Broadway Burger King

Burger King 06-07-2016The same night I photographed McDonald’s, I thought it would only be fair to knock off Burger King, too. When I searched for the history of the fast-food place, I found a gazillion restaurant reviews, but not a lot of hard information. A 2004 Century of Commerce compendium in The Missourian made note that Burger King Restaurant was established at 2346 Broadway in 1972.

Other business highlights of that year included:

  • Keys Music moved to 121 Broadway.
  • A&P Super Market on Spanish Street closed and was taken over by J. Ronald Fischer.
  • The former Vandeven store on Broadway was sold to Craftsman Office Supply
  • Speed Equipment Worlds of America Inc. opened in the 2100 block of Broadway.

FindTheData info about BK

Burger King 06-07-2016When I searched for 2346 Broadway, an interesting site called FindTheData popped up. It mined public records for information about the property. It looks like most of it dates to 2011.

  • It is a commercial building with an estimated value of $195,087.
  • That is 216% higher than the $61,829 average for commercial properties in the 63701 Zip Code.
  • That places it among the most valuable 20% of commercial properties in the area.
  • It has 0.66 acres of land, while a typical one has 0.53 acres.
  • It has moderate flood risk, high earthquake risk, very high tornado risk, and very high hail risk (but has below average hail risk for Missouri, which is one of the most hail-prone states in the U.S.).

Cape is a lower middle class city

Burger King 06-07-2016The data site has this to say about the city:

  • It has about 38,665 residents and is about 28.87 square miles in size.
  • The city is considered to be lower middle class because a disproportionately large percentage of its households earn between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. [The blue sign in the middle photo was advertising they were hiring for $8.25 an hour, by the way.]
  • Through geospatial analysis of the company’s database, they’ve discovered Cape Girardeau has a high number of alternative medicine, bars, and gym business types compared to the typical city.

Alvarado was located at Broadway and 61

Oldtimers will remember the Alvarado as being located at what was once the outskirts of town at Broadway and Hwy 61, where the Burger King is now. I haven’t found any file photos of the Spanish-style building, but Fred Lynch and Sharon Sanders did a good job in Fred’s blog of telling the history of the landmark building.

David Louis Motel Sign

David Louis Motel SignHere’s another dip into the Terry Hopkins General Sign box.

When I was doing daily picture pages at The Athens Messenger, I had a technique for having an easy day. I’d shoot something like a old general store and run an outside photo on Monday with the caption, “Tomorrow we’ll go inside.” That let me get a two-fer out of the story.

This is going to be somewhat like that. Today we’ll look at a sign advertising the David Louis Motel, a name that didn’t stick around long. The next day, we’ll go into the history of the renamed motel and see photos of what is there today. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

My perspective has changed

David Louis Motel SignI spent years editing my shooting session down to the most striking and story-telling image and ignoring the rest because newspaper space was finite.

Hanging around with museum folks like Carla Jordan in Altenburg and Curator Jessica in Athens has given me a totally different perspective: I crop more loosely to keep background objects visible and I run more photos that are similar but contain slightly different details. It’s those little details that I used to crop out that contain valuable historical information.

This is a good example. The picture at the top of the page shows the sign best, but looking off to the left edge of the frame above shows the old Alvarado service station and restaurant with its sign proclaiming “The Best in Foods” on its side.

Ward’s Big Star

David Louis Motel SignA frame from a slightly different angle shows the yellow sign for Ward’s Big Star Super Market at the left. I can remember going in there lots of times with Mother.

The store must have been getting bread deliveries: that’s a Hart’s Bread truck on the left and a Bunny Bread truck on the right.

The two red trucks are from Central Asphalt. I thought maybe they were paving the parking lot, but the lot is full of cars.It looks like they may be working behind Ward’s.

There’s no date stamp on the slide mounts. Anybody want to guess about when it was taken based on the cars in the photos?

The trees are devoid of leaves, so it must be either fall or winter. The day is warm enough that the man driving by has his window down, but chilly enough that he’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt.