Tag: Walther’s Furniture

Posted on

Broadway and Sprigg

Missourian Librarian Sharon Sanders runs an interesting blog on Thursdays called “From the Morgue.” Back in the less PC Good Old Days, that what we called the repository of yellowing clips carefully snipped out by the custodian of the newspaper’s history. Folks like Sharon and her predecessor, Judy Crow, really DO know where the bodies are buried and can find the skeletons in closets going back generations. You do NOT want to get on the wrong side of the newspaper librarian. They used to possess both sharp tongues and sharp scissors.

I’m not sure what Digital Sharon could do to a reporter who didn’t bring back a much-handled envelope of old clips, but I bet it wouldn’t be pretty. On one of our first meetings, I started to raise my camera to take her picture. I don’t normally take no for an answer – I’ve shot Popes and Presidents, rioters and guys with guns – but I put my camera down when she shook her head. I knew right away that she wasn’t somebody to mess with.

I felt fortunate to escape with my life and a photo of a stack of aging clips.

Broadway and Sprigg

Her blog Thursday said one of her most-requested photos is of the building that used to be at the northeast corner of Broadway and Sprigg Street. It’s a vacant lot next to the Last Call Bar today. She’s done all the historical heavy lifting about that block, so it’s worth heading over there.

I don’t have any photos going back that far, but I do have the area today.

This aerial from November 2010 shows a number of landmarks. The red building is the Last Call she mentions. The white building diagonally across the street is the infamous 633 – 635 – 637 Broadway trio of buildings that have been a source of controversy for a long time. One building was razed and the other two are being renovated. In the center of the picture is Trinity Lutheran Church. The brick building to its left is Shivelbines Music and the white building across the street is Annie Laurie’s Antiques.

Last Call

It’s hard to miss the Last Call if you’re eastbound on Broadway. Its red colors are set off by a blue sky.

Blue-sided building is gone

The blue-sided building with the iconic mural at the top center of the aerial and the ones next to it were torn down at the end of 2011. Walther’s Furniture, across the street, has turned into Discovery Playhouse.

Like a gap in a first-grader’s grin

The northwest corner of Broadway and Sprigg has another empty spot. That’s where the old Chris Cross Cafe used to be. This view is south on Sprigg toward Broadway somewhere around 1966 or 1967. The three-story building on the south side of Broadway was the Cape Hotel. It burned and the spot is occupied by a Subway today.

Posted on

View from Trinity Bell Tower

Just before it was torn down, Brother Mark and I crawled all over the Trinity Lutheran Church documenting it. I posted photos of the bell earlier. Today we’re focusing on the view FROM the bell tower. Those louvered windows had a fairly big space to look through, even if the mesh screening was a bit distracting with some lens choices. Click on the photos to make them larger.

View to the northeast

The building towering over everything else is the KFVS-TV building. To its left you can see the H & H Building and the Marquette Hotel. The bright white object rising above the trees at the top right is the Common Pleas Courthouse. You can barely make out the Walther’s sign on the left side of the frame. It has become the Discovery Playhouse. Across the street was a the building that would later sport a bright blue mural with the words, “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That building was torn down last winter.

View to the north

Switching to a slightly longer lens let me throw the screening out of focus (mostly), but it didn’t cover as much area. The white building to the right was Brinkopf-Howell Funeral home, now Annie Laurie’s Antiques. Shivelbine’s Music would be the building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Frederick. Star Service Station was on the northwest corner. I’d sure like some of that 36-cent gas today.

View to the west

The tall structure at the top right is the telephone company’s microwave tower. In the days before fiber optic cable, much of the country’s long distance traffic was handled by radio signals beamed from tower to tower. Southeast Missouri State University’s Academic Hall’s dome barely clears the treetops near the top right.

View to the south

This is looking south from the intersection of Themis and Frederick. The small brick building on the southwest corner was known as “The Mouse House.” Cape-Kil is directly south of it.

 Trinity Lutheran Church neighborhood in 2011

Here is an aerial photo I shot of the neighborhood April 17, 2011.

