Cape Girardeau History and Photos

September 18, 2012February 11, 2021

Wreck at Broadway – Perry

The thing that caught my eye about these photos wasn’t the wreck – it looks pretty minor. It was the neighborhood in the vicinity of Broadway and Perry Ave. and how it has changed since these photos were taken in the mid-1960s. Almost everything on the south side of Broadway has been gobbled up by Southeast Hospital. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Stubb’s Beer Garden gone

The 1968 City Directory lists the following businesses in this block of Broadway

1700 – Lacy’s Texaco Service
1703 – Bill Wescoat’s Trailer Rental Service & Wescoat Motor Company
1704 – Cape Drive-in Cleaners
1720 – Stubb’s Beer Palace
1736 – Child’s IGA Foodliner

The city directory might list it as Stubb’s Beer Palace, but we always referred to it as the Beer Garden. It’s a parking lot now. Child’s Foodliner is occupied by an orthodontics practice.

2011 Aerial of SE Hospital -1700 Block

Here is a 2011 aerial of the area. Perry Avenue comes in the from the left. Capaha Park is at top left, and Southeast Hospital takes up most of the right side of the photo. You can go here to see aerial photos of the area in 1964.

Wreck doesn’t look serious

Looks like car vs. pole and sign. I learned a long time ago not to play crash investigator and speculate about the cause of a wreck.

I may have told this story before. I had to testify in a civil suit involving a car crash. I showed up with more prints than Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant. I was barely old enough to have a driver’s license of my own, so one of the attorneys tried to get me to speculate about the cause of the accident and to lead me into making a statement he could pounce on. I kept saying, “The photo shows x, y and z. That’s all I can tell you.”

“You testified that the skid marks were 37 feel long. Could they have been 34 or 38 feet long and not 37 feet long? What makes you so sure they were 37 feet long.”

“I took a tape measure and measured them because I figured some lawyer would ask me that.”

“No further questions.”

Houses are all gone

It’s hard to believe that the Broadway facing Capaha Park was once filled with family homes. John Hilpert, one of my best buddies in grade school lived in an old two-story house on the other side of Louisiana Avenue.

September 17, 2012February 7, 2021

Picture Day at Hollister School

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch left a comment on my post about Paul Lueuders showing up at Central High School to take homeroom photos for the Girardot: “When I was in high school, I always liked working alongside a group photographer. I would take pictures of the kids ‘getting ready’ to be photographed when they didn’t think anyone was watching, or taking their picture.”

That got me to thinking about this picture page I did for The Athens Messenger November 8, 1968. The original assignment was to go to Hollister School to capture kids being vaccinated or something, but it turned out that local studio photographer Ralph Norris was there to shoot student photos, so I switched gears.

Once you got out of the Ohio University-dominated Athens and out into the county, you were in Appalachia, where poverty and worked-out coal mines were found down every back road. When I see people walking down the street sporting “Hollister” labels, I have a different picture in my mind than they do. (Like always, you can click the pix to make them bigger.)

Slicked-back hair and shiny faces

Like Fred wrote, it was fun to sit back and watch Ralph work with the kids. He had a gentle touch and put the children at ease. He wasn’t the master photographer Paul Lueders was, but he was a decent craftsman who had been doing his job for years.

My copy was short and sweet on the page: “Slicked-back hair and shiny faces were the order of the day at Hollister School Wednesday. That’s when photographer Ralph Norris came to take everybody’s picture. Here’s how it was.”

Pretty girls and a crown

Ralph and I would cross paths from time to time. He was a nice guy who was fun to talk with. I don’t think we ever exchanged any heavy thought, but I do owe him big for one piece of advice he gave me.

Covering Miss Rutabaga or something

He was the official photographer for some local pageant. I don’t remember if it was Miss Athens County or Miss Rutabaga or whatever. All I know is that it involved pretty girls and a crown. I went to the swimming pool to shoot the bathing suit competition. Hey, newspaper photographing is a tough job.

Now that I think back, I don’t know how I got the pageant assignment. That had boss Bob Rogers written all over it. He must have been out of town.

Anyway, Ralph pulled me over to the side and said, “It’s become kind of a tradition for the girls to throw me in the pool after I take the group shot, so you might want to be prepared to get wet – you know how all those photographers look alike – or to beat feet while they’re distracted by me.”

I managed to get a shot of him making a big splash, then exited quickly.

I should go look for those negatives

Now that I think of it, I need to go digging for those negatives. To look for Ralph, of course.

