Sophia Rohde

For roughly fifty years, until her death in 1949, Sophia Rohde kept the house as the center of her family’s life. Her children grew up within its walls, and for a time her mother lived there too. She endured the upheavals of the Spanish flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression, while watching the Benton Park neighborhood grow and shift around her. Breweries, German immigrant churches, and small businesses anchored the community as generations of families built lives side by side.

Sophia Rohde (née Bulla) came to the United States in 1867, just two years old, as part of a group of “Bohemian” families settling in Washington, Missouri.¹ By 1880, at the age 19, she and her sister had moved to St. Louis, and were employed as servants in the household of Conrad and Mary Ebner, who lived and owned a business near downtown St. Louis. ² Around this time, Sophia crossed paths with her future husband, Herman F. Rohde. While the details of their first meeting are unknown, their workplaces were only a few blocks apart — Sophia at 519 N. Market and Herman at 117 South Broadway — making it easy to imagine how their lives might have overlapped³. They married in 1883, and quickly became a family of 5, as they welcomed children Herman Jr., Clara, and Edwin.

In 1897, Herman Sr. was tragically killed in downtown St. Louis when he was struck by a trolley pole while walking by a streetcar near Broadway and Pine. He was thrown to the ground and fatally injured, passing away shortly after at the City Hospital. His sudden death left his wife, Sophia, and their three young children (ages 13, 12, and newborn) to carry on without him.

According to the newspaper, Sophia had given birth to the couple’s third child only days before the accident and was seriously ill. The article reported that “an effort is being made to keep the news of her husband’s misfortune from her.” In the months that followed, Sophia sued the trolley company for $5,000 in damages⁴, but the case ended in a hung jury, and she received no settlement.⁵

After the tragic loss of her husband in 1897, Sophia and her family moved on from their home at 2251 S. Jefferson. In 1898, she purchased a new four-unit house at 1924-1926 Sidney Street for $8,350, living upstairs on the 1926 side. Over the years, her life on Sidney Street was marked by moments of both joy and sorrow. In 1907, her daughter Clara married Herman Stuckstede, with the ceremony at St. Agnes Church across the street and a lively reception held at the Sidney Street home. Years later, in 1921, Sophia suffered the loss of her mother, Caroline, who had lived with her until her illness worsened and she was moved to the Sanitarium on Arsenal Street.

Despite the deep roots she planted during these years, a brief departure from the narrative occurred in 1912 when Sophia placed a classified advertisement listing the building for sale. For reasons lost to time, the property never changed hands, and the listing remains merely a curious footnote in the building’s history. Rather than moving on, Sophia chose to remain, anchoring herself to the house for another thirty-seven years.

Throughout the Rohde years, the Sidney Street house was home not only to Sophia and her family but also to a steady stream of immigrants, laborers, and families who reflected the rapid growth of the Benton Park neighborhood. According to the 1900 Federal census, sixteen people lived under its roof — seven of them German immigrants — mirroring the immigrant boom that shaped St. Louis in the mid- to late-1800s. By 1910, only two residents were foreign-born, and by 1920, Sophia Rohde herself was the sole foreign-born occupant of the house. This shift mirrored broader national trends, as immigration slowed and second-generation families increasingly put down roots. Their occupations told the story of the neighborhood as well: brewery workers, saloon keepers, and tradesmen tied closely to the bustling local industries.

Together, these lives—ordinary and extraordinary—wove the Sidney Street house into the broader story of a changing America.

1. W. M. von-Maszewski, German Emigration Ships to New Orleans, 1865–1869 (Pasadena, TX: Tortuga Press, 1997), 196; entry for Sophia Bulla, age 2, arrival at New Orleans, 1867. Cited in U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s–1900s [database on-line], Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed September 11, 2025). ↩︎
2. 1880 U.S. census, Saint Louis, St. Louis (Independent City), Missouri, population schedule, North St., house no. 519, dwelling 17, Sophia Gomolo, age 19, servant; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed September 11, 2025); citing NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 728. ↩︎
3. “Rohde Struck by Pole,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 31, 1897, 15, accessed September 11, 2025, https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-globe-democrat-rohde-struck-by/94591917/?xid=637. ↩︎
4. St. Louis Globe-Democrat. St. Louis, 7 Jan. 1898, p. 12. ↩︎
5. St. Louis Globe-Democrat. St. Louis.
   7 Jan. 1898, p. 12; 23 Apr. 1898, p. 16. ↩︎