 

Posted on

Broadway End-to-End

I was trading some messages with Nicolette Brennan from the City of Cape about a picture of Broadway for a project she’s working on. That got me to thinking about how many Broadway stories I’ve done. I’ve documented the street from the river’s edge to the old Colonial Tavern on the west end. Click on the photos to make them larger and click on the links to go to the original story.

So many teens were dancing at the old Teen Age Club at Themis and Spanish that the floor was bouncing and a city inspector shut ’em down. They moved the dance to the bank parking lot at the corner of Main and Broadway.

Crash at the Colonial Tavern

The Colonial Tavern was my dad’s morning coffee stop where everybody would gather to hash over the previous night’s Cardinal game. A sports car picked this night to plow into the building that was at the west end of Broadway.

The park that got away

A three-acre tract of land on the south side of Broadway east of Hwy 61 was donated by the Doggett family with the understanding that the the land would be developed into a park similar to Dennis Scivally Park on Cape Rock Drive.

The family felt that the tract hadn’t been improved in the past 10 years, so they filed a suit to reclaim the land. A granite marker with the name “Doggett Park” next to the Masonic Temple parking lot is all that remains of the park.

Crash at Broadway and Fountain

Sometimes what you think is going to be an inconsequential story resonates with readers. Fred Kaefpfer, who was directing traffic at this crash at the corner of Broadway and Fountain, turned out to be Cape’s singing policeman. It became one of the most-commented stories of the early blog. The Idan-Ha Hotel shows up in the background of the photo.

Idan-Ha Hotel burns

The Idan-Ha Hotel, which had caught fire in 1968, caught fire again in 1989.

Star Service Station – Cigarettes 25 cents a pack

The Star Service station at the corner of Broadway and Frederick gave stamps with your gas. Ninety stamps would get you $1.50 worth of free gas.

Annie Laurie’s used to be Brinkopf-Howell’s

Niece Laurie Everett’s Annie Laurie’s Antiques, across the street from the Star Service Station used to be a funeral home. It’s the top-rated antique shop in Cape County now. Shivelbines Music, across the street, got a new sign in November.

Bob’s Shoe Service

Bob Fuller’s Bob’s Shoe Service was where I stocked up on Red Wing boots, the ideal footwear for a photographer. They’d shine up acceptably for formal wear (at least as formal as I ever got), but you could wade water and walk on fire with no worries.

507-515 Broadway

The 500 block of Broadway has had an interesting past.

Discovery Playhouse – Walthers’s Furniture

I was glad to see some life around the old Walther’s Furniture Store and Funeral Home. The Discovery Playhouse has become popular in a short period of time. Here is was before it opened.

Lutheran Mural Building razed

When I shot the Discovery Playhouse, I had no idea that the landmark building across the street was going to be torn down within a couple of years. It was best known for the huge blue mural on its side.

Rialto Theater roof collapses

A rainstorm caused the roof of the old Rialto Theater to collapse in 2010. This story contains a bunch of links, including one that tells how I met Wife Lila there when she was working as a cashier. This picture is of the 1964 Homecoming Parade.

Broadway Theater is still impressive

I managed to talk my way into the Broadway Theater on a cold December day. It still has the feel of the premier theater of the city.

What’s going to happen to the Esquire?

When I did this story in October 2011, it looked like the Esquire Theater was going to get new life. A new owner had an ambitious plan to renovate it. The latest stories in The Missourian make it sound like the project is unraveling.

Here’s a piece I did about its art deco history. In September 1965, I used infrared flash and film to capture kids watching The Beatles movie Help! It was the first (and only) time I used that technique.

Pladium / D’Ladiums – it’s still the same

I wasn’t a pool player, but those who were spent their time in the Pladium (now D’Ladiums) across from Houck Stadium or the Pla-Mor, next to Wayne’s Grill and the Esquire. The Beav still rules the roost at D’Ladiums.

Vandeven’s Merchantile

Howard’s Athletic Goods and a handful of other businesses have moved into the building at the corner of Broadway and Pacific over the years, but it’ll always be Vandeven’s Merchantile to me.

It dawns on me that I have even more photographs along Broadway – way too many to inflict on you in one shot. I’ll hold off putting up the rest of them until another day. Don’t forget to click on the links to see the original stories.

