From the Morgue: Closing Lorimier School

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education voted in February 1975 to close Lorimier School on Independence Street.Southeast Missourian archive

After years of rumors and speculation, the Cape Girardeau Board of Education decided Feb. 10, 1975, to close Lorimier School on Independence Street for elementary classes.

The decision had been hinted at just the month before when the school board indicated “the old building is near its end as an elementary school” because of declining enrollment.

Almost immediately, there was a suggestion that the school be transformed into a public library, replacing the old Carnegie Library in what was then known as Courthouse Park.

But before any decisions about its fate were made, the Southeast Missourian’s managing editor penned a farewell note to the school that reviewed much of its interesting history. He also added his hopes for the future use of the building.

Here are the stories announcing Lorimier School’s closure and John L. Blue’s tribute a few days later.

Published Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1975, in the Southeast Missourian:

Enrollment drop to close Lorimier

By CECELIA SONDERMAN

Missourian Staff Writer

Lorimier School will be closed for regular elementary classes because of declining enrollment, but its doors will remain open for other purposes.

The Board of Education Monday night voted “to instruct the administration to take steps to close Lorimier School as a regular elementary operation with the understanding that it is used as an educational, public or community facility.”

Jerry W. Ford made the motion; Mrs. Donald R. McBride seconded, and the vote was unanimous...

Supt. Charles E. House told the board annual cost of pupils attending Lorimier School was more than $1,500 per child in average daily attendance as compared to between $700 and $800 in some of the other schools. He predicted the cost would go higher.

He said there was no possibility of bringing more children into Lorimier School because enrollment was also declining in adjacent areas. Pupils at Lorimier are expected to be enrolled at Washington or May Greene schools next year, and staff teachers will be reassigned.

Two vocational classes – nurses aide and practical nurse training – are now being held at Lorimier School along with elementary classes. The elementary operation may stop at the end of the 1974-75 school or at the end of summer school, if such classes are held there this year.

Board members expressed opinions that they would want some type of operation going on in the building. The school district will retain title to the structure...

The original Lorimier School opened in 1872 at the same Independence Street location as the second Lorimier School, now known as Kellerman Lorimier Hall.Southeast Missourian archive

Published Sunday, Feb. 16, 1975, in the Southeast Missourian:

End of a great school…Lorimier

Time, after 102 years, may have ended the formal days for education at a school called Lorimier.

Named for the founder of Cape Girardeau, the first of two schools to bear that name, both on a hilltop site on Independence Street, was ready for occupancy in September 1872.

This week, a century and two years later, the present Board of Education voted to cease its use for public school instruction at the end of the current year.

It has been a long time and a lot of history in between, for it was here that so many of the men and women who have nurtured Cape Girardeau through the years received at least a portion of their education.

Use

One would like to say that there has been continuous use of a Lorimier School during those 100 years plus one. But it isn’t so. There was a lapse of nine years without children’s voices.

The building, which many older citizens remember fondly, finally came to the end of its days in 1928. It was abandoned for school purposes and its equipment moved to Broadway School, itself a landmark, now the Medical Arts Building, unrecognized as a school.

It stayed there, gathering dust, its red bricks, arched