Kage School Archives

Scott Moyers had a story in The Missourian that the Cape commission had released an endangered buildings list. Here are the ones considered most endangered:

B’nai Israel Synagogue, 126 S. Main St.
Broadway Theater, 805 Broadway
Esquire Theater, 824 Broadway
Fort D blockhouse, 920 Fort St.
Franklin School, 215 N. Louisiana St.
Hanover Lutheran School, 2949 Perryville Road
Old Jefferson School, 731 Jefferson Ave.
Kage School, 3110 Kage Road
Lorimier Apartments, 142-148 S. Lorimier St.
Sturdivant Bank, 101 N. Main St.

I’ve done stories on almost all of them. Here’s a look back:

Kage School

I imagine the long, cold walk to the outhouse was not fun for this little guy,

Photos that were taken just before the Kage School closed , along with some interesting facts. It was integrated as far back as 1889, and accepted children from the County Poor Farm.
When I went back to document the building’s condition in 2010, I was surprised to see names going back to 1899 carved in the bricks.

Broadway Theater

I spent many a happy hour in the Broadway balcony

I was sure that the inside of the old Broadway Theater would be a disaster with the roof falling in and debris all over the place. When I got my first glimpse of the interior, I was transported back to the days of Saturday matinee movies in a grand theater. It’s ragged, but it’s still grand.
The basement under the theater was HUGE, but the dressing rooms for the old stage actors were tiny.

Esquire Theater

The Esquire had over a mile of neon lighting when it opened in 1947

Photos of the Art Deco Esquire Theater before the recent renovation project
Infrared film photos of teenybopper reaction to the Beatles movie Help! when it played at the Esquire in September 1965.
Photos of the maybe on, maybe off project to renovate the movie house.

Fort D

The building we know as Civil War Fort D didn’t exist until 1937. It was used as a residence in the 1960s.

101 North Main / Sturdivant Bank

Bank, telephone exchange building, Minnen’s Dress Shop, Cape Wiggery. The old building at 101 North Main Street has been many things and has some interesting connections to other pieces of Southeast Missouri history. Its neighbor, the St. Charles Hotel, home to General Grant in the Civil War, was torn down in 1967.

B’nai Israel Synagogue

The B’nai Israel Synagogue is in an historical triangle that includes the Red House and St. Vincent’s Church.

Jefferson School

Jefferson was a black school in 1953-1955 before the system was integrated.

Pictures of the oldest standing school in Cape Girardeau taken in 2010
I shot it again in 2011 after it had been slated for demolition. It may have had a reprieve.

Franklin School

This part of Franklin School will be torn down when the new building behind it is completed.

Franklin: the school with no name.
Franklin School and construction progress in July 2011.

It wasn’t until I had looked at this picture five or six times that I realized that the students are forming a question mark.

That leads me to believe that I must have shot the picture for a “What’s going to happen to Kage School?” story.

Since the school, which was established in 1880, closed May 20, 1966, exactly 112 years after its creation, that’s probably what it was.

One of the last one-room schools

The National Register of Historic Places Registration Form has fascinating factoids buried all through it.

It was one of the last one-room school houses in the area, right up until it closed.
It was unusual because of its racial and economic diversity. Enrollment included white children from well-established families, the district’s African-American students from as far back as 1889 or earlier and children from the County Poor Farm.
Because of the need for children to work on family farms, the school term was usually only the three or four winter months.
The current brick building was erected in 1880 for a low bid of $1,200. (Additions and changes brought the total to $1,600).
The original log cabin school cost $180.25, including a $9.25 fireplace. After the new building was completed, the old one was sold to Henry Klaproth for $13.
Electricity and lights were installed January 21, 1938, most likely as a result of a WPA project to upgrade schools.

The long, cold walk

The school started serving hot lunches in 1933 once a week. Later a makeshift cafeteria was created by erecting a partition in a back corner of the classroom. Times were tough and Kage was the first rural school in the area to serve a hot lunch.

One thing the school DIDN’T have was indoor bathrooms. Outhouses were used until the school closed.

Updated photos

Here’s what Kage School looks like today, including old initials carved into the brick walls.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Kage School

Endangered Buildings List