We need your help to dig into local history. Support West St. Paul Reader.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s