Broadway Archives

June 8, 2011September 18, 2011

507 – 515 Broadway’s Past

Reader Larry Points left a comment on yesterday’s story about Bob’s Shoe Service that set me off to do the research I should have done last night about businesses at in the 500 block of Broadway:

Am I mistaken, or was Wissman’s barber shop in this location prior to Bob’s Shoe Service (or perhaps it was in a storefront that went away for the adjacent parking lot)? My Dad’s Parisian Cleaners was across the street at 510 Broadway.

Here’s aerial photo taken April 17, 2011, that shows the neighborhood in question. Bob’s Shoe Service is at 515 Broadway. Wissman’s Barbershop was were the parking lot is to the east of Bob’s. Trinity Lutheran Church is at right center. Annie Laurie’s Antiques is the white building on the northeast corner of Broadway and Frederick. Shivelbine’s is across the street from Annie Laurie’s.

515 Broadway Background

Taken from stories in The Missourian:

June 17, 1921 – Ad for Scott’s Coffee Store offered 10 lbs. pure cane sugar for 75 cents and promised freshly made peanut butter while you wait.
Oct. 14, 1921 – G.W. Tallent had an addition built onto his barber shop because he couldn’t find a bigger building to buy.
Dec. 11, 1924 – The Square Deal Variety Store advertised you could buy a velocipede for $2.75 up to $12.
Dec. 15, 1930 – Curious ad says “Regardless of what your stamp book may state, Bankers’ and Merchants Christmas Saving Stamps are now good any time before or after the first of the year. Do your Christmas shopping with these Christmas Savings Stamps – Profit-Sharing Stores. (Then it lists more than a dozen merchants whose names you’ll recognize)
July 15, 1935 – Square Deal Variety Store celebrates 20th anniversary with double Eagle Stamps.
April 16, 1942 – The battle to defend Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific against the Japs is of particular interest to Mr. and Mrs. C.H. Shively, who own and operate the Square Deal Variety Store. They spent about 13 years in Australia before coming to Cape Girardeau. He was a representative of an American firm selling merchandise in that area. They didn’t reside in any particular place, but were traveling all the time. Mr. Shively said that he stayed in at least 500 hotels, as many as three in one day.
Oct. 29, 1945 – Norval Randol, recently discharged from the Army after five years of service, has completed negotiations for the purchase of the Square Deal Variety Store and building from Mr. and Mrs. C.H. Shively. Mr. and Mrs. Shively have operated the store for 29 years, 22 of them in the present location. Prior to that, it was located in the I. Ben Miller drug store building.
May 22, 1948 – Narvol A. Randol, owner of the Square Deal Variety Store, has installed a complete sales and service department for Maytag appliances. Walter R. Balcom is manager of the department.
April 7, 1967 – Bob’s Shoe Shop, which has been located the past nine years at 633 Broadway in a building owned by Martin Hecht, has moved to new quarters at 515 Broadway. It now occupies triple its former space in a building purchased by the shop’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fuller, from Rex Lambert, who formerly operated a fabric shop there, but has since moved to a new location on Kingshighway north.
June 29, 1975 – A story and pictures about Bob Fuller turning cowhide into fine saddles.
June 20, 1985 – Bob’s Shoe Service has expanded several times to offer the largest selection of boots between St. Louis and Memphis. The latest expansion was to acquire the adjoining building at 517 Broadway. This has been converted to the BOOT ROOM, a showroom featuring over 2,500 pairs of boots.

507 Broadway

A number of buildings were torn down on the south side of the 500 block of Broadway to create this parking lot. This photo is looking west toward Bob’s Shoe Service at 515 Broadway.

Missourian stories and advertisements:

June 14, 1922 – Miss Minnie Brandon is expected to return home within the next few days from St. Louis where she purchased a stock of goods for a novelty store, which will open at 507 Broadway. The building she will occupy is now nearly completed. Miss Brandon is the niece of William Vedder.
Jan. 13, 1928 – Walter Mehrle will open the “Handy Grocery Store” at 507 Broadway, Saturday, and announced he will handle a complete line of groceries, vegetables, with a specialty of the last two. The building was formerly occupied by a fruit store. Mehrle was previously associated in the Mehrle Grocery Co. on the corner of Spanish and Independence streets.
Oct. 26, 1933 – Advertisement: J. Hughes Watchmaker & Jeweler. Repair work a specialty.
Jan. 4, 1936 – Attention: I have sold my interest in the Broadway Barber Shop and am now located at the old Talent Shop, 507 Broadway. Lester Wissman.
Mar. 18, 1938 – PATRICK – A son born yesterday at St. Francis Hospital to Mr. and Mrs. Lester Wissman, 1108 Independence street, was named James Patrick, his birthday being St. Patrick’s Day. Mrs. Wissman, formerly was Miss Marjory Davis of Jackson and Wissman operates a barbershop at 507 Broadway.
Aug. 31, 1939 – DAUGHTER – Mary Ann is the name that has been selected for the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lester Wissman, 101 North Boulevard, born Tuesday. She is the third child in the family, but the first girl, the others being Joe and Pat. She weighed 10 pounds. The father is the owner of a barber shop at 507 Broadway.
Nov. 29, 1946 – A plate glass window was broken out of the Lester Wissman barbershop, 507 Broadway, early Wednesday night. Police said some young people were playing old-fashioned whip cracker and that a girl was swung around against the glass, breaking it. It was also said the girl’s hand was cut against the glass.

June 8, 2011November 16, 2011

I Loved My Red Wing Boots

I made semi-annual pilgrimages to this building displaying a boot for at least 20 years.

The Missourian announced on Jan. 27, 1985, that Bob’s Shoe Service at 515 Broadway was expanding. Owner Bob Fuller bought the building on the right from C.W. Bauerle, doubling his space from 1,500 square feet to 3,000.