 

Posted on

David Renshaw – Demolition Man

David Renshaw and I didn’t exactly get off on the right foot.

I told Mother I wanted to cruise by 501 Broadway to get a shot of an old building that was due to be torn down. I had photos of it, but I wanted one with the fence around it that would say, “Days are numbered.” I left her in the car with the heater running. (As always, click on any image to make it larger.)

Lutheran Church mural

I shot the west side, where the big blue mural is; wandered around to the front; decided I might as well walk down the east side, not because the photos would be all that interesting, but because I wanted some record shots. My eye was drawn to what looked like an enclosed wooden porch on the second floor. In the middle window of the porch was a gold-colored object that looked like it might be a trophy. Curious.

What’s in the window?

While I was looking at it, I noticed a gap in the fence and a black vehicle pulling into the building through the fence. I decided to “follow that car” to see if I could get some interior shots. I didn’t spot anyone right away, but, walking further in, I ran into a young woman. I handed her my card and started to explain what I was doing when a man walked up asking what I wanted.

500 Block of Broadway

I launched into my standard 30-second elevator speech and got to the part where I said, “I used to work for The Missourian.” That was not a good thing to say because David Renshaw was not happy with part of a Missourian story that morning.

Not happy with Missourian story

What had his tail twisted was a line in the Nov. 15, 2010, story that said, “[Tim Morgan, director of the city’s Inspection Services Department] and church leaders did not know the exact day the building would come down. But the church has hired Sabre Excavating of Thebes, Ill., to do the work. David Renshaw, of Sabre, did not return phone calls Monday.”

“How could I return a phone call that I didn’t know I’d gotten,” he said, and walked away. Brandy Williams, the young woman clarified. The reporter had called his home number and left a message there. He didn’t get it until much later.

Translating newspaperspeak

Let me digress here to talk a little about newspaper-speak. In the old days, reporters wrote what information they had and put it into the paper. At some point, people started complaining that, “You didn’t let me tell MY side of the story.” To counter that argument, you started to see some of the following phrases in the paper. How they were interpreted depended a lot on the paper’s policies and local customs.

  •  “Refused to comment” – You asked the subject a question and they refused to answer.
  • “Not authorized to comment on the record” – That meant you got all kinds of juicy info, but you couldn’t attach the person’s name to it.
  • “Didn’t immediately return phone calls” – Now that we’re into 24/7 news cycles, that means, “I was on deadline, called the person, left a message and they didn’t call me back in the five minutes before I had to file this story.”
  • “Didn’t return repeated telephone calls” – Subject has been dodging me.
  • “Didn’t return repeated calls to his office, home and cell” – Reporter is getting cranky
  • “Did not return phone calls” – this was the Renshaw complaint, which I think was valid. The implication was that Renshaw was dodging the call. The reality was that he didn’t KNOW there was a call. That might not have been the reporter’s intent, but that’s the way it was perceived, with reason.

“I’m really not a rude guy”

Renshaw came back a couple of minutes later. “I’m not really a rude guy. This just had me a little upset.”

I told him that I was not responsible for anything that happened at The Missourian after 1967. After that, we got along great.

I was discussing interviewing techniques with someone the other day. I said that I approach an interview the same way that I approach fly fishing: I think there’s a big bass hiding under that sunken log and I’ll make a test cast to test my theory. If I’m lucky, I’ve landed a lunker. More than likely, my question won’t get a nibble, so I’ll cast another one. If I’ve tried two or three casts without a nibble, I’ll switch bait and fling it again.

Piercing blue eyes

Renshaw has these piercing blue eyes and a bemused expression that deliver the message, “That was a really dumb question” without him having to say a word. He’s the big bass under the log who can’t be fooled with artificial lures.

Like he said, he’s not a rude guy, but I get the feeling he doesn’t suffer fools kindly.

One the other hand, I was impressed with how introspective and how insightful he was. He has a real appreciation for the buildings he’s destroying.

“It’s too far gone”

Looking at the tin ceiling on the first floor, with pieces of it falling down and with water dripping from it, I asked if there was any salvage value to it.

“It would mean something to someone,” he said, picking up a rusted and rotten piece from the floor. “But, you can’t save it. It’s too far gone. What are you going to do with it?

