Adolph Reuter began working at the Barkhoff Organ Company in the early 1900s, thereafter working at other pipe organ building companies until he reached the level of shop superintendent. In 1917, he and Earl Schwarz established the Reuter-Schwarz Organ Company in Trenton, Illinois.

In 1919, with a commission for an organ in the Masonic Temple in Lawrence, Kansas, the company moved operations to Lawrence. Soon after that Schwarz left the business, and the company was renamed as the Reuter Organ Company.

Adolph Reuter retired in 1961. In the early 1980s, long-time employee Franklin Mitchell, along with newly employed production manager Albert Neutel, purchased the Reuter Organ Company. Neutel had owned his own organ-building company in Ontario, Canada for several decades before moving to Lawrence and joining Reuter.

In 2001 Reuter moved its operations to a new specially designed facility in northwest Lawrence. The company continued to craft pipe organs for churches, synagogues, concert halls, schools, and homes in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, and Korea until 2022, when owner J.R. Neutel announced the company would scale back operations and no longer build new organs, only service existing organs through their remaining warranties.