On a downtown corner where you’d least expect a storybook, the Eugene Field House has been keeping childhood safe since 1936. This brick row house, built in the 1820s–40s, was the boyhood home of Eugene Field — the ‘Poet of Childhood’ whose ‘Wynken, Blynken, and Nod’ sailed generations of children to sleep.
The house carries legal history, too: Eugene’s father, attorney Roswell Field, took the freedom suit of Dred and Harriet Scott, making this modest home a quiet landmark of American justice. Today the museum celebrates both legacies and houses the St. Louis Toy Museum’s collections — antique toys and Field memorabilia filling rooms with two centuries of play.
It is one of downtown’s smallest museums and one of its most touching.
The Eugene Field House is at 634 South Broadway. Hours at eugenefieldhouse.org.