The story said that Fuller had “been in the shoe repair business for 32 years, and in addition to this engaged for a time in making saddles, and at the present produces leather belts and other items. Fuller is assisted in his business by his sons, Wade and Scott.”

I’m not sure exactly when I bought my first pair of Red Wing boots, but it was sometime between The Athens Messenger and The Gastonia Gazette in the late 60s – early 70s.

Shoes through the ages

[Note the reflection in the bottom left of the photo. Click on it to make it larger. The Walther’s sign hadn’t been changed to Discovery Playhouse yet. These pictures were taken Oct. 24, 2009.]

I was no stranger to manly, blue collar shoes. Even back in grade school I wore a modified high lace-up combat-style boot. When I worked for Dad one summer, I had some low-cut work shoes that were sturdy and serviceable.

I think I wore loafers in high school. Not penny loafers, I’m positive. No tassels, either.

When I went away to college, I recall going through a Hush Puppy suede shoe stage. At some point, I bought some fur-lined slip-on boots in Ohio that were nice and warm when it got cold and nasty. I wore them until they became, shall we say, odoriferous, and I passed them on to Brother David, who wore them many more years. He lived in Oklahoma, where standards were lower.

Red Wing boots: perfect photographer shoes

Something lured me into Bob’s, where I discovered the Red Wing work boot, which I thought was the perfect footwear for a newspaper photographer.

They were quick to slip into.
If you polished them, they’d take a shine like an expensive dress shoe.
If you put mink oil on them, they’d get soft and repel water.
They were high enough that you didn’t have to worry about wading through water, sand or mud. (And, it didn’t matter if your socks matched. You couldn’t see them.)
You could climb rock cliffs, walk through construction sites without worrying about stepping on nails and be reasonably certain that you were safe from snakebite as long as you were around lazy snakes.

No BS uniform

Every once in awhile I’d want to go onto a construction site to shoot pictures, but some foreman would say, “Well, I’D give you permission, but you have to have a hard hat and the right kind of shoes. Safety regulations, you know. Sorry.”

I’d walk back to my car and dig out my safety-approved white hard hat. On the front of it was a drawing of a bull squatting down making a deposit, surrounded by the international symbol for “No.” I’d return to the foreman, don my “No BS” hard hat, hike up my pants leg to display my Red Wing boots and say, “OK now?”

Rarely did the foreman come up with another hoop for me to jump through.

Boots cost more than a suit

The only drawback was that the boots cost $75 in the days when you could buy a SUIT for $25. OK, let me amend that. I could buy a suit for $25.

Despite the high cost – more than half a week’s pay – I usually had at least three pair of the boots in wearing sequence.

A new pair for when I needed to be presentable – that set was polished.
The ones I wore for work – mink oiled and waterproofed.
A beat-up pair kept in the trunk for truly grody situations.

It just dawned on me that I haven’t seen a pair of Red Wing boots in the closet since Son Matt got big enough to wear my shoes.

April 30, 2011November 18, 2016

View from KFVS Tower

I’ve seen Cape Girardeau from the ground and from 1,500 feet in a small plane, but I had a chance to see it from the 11th floor of the KFVS Tower recently. That’s a nice height to pick out landmark buildings.

This view is looking west down Broadway. You can click on any image to make it larger. The building at bottom left is the old Federal Courthouse. The tall building with yellow brick in the foreground is the Marquette Hotel. The pink building with a mural is where the old Idan-Ha Hotel stood before it burned. The nearest intersection is Broadway and Fountain.

Broadway to the east

This photo looks in the opposite direction – east on Broadway toward the Mississippi River. The Missourian is on the bottom right. The metal roof in the foreground is the N’Orleans. On the right is the First Presbyterian Church. The rusty steeple near the top of the photo belongs to the former General Baptist Church.

Common Pleas Courthouse

A view to the southeast picks up the corner of the First Presbyterian Church, the red tile roof of The Southeast Missourian, the Common Pleas Courthouse and old library, the steeple of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church and the Bill Emerson Bridge.

Cement plant in distance

This photo is similar, but it shows a bit more of the neighborhood and gives a glimpse of the cement plant way off in the distance.

April 28, 2011March 28, 2024

N’Orleans Stands Empty

Tables in the N’Orleans Resturant sit covered with white tablecloths for customers that won’t be showing anytime soon. The landmark eating establishment is closed.

Built as hostelry in 1806

I’m not even going to try to rehash the history of the place.

One marker says that it was the “site of the first hostelry in Cape Girardeau, built in 1806 by Capt. Wm. Ogle, one of the first west of the Mississippi River. In 1868, the Turner Society erected the present building as turnverein or a community center. Masonic Order owned the building from 1888-1891. Later became known as an opera house and many famous personages appeared on its stage.”

Opera house, Masonic Lodge, newspaper office

The building has been used for many things over the years.

A marker posted by Old Town Cape says, “Royal N’Orleans: Turner Hall, as this building was once known, was built in 1868 with contributions from members of the community. Designed by Nicholas Gonner, an architect, civil engineer & contractor in 1888, the Mason’s purchased Turner Hall & it became the opera house and Masonic Lodge. In 1904, the Naeter Brothers started and published the first issue of The Daily Republican on these premises. In 1954, the Royal N’Orleans was opened.”

Dead plant in the window

I shot this the day before seeing the screaming plants at the Plaza Galleria. If it had been the other way around, I wouldn’t have given this a second glance.

Protest in the 60s

SEMO students picketed the N’Orleans in 1967. See more photos of the rowdy group here.

Photo gallery of the N’Orleans

The place has been called the Royal N’Orleans, the Petit N’Orleans and is now just N’Orleans. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.