Aerial photos Archives

April 3, 2013April 3, 2013

Cape Girardeau Sand Company

While cruising around looking for flood photos, I stopped at the Cape Girardeau Sand Company for a couple of shots. David Hente had a good piece on the sand company in the August 30, 1992, Missourian. At that time, Cape Sand had been in business 75 years and was the largest company of its type between Cape and Chester, Ill. (In another month, the river was higher.)

Family-owned business

The company was created in 1919 when Peter Deimund and his son, Linder, launched the business with a capital investment of $5,510. When the story was written, it was still a family business. Members include Linder P. Deimund, Jr., who helped construct a sand conveyor system with his father and who does all the maintenance work; Richard Deimund, the pilot of the sand dredge Miss Catherine; Jerry Beckett, deckhand on the Miss Catherine; Jeff Deimund, clamshell shovel operator; Gary Hester, front-end loader operator in the sand yard, and office manager Sonny Deimund.

Business started at the foot of Themis

The company’s first site was at the foot of Themis Street, then it moved north to Broadway. In 1924, the Deimund family bought riverfront property in the 300 block of North Main Street. This is where I took this photo around 1964. It was supposed to be an arty silhoutte. It ended up neither arty nor a good record shot.

The building in the background with the white on it has a hanging sign that says “North American Van Lines.” Across the front of the building is lettering that says something “& Storage.” I’m going to guess that was Nichols Transfer and Storage listed at 447 North Main Street in the 1969 City Directory. The sand company moved to its final location in the 1300 block of Water Street in 1963.

Red Star and Cape Sand Co

This aerial showing the Cape Girardeau Sand Company and what is left of the Red Star District was taken April 17, 2011. The concrete pad at the left of the photo is what we used to call Honker’s Boat Dock. To the left of Sloan Creek is the area that is being cleared for the Isle Casino Cape Girardeau. The light-colored building at the top center is the Show-Me Center.

Housekeeping note

The program that sent out email notifications when I posted new material quit working. Son Matt installed a new one that we hope will work more reliably. We’ll find out soon if everyone’s email address transferred over. If you haven’t signed up for a free subscription, put your email address in the box at the top right of the page and press Subscribe Now. You’ll get an email confirming that you are you. Click on it and you are in business. You may unsubscribe at any time (but we’ll hate to see you go.)

March 7, 2013March 7, 2013

Academic Hall Gets New Hat

Academic Hall has been undergoing some major fixing. Surprisingly enough, the university hasn’t used “structural problems” as an excuse to tear down the iconic building as they seem so prone to do with other Cape landmarks.

Here’s a view of the dome from the north, looking south. You don’t often see it from this side.

Academic Hall Stories

Missourian webmaster James Baughn offers this information on Academic Hall.
Academic Hall in 1966 and 2011
Fred Lynch had a photo of the dome with scaffolding around it.
Dome reconstruction starts
Vintage and current SEMO aerials and photos
1966 Outstanding Seniors in front of Academic Hall

December 19, 2012February 20, 2015

SEMO Plans to Erase Landmark

There were a number of things that let me know I was getting close to home: going down that last hill at Thebes Gap, catching the first glimpse of the Mississippi River as it curved around Gray’s Point, spotting the Common Pleas Courthouse and the dome of Academic Hall poking above the trees… Once we made the white-knuckle passage across the Traffic Bridge, I’d look off to the left, not to see St. Vincent’s College, but to spy the strange brick structure on its lawn. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was a sign that I was home.

When I researched a piece on the 5th anniversary of the River Campus, I discovered a report filed with the National Register of Historic Places saying the court was constructed in 1843 and was supposed to have been the first handball court west of the Mississippi River.

James Baughn reads the fine print

The December 16 Missourian ran a routine story about the SEMO regents approving 96,000 square feet of new construction at the River Campus. There was an aerial photo overlay, but I’m sure most readers didn’t look at it closely. I’m guilty as charged.

Missourian webmaster James Baughn, who does one of three must-read blogs in the paper, is one of those detail kind of guys who notices things. He discovered that the new construction will erase one of the oldest structures in Cape Girardeau, one built by Joseph Lansman. Who is he? Thanks to Baughn’s research, we find that he was the guy who was probably responsible for SEMO being in Cape in the first place.

Baughn notes “[Louis] Houck was able to work his magic to steer the newly formed Board of Regents toward Cape, but Lansman helped seal the deal. He agreed to donate land he owned at the site of Fort B, the old Civil War fortification on a hilltop north of town, well away from the mosquito-laden swamps. During a crucial meeting at the St. Charles Hotel (built by Lansman), the regents made the final selection of Lansman’s site for the new college.”

SEMO, which touts one of the few undergraduate historic preservation programs in the country, assures us that they will incorporate a “select” number of bricks from the handball court into the facade of the new River Campus building. If they were in Philadelphia, they’d probably scrap The Liberty Bell and incorporate the clapper as a door knocker. I mean, why hang on to that old thing? Nobody’s going to ring it with that crack in it.

Holy Crapola! I’ve been ripped off

I followed a link on Baugn’s blog to a SEMO publication that details the constuction project. Guess what they have on the first two pages? This copyrighted aerial photo showing the River Campus I shot November 6, 2010. I can’t wait to make some phone calls tomorrow morning to SEMO and the Lawrence Group to talk about appropriating photographs for commercial use without compensation. (As always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Frame Two of my purloined photo shows clearly that they are targeting the lawn and handball court area that gives the site its quiet beauty, second only to the trees area and terraces overlooking the river. (They’ll go next and SEMO will sell “preservation toothpicks” made of the trees.) It would appear to me that there is plenty of space occupied by parking lots that would be perfect for the expansion. Put two floors of parking under the new buildings and you could leave the lawns and terraces alone.

Thanks, Mr. Baughn, for the heads-up.

October 8, 2012

Ordinary People Doing Ordinary Things

I shipped off the first draft of the book I’m putting together for my Altenburg presentation to some friends who used to get paid for making nasty comments to writers. Let’s see if they’ve lost their edge after the newspaper business shook ’em off like fleas flung from a stray dog.

Here’s a peek at facing pages 24 and 25. Click the image to make it larger.

Don’t forget October 16

I know you all are getting tired of hearing me talk about it, but I’d love to see some of you at my preview presentation on October 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Altenburg museum. Admission is free. In addition to still photographs, I’ll be showing videos and telling war stories.