“I worked for a demolition contractor in St. Louis for eight years, then I came home. That’s my dad in there knocking stuff down. I just wanted to come home.”

 Are the bricks worth anything?

“I can’t get anyone to come get them. I’ve called and I’ve called and I’ve called. If I clean them and pallet them up, I might get 30 cents up to two bucks a brick, but they’ve got to be the right brick. The guy’s wife has to like it.

“Brick places want you to take some bricks and lay them out to take a pretty picture, flip ’em over and take another picture, flip ’em over and take another picture, flip ’em over and take another picture. That’s six bricks out of how many there are in here?

“We did it on one project and we didn’t make anything – maybe $25 a pallet. I don’t have a place to store it.”

“I cut every section of that bridge”

He looked at my business card that has a photo of the old Mississippi River Bridge on it. “I cut every section of that bridge with a huge pair of metal shears. I did that. I was handing out handfuls of rivets to people for souvenirs. I still have some pieces of the debris.

Then, he told me a touching story. “I remember when I was first getting started out in Operators. I had a bunch of [union] stickers. I was stuck in traffic on the bridge with my son, who was about eight or nine. There wasn’t anything to do, so I gave him some stickers and he started sticking them on the side of the bridge – Ironworkers stickers – just sticking them on the side of the bridge.

“And, when I was cutting that bridge up, when I got to that piece of the bridge, the stickers were still there. I cut it out and kept it. My son’s 21 now.”

Mortar has turned to powder

“I think the best thing you can do to this building is to tear it down. There’s nothing here.”

He pointed out obvious cracks in the walls. There are metal bracing bolts coming through the brick wall the mural is painted on, but there are no plates screwed to them. There are places where the mortar has been patched, but most of the mortar is so powdery that you can dig it out with your fingernail with no effort.

Roof is leaking

When we walked across the roof, I commented that it didn’t look too bad. He said the leaks aren’t obvious. “You saw the water pouring down through the ceiling. The roof is leaking.”

What I thought was a trophy

When I asked if it was safe to go up on the second floor, he said he’d be happy to take me up, “but there’s nothing up there but junk”. He thought I might like to go on the roof, though, to shoot the surrounding neighborhood. He said there’s a third floor to the building, but the access to it is boarded up. He didn’t know what, if anything, was up there.

It WAS junk

When we got to the second floor, he was right. Whoever had lived in the two apartments there had left behind plenty of debris, but most of it wasn’t very interesting: just some old books, a couple of Samsonite suitcases – “We had a Vietnam vet up here the other day; he remembered carrying suitcases that looked like that” – a pair of crutches and some ratty furniture.

“This is going to be gone forever”

Like I wrote yesterday, just I started to walk out of the room, I turned and said, “I guess I should get a picture of the building across the street. It may be the last picture ever taken with this viewpoint.”

That’s when Renshaw said something that struck me enough that it’s worth repeating: “I learned one thing in demolition – and I look at it from a lot of different ways. This is it. You just said it. This is going to be gone forever. Gone. No more. Right now you just experienced the last thing forever.

“There was a four-year-old little boy up here this morning – his dad is in this kind of work – and he was standing here leaning on this windowsill wanting to go back over there [to the Playhouse]. When he’s 20 years old, he won’t even remember this building.”

View from Discovery Playhouse

He thinks the building will start coming down around the first of December. “It should go fast, then the trucks will start rolling in here. That’s when people will really start taking note. They really don’t know something’s going on until that.”

Cape firefighters took advantage of the soon-to-be demolished building to practice some of their skills. Missourian photographer Fred Lynch captured a gallery of photos of their training.

“A Time to Build Up; A Time to Tear Down”

Reader Lyndel Revelle commented yesterday, “It is sad to see them gone forever but then it reminds me of the Byrds song, Turn, Turn ,Turn, (taken from the book of Ecclesiastes) where you find these words, ‘To everything there is a season a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to build up and a time to tear down.’”

501-503 Broadway Photo Gallery

Here’s a gallery of photos I’ve taken of 501-503 Broadway and its neighbors over the past few years. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

 

About Proudly powered by WordPress