Broadway Archives

November 21, 2011

“Going to be Gone Forever”

I was going to shoot a quick mug shot of the building at 501 Broadway, the one that has the big blue mural on the side of it, because it’s going to be torn down in the next couple of weeks. The property has been purchased by Trinity Lutheran Church. The cleared lot will be used for parking or for green space, a Missourian story said.

I happened to there at just the right time to catch David Renshaw, the guy who is going to knock it down. He gave me a tour of the old building and said some things that are worth a whole separate story. This post spins off one I did about neighborhood businesses and landmarks in Cape. One of them was Discovery Playhouse, a Broadway success story. The old building, constructed in 1916, has been turned into a children’s museum.

When I checked the link, I saw this March 22, 2010, photo taken from the second floor of the Playhouse, looking past the old Walther’s sign toward the building across the street that’s going to be torn down. (The Walther’s sign has been changed to read Discovery Playhouse, as you can see in the photo below.)

Nobody will have this view again

Renshaw said there wasn’t much to see upstairs at 501 Broadway, and I had to agree with him. I love old buildings, but this one was in sad shape. As much as I would have loved to have done a weeper about a poor old historic building being destroyed, I couldn’t do it. Sometimes the patient is too far gone for for heroic measures. The time to have saved it was before the roof started leaking and the mortar between the bricks started crumbling to powder.

Just as 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.”

A friend of mine who used to do construction rehab said, “I don’t think I’ve ever met an introspective–much less, articulate–demo guy. Usually they’re the bottom of the construction hierarchy, along with roofers. Probably because both trades normally hire casual labor with little in the way of permanent skills.”

“Gone. No more”

Well, my friend never met David Renshaw. What he said captured my thoughts exactly.

Renshaw said, “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.”

He nailed it.

If I get my act together, you’ll see photos inside and outside 501-503 Broadway tomorrow. Renshaw was also the guy who used a pair of huge shears to make all the cuts on the Mississippi River Traffic Bridge just before it splashed into the river. I’ll share his touching story about something he found on the bridge that will show that he’s not just some brute who knocks things down.

November 17, 2011

Shivelbines Sign is Back (and Better)

I posted some photos Wednesday morning of something missing on Broadway: the Shivelbines Music sign. By 9:55 a.m., Scott Shivelbine put us all at ease with this comment:

Hello from Shivelbine’s Music! Good news for our sign, it might go back up today, 11/16 if not too windy. The sign has been completely rebuilt. All new display panels, electical and rotation motor. It will have a new look as well. My brothers, Mike and Greg, as well as my cousin, Bill, could not believe the attention having the sign down has brought from the community. The original sign went up in 1969,when we bought/moved in this building. Magnavox paid for 50% of the sign cost.

Thanks to all for supporting our music store since 1949…

[There are some interesting comments on the earlier story. If you go back to it, press Ctrl-F5; that’ll make sure you have all of the fresh content. You can click on any of these photos to make them larger.]

Laurie Evertt to the rescue

I was just getting ready to order a couple calzones from Mario’s Pasta House to take over to John and Dee Perry’s house when Niece Laurie Everett of Annie Laurie’s fame called to say that there was a big crane out in front and the Shivelbines sign was being erected.

I got there as quickly as I could, figured Broadway would be blocked off, ducked down Themis and slid into the parking lot across from the Discovery Playhouse. I had on a wool vest, but realized after two steps that a full-blown jacket was called for. I’m a weather wimp.

Hoofing it to the front of the store, I was muttering about the timing: couldn’t they have done this before dark o’thirty? As it turned out, I had a window of about 15 minutes where there was enough light on the building to be not so bad, the white letters on the black sign popped out, and the light from the windows was neat.

Are you going to turn it on?

I asked one of the workers if they were going to finish the job and get it turned on? I was assured that it should be lit up and turning in a couple of hours or less. That worked with my schedule. I phoned in my calzone order, then went over to John and Dee’s to show Dee how to operate her new film scanner. She wants to digitize a whole stack of Kodak slide trays full of pictures John shot all the way back to when he was in Vietnam.

No trouble seeing the new sign

Dee was a quick study, the calzone vanished quickly and it was time to see if the sign guys had kept to their plan. There was no trouble spotting the sign from several blocks away. The vertical sign rotates and the horizontal “Music” part below it turns slightly faster.

Turning sign illuminates building

As the sign turns, it illuminates parts of the building. The windows pick up neat reflections of the letters. It’s a good thing the second and third floors aren’t bedroom apartments. That light would take some getting used to.

