Sturtevant was laid down on 23 November 1918 and launched on 29 July 1920 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation; sponsored by Mrs. Curtis Ripley Smith; and commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 21 September 1920.

In late December, she returned to Turkey at Samsun, thence to Constantinople in January 1922, before reentering the Black Sea to visit southern Russia.

Sturtevant investigated potential ports of debarkation in southern Russia for the supplies soon to be shipped by the American Relief Administration.

In addition to ports of call of the previous cruises, she visited Varna, Bulgaria; Mersina and Smyrna, Turkey; Piraeus, Greece; and Naples, Italy.

She operated along the Atlantic seaboard through the end of the year, conducting gunnery exercises in October at the southern drill grounds off Virginia.

In early January, Sturtevant proceeded to the Panama Canal Zone to participate in a war problem with the Scouting Fleet.

At the end of the month, she sailed with the Fleet, via Culebra Island, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the British West Indies, conducting tactical exercises along the way.

From late April-mid-June, the ship participated in a joint Army-Navy war problem simulating the attempt of an enemy force to capture the island of Oahu.

Returning to the Atlantic side of the isthmus to resume drills and exercises in the vicinity of Cuba, Sturtevant steamed north to Boston during the first week in May.

Each year summer operations along the north and central Atlantic coast of the U.S. were alternated with winter maneuvers in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

She was recommissioned there on 9 March 1932, and on 30 April reported for duty to the Commander, Special Service Squadron at Coco Solo in the Canal Zone.

For the next two years, the destroyer plied waters of the Gulf and the Caribbean, supporting the activities of the marines ashore in Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and other Latin American republics.

The destroyer operated out of Norfolk, in the North Atlantic until early March 1942, then escorted a convoy from New York to the Canal Zone.