Cape Girardeau History and Photos

After I published the photograph of Dutch sitting in front of the old Farmers and Merchants Bank, I got a message from Toni Eftink, projects manager of Old Town Cape.

“I guess the bank is gone though, right? I can’t seem to picture anything w/huge columns like that at Good Hope & Sprigg now. When did it go?”

Bank History

The bank was incorporated in 1904 and moved to the two-story red brick structure at 701 Good Hope in 1923.  It was the oldest operating banking facility in Cape Girardeau.

That bank, located in the Haarig business district, catered to the early German-Americans who settled in the Good Hope area. It was expanded in 1936, and a drive-in window was added (depending on which story you read) in 1956 or 1970.  It was sold to Boatmen’s Bank in 1982. Boatmen’s Bank became Nation’s Bank, which became Bank of America.

Boatmen’s Bank gave it to the Salvation Army

Major structural problems were discovered in the Salvation Army’s headquarter building at 215 Broadway in the spring of 1985.

About the same time,  a Missourian story quoted James P. Limbaugh, vice president, as saying that the Cape’s western migration had taken the bank’s customer base with it. The bank was using only about 25 percent of the building’s 13,000 square feet. It had already been downgraded to a branch office when a new main facility was built on William St. in the early 70s.

Landmark Cape bank gets new life

Limbaugh said the facility needed a new roof and some other “fairly major improvements,” but “structurally it’s a good building.” He said there is an “emotional and sentimental attraction to the building” and that bank officials are happy that the structure can be put to good use.

For their part, the Salvation Army was ecstatic: “That’s a tremendous gift, something almost beyond words,” a community relations director in St. Louis said.

Farmers and Merchants razed in 1995

Not long after the Salvation Army moved into the bank, it started beating the drum to build a new facility on the property. The organization complained that the building didn’t meet its needs – only about 4,200 square feet of the 13,000 square feet were usable, compared to a new building with 17,200 feet of space. Despite the opposition of local historic groups, the bank was razed in 1995.

Salvation Army HQ at 701 Good Hope

The massive bank building that anchored a major corner in the Haarig District for more than six decades is now a parking lot and what you see above. I have a lot of respect for the work the Salvation Army does, but I sure miss seeing the Farmers and Merchants Bank when I drive down that block.

Farmers and Merchants Bank at the corner of Sprigg and Good Hope, with its strong brick walls and huge columns, looked like a bank should look. Dad had an office for his construction company on the second floor of the building, and we always thought it was neat that we had a key to the front door of the place.

My first savings account was in that bank. I was really disappointed that it didn’t look like Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin. And, I was even more disappointed when I found out that they didn’t keep all the money I gave them in a separate place so I’d get back the same coins I gave them. When I got my paper route at 12, Dad set up a checking account for me, and I wrote checks from that day on. I carried a copy of my birth certificate for ID.

Like Cher is Cher, Dutch was just Dutch

The fellow sitting in front of the bank is Dutch, a laborer who worked for Dad. Long before Britney and Paris and Cher and the other one-name celebs, Dutch was Dutch. I know he HAD a last name, but he was always just Dutch. Now that I think of it, most of the core workers were one-namers. There was Sylvester the mechanic, Fred (Robinson) the heavy equipment operator, Doc the carpenter and Dutch and Peewee, the laborers.

I’m not sure where he and Dad hooked up, but he’d keep Dutch on the payroll well into the winter, after all the construction jobs had wrapped up for the season. He gave him his own hammer and his own shovel, and you’d have thought they were gold-plated.

Dad didn’t like union jobs

Dad generally didn’t like to bid on union jobs. He had no patience with all the jurisdictional stuff that went along with them. “If I truck a dragline to a union jobsite,” he griped one day, “I have to have a Teamster  drive the truck. When it gets there, I have to have a laborer lay down timbers to back the dragline off the truck; I have to have a union crane operator run the dragline and an “oiler” who stands around in case it needs any kind of maintenance. If I’m in a non-union area, I can get by with two men – one if he’s really good.”

Anyway, Dad came home from work one day really ticked off. “Some union carpenter threatened to shut down the whole job because he caught a laborer – Dutch – carrying a hammer on his belt. When I told Dutch he was going to have to take it off, I thought the man would start crying.”

This must have been the grand opening of Griff’s Burger Bar. I don’t have any idea who the two men are or the exact date it was taken. I’m going to guess sometime between 1966 and 1968.

Millikan Car Lot is in the background. There was a story in the August 12, 1968, Missourian that reported that four wheel covers, valued at $138, were stolen from a vehicle at Millikan Car Lot, 1803 Independence. Based on that,  Griff’s must have been the the eatery at Caruthers and Independence.

I didn’t see any mention of the opening, but the Google archive index may have missed it. A couple of want ads looking for night managers ran in 1966 and 1969.

Griff’s employee engagement announced

There was a Missourian engagement announcement published  May 10, 1968, that said that “Mr. and Mrs. Norman V. Niswonger have ann0unced the the engagement of their daughter, Miss Laura Mae Sample, to Leroy Friedhof, son of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Friedhof. Miss Sample is a senior at Central High School. Mr. Friedhof is a senior at College High School, and is employed by Griff’s Burger Bar. A late August wedding is planned.”

[UPDATE: make sure you read the comments below to find out more about the Friedhofs.]