Vote of confidence in Broadway

It’s encouraging to see a long-time Broadway business invest in sprucing up its property. Maybe that’s a positive sign that new life may be coming to the street.

I know that I promised a story about a building down the block from here that’s facing the wrecking ball, but it’s coming. This is as close to breaking news as I get these days. (We were driving down Broadway the night before and Mother said, “Look there are flashing lights up there.”

“There’s a day when I would have cared,” I told her, turning off on a side street to avoid them. She doesn’t know how much I don’t miss those days.

November 16, 2011November 16, 2011

Where’s Shivelbines’ Sign?

Two Broadway locations appeared on my radar screen this morning: a Facebook post that asked what had happened to Shivelbines’ sign and a Missourian story that said a landmark building containing a huge Lutheran Church mural was going to be torn down. I ran into an interesting guy while tracking down the second lead, so I’m going to hold it for a day or so until I can do it justice.

When I first read the Shivelbines’ question, I thought the person might have been referring to the mural on the west side of the building. THAT would be unusual to lose two murals in the same block at nearly the same time.

Blue Mural the one in danger

The blue mural down the block past Bob’s Shoe Service is the one that is likely to be torn down. Notice anything missing on the front of Shivelbines?

Night photo of Shivelbines

This photo taken at night with the light trails of passing cars in it may help you pick out the missing sign.

Now you see it

The night photos were taken on Oct. 23, 2009, the same evening I shot a contemporary version of Central High School’s 1965 Alma Mater picture, a time exposure of Southeast Hospital and the Wimpy’s intersection.

Now you don’t

The different-colored brick right above the 535 address is where the sign had been.

Not to worry, though. It’s coming back.

There was a note on the Shivelbine’s Facebook page that said, “We’ve had some people asking about our sign. It was damaged during a storm in the spring and is now being repaired! We’re hoping to see it up again soon!”

October 19, 2011May 13, 2024

Esquire Gets New Life

The Esquire Theater, 824 Broadway, may not turn into a parking lot after all. John Buckner, the building’s new owner, has announced plans to spend up to $2.4 million to renovate the 67-year-old building as an art-house theater. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

New owner like a kid with a toy

Buckner is tackling the project with a lot of enthusiasm and a healthy dose of fun. He couldn’t wait to get a message on the marque, even though a cold front was moving in and dropping lots of chilly rain down his collar.

The place is a mess

The Esquire closed as a motion picture house Oct. 7, 1984, with a showing of Purple Rain. After that, it tried to be a second-run movie theater; a teen club; a gospel music theater, and ended up a repository for junk, including the set from the Tom Hanks movie, The Green Mile.

This photo, taken from the projection booth, gives only a hint of the clutter. Wife Lila’s brother, John Perry, is helping Buckner clean out the accumulated stuff so Penzel Construction can begin renovation. He said that the building was crammed so full that they could barely get the lobby doors open.

Tiny concession stand

The concession stand, with the candy counter still showing prices, was much smaller than I remembered. Another thing mis-remembered by me and some of the curious folks who wandered in on Tuesday was a balcony. Most of us would have sworn that the Esquire had a balcony, but it didn’t. The Broadway must have been the only theater of the three on Broadway to have upstairs seating.

(The dishes weren’t used by the theater. They were some of the miscellaneous stuff stored there.)

Short of seating

The theater seated 800 when it opened in 1947. The audience had better have stayed seated in the red upholstered seats because there was a dearth of another kind of seating.

The men’s room had a urinal and a toilet – and you’d better be skinny to use the former – to handle the needs of the audience. Maybe they didn’t serve extra-large drinks in those days.

Esquire stories

Scott Moyers did a long piece in The Missourian on plans for the building. I’ll point you there for the details. An accompanying sidebar has a historical timeline of the theater.
Missourian photographer Laura Simon made it into the Esquire a day before I did (and went to the trouble of lighting it better) to produce a photo gallery.
I ran a collection of exterior photos of the theater in March of 2010 and went into a little of its 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.

Esquire photo gallery

I prowled from the boiler room in the basement to the projection room high above the viewing area. I discovered the old projectors, boxes of tickets, the plastic marque letters, the 1947 Workman’s Comp placard and a devil’s brew of mold that will either cure anything I have wrong or kill me.

Many of the things I photographed won’t bring back memories because they were just items that were stored there and had no connection with the theater we remember. I’m including them to give an idea of the scope of the project in the before stage and as a reminder of how far the building has come (assuming that the project is completed).

Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the picture to move through the gallery. Please, leave comments. It seems like everyone who walked into the place had a story to share. I wish I had set up a video camera on a tripod to capture those memories.