Helping With Homework

5x7 Vandevens 2-4-67 8I can tell when the term is ending at Southeast Missouri State University. That’s when I start getting requests for information and photos about Cape landmarks and businesses.

In 2013, I compiled a list of Links about Main Street businesses for Katy Beebe’s Historic Preservation class. It would be nice if I could submit my work for extra credit to bring up my grade point average from 1965 – 1967.

Gallery of requests

Here are some of the photos students have requested this time around. The student was planning to print the pictures on 5 x 7 paper, but the images didn’t always scale out to that proportion. To keep from cropping the images, I sent them to the printer with white space around them to make them fit the format.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

Cape Grocers Association

Reader Bob Reese loaned me a copy of Cape Girardeau’s 1956 Sesquicentennial booklet. It’s full of cool historical facts, but I find the advertisements as interesting as the editorial copy. This ad for the Cape Grocers Association – CGA – is a catalog of familiar names. (Click on it to make it easier to read.)

I tried to find out a little about the origin of the group, but didn’t find much. A March 18, 1959, Missourian story said the CGA was enlarging its warehouse at 1901 Independence by 8,000 square feet – an expansion of almost 60 per cent. The membership, the story said, was up to 60 locally-owned retail outlets in Cape, Scott and Bollinger counties in Missouri and Alexander county in Illinois. (On the same page is a photo of an unnamed school being erected near Dennis Scivally Park. It would become Alma Schrader School.)

A June 8, 1932, brief said that additional warehouse space had been leased by the Cape Grocers Association at 111 Water Street.The brief’s not all that interesting, but if you scroll to the left, you can see photos of the Bonus Army converging on Washington.

Fred Lynch had photos of the Water Street building being torn down on his blog.