September 17, 2012November 14, 2012

1965 Sophomore Picture Day

It wasn’t the start of the school year until Paul Lueders showed up to take homeroom photos for The Girardot. The first step in this herding of cats was for him to size up where everybody was going to sit and stand. He was the consummate professional who never got flustered nor lost his patience. I’ve shot enough group photos to know that’s not easy. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Everybody look here

He’s making sure he can see every face. Girardot staffer Marcia Maupin, at right with the clipboard, is trying to get the names nailed down.

Moment of Truth

This is where the wizard disappeared behind the curtain to work his magic. His use of large-format film – probably 4″ x 5″ in this case, was one of the reasons his photos were so sharp and clear.

I apologize for all the scratches and spots on these photos. Time and storage hasn’t done the film any favors. I decided it was too damaged to try to repair everything.

Sophomore students

I actually have names for the photos for a change. If there are any errors, blame Marcia Maupin. This is the photo that appeared in the 1965 Girardot.

Dredge Ste. Genevieve

Huge crowds turned out to tour the Corps of Engineers Dredge Ste. Genevieve in the middle 1960s. I tried to find the story associated with the photos, but came up blank. The “Genny,” as she was called by the men who worked aboard her for more than half a century, was built in 1932 by Dravo Corp. at Neville Island in the Ohio River at Pittsburgh.

Last stern-wheeler

The Ste. Genevieve, the last steam-powered stern-wheeler cutterhead dredge to be operated by the Corps, was retired in 1984. A story by David Hente June 18, 1994, tells of its sad end. Or, at least part of it. After it was retired, it spent several years in Davenport, Ia., where it was supposed to be turned into a museum. That never happened.

Donated to Marine Learning Institute

In 1992, the General Services Administration donated the craft to the Marine Learning Institute, which had offices in Missouri and Maryland. The institute wanted to turn the boat into a floating museum and educational center on the banks of the Missouri River at St. Charles. That didn’t happen, either.

The next plan was to put it at the corps’ environmental demonstration area on the Mississippi River at a former marina at West Alton, Ill. That also didn’t come to pass.

Sank in 1992 near Cairo

While the institute was trying to find a permanent home for the dredge, they received an invitation from the city of Cincinnati to bring the dredge to its Tall Stacks ’92 festival on the Ohio River. It was towed to a staging area below Cairo to wait for a ride up the Ohio. While it was there, it sank on Oct. 1, 1992. After spending 31 days on the river bottom, it was raised, emergency repairs were made to its hull and it was towed to the Missouri Dry Dock and Repair Service in Cape for permanent repairs.

Repairs and wrangling

After the Ste. Genevieve made it to Cape, there was a two-month delay, but the repairs were finally made to its hull in 1993. The shipyard placed a lien on the boat because the Marine Institute didn’t have enough money to pay for the repairs. The repaired dredge was put back into the water and remained docked in the shipyard while the legal wrangling went on through the rest of 1993 and early 1994.

Sank again in March 1994

On March 10, 1994, for reasons unknown, the Ste. Genevieve ended up on the river bottom again. That brought about even more legal squabbling. The Missouri Dry Dock owner, Rob Erlbacher, said he wanted to cut it ip for scrap to get it out of the way. “I want to see the boat removed regardless of what it takes to do it. We need to get it out of here.”

More grand plans

The institute argued that the boat was worth $775,000. Richard Wooten, a spokesman said that a number of groups were interested in preserving the boat. “After the Genny is raised, we intend to take her to Ft. Meyers, Fla., where the Ford Foundation and the Edison Foundation have placed $500,000 in their budget for a permanent berthing area for the vessel as a museum and educational center,” he told The Missourian.

The sad end

I don’t know what finally happened to the Genny, but based on photos I saw of its paddle wheels on the LittleRiverBooks website, I’m pretty sure she never made it to Ft. Meyers. Here is a photo showing only the stacks and pilot house sticking up out of the water. Dan Back photographed the stacks and pilothouse with the dry dock in the background; the stacks were removed eventually and sent off to be dismantled. During the high water, spring 1995, she was completely under water.

Here is a photo of the “recovery” effort. It’s the last mention of the Ste. Genevieve in The Missourian.

Ste. Genevieve photo gallery

Here’s a collection of all the photos I could find of the dredge’s visit to Cape Girardeau. They remind me a little of when I photographed the Delta Queen taking on passengers in Cairo in 1968. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.