Author: Ken Steinhoff

When I ride my bike from Cape to Altenburg, I climb a steep hill on Country Road 532 (also known as Pocahontas Main St.) to get to State Highway C.

Climbing hills makes me want to take pictures. OK, to be honest, climbing hills makes me want to stop. Photography is just an excuse.

Conveniently, there is an old building the corner of Main and Hwy C that has caught my eye over the years.

It wasn’t grown up in 2001

The building has deteriorated and brush has grown up around it since I first shot it in 2001.

Ornate front door

It had a fairly ornate front door with an oval glass window, but the bushes hide it from view these days.

Door had transom

A shot through a side window shows that the door had a transom above it for cooling. It had a door latch and at least two locks, although the inside locks were fairly unsophisticated.

The walls have been covered with some kind of peg board or acoustical tile, with minimal fiberglass insulation behind it.

Might have been white with green trim

Most of the paint has peeled off, but it looks like it might have been a white building with green trim at one time.

Back door has skeleton lock

The back door had a simple door knob and lock that took an old-fashioned skeleton key.

A few windows are unbroken

Vandals haven’t broken out ALL the windows.

Does anyone know anything about the building?

I’ve never seen anyone around to ask about the history of the building. Does anyone know what it was used for?

Question from Bob Reese

Dear Ken and Group,
I have the above old picture and thought maybe it was in Egypt Mills but it looks kind of like the picture you posted of Pecan Grove School.
What do you think?
Thanks, Bob Reese, Tucson

Pecan Grove School

I’m on the road and don’t have access to any photos that show another angle of the Pecan Grove School, but both buildings look like they have three windows. The roof on the photo Bob sent looks like wood shake; I think I remember Pecan Grove as being tin, but I’m not sure. It could have been replaced over its 100-plus year life.

Does anyone know if the Egypt Mills School is still standing? If so, I may take a run out there.

On the way back from shooting Dutchtown’s Beechwood Club, I stopped to take some photos of a tiny little white building on the north side of Highway 74, just east of Dutchtown. I was pretty sure it had been a school.

While researching something else, I saw a story about the 50th Anniversary of the Pecan Grove School in 1951. There was a photo that matched up with this one. Bingo.

Pecan Grove had as many as 60 students

A Missourian story from Oct. 29, 1930, said there were 25 pupils enrolled in the school. Eleven of them have had perfect attendence this term.

The 50th Anniversary story said the school was founded in 1901 and had operated in the same building for 50 years. By 1951, the school had an average of 16 pupils. At the turn of the century, as many as 60 students were taught in the one-room, 30 by 30-foot wooden building. Grades one through eight were taught there.

Otto E. Eggimann, the oldest living teacher, said he gave the school the name Pecan Grove School. It had originally been called the “Little Yellow Schoolhouse.”

Annexed into Cape Schools in 1970

A June 15, 1970, story said that Pecan Grove School had been annexed into the Cape Girardeau School District. In September of that year, the school district issued a quit claim deed to Ferd Peetz, giving him the one-acre site of the former Pecan Grove School.

Lou Muegge and the pecan tree

The Missourian reported on Nov. 24, 1943, that Coach Lou Muegge and several of his Central High grid players spent Sunday afternoon on an outing near Pecan Grove School and, of course, a football was taken along with them. The boys took turns at throwing the football in the pecan tree and kocking down pecans, while they also ran through cornfields as a form of limbering up exercise. Jack Baynham, Leon Brinkopf and Herbert Upton were the members of the squad on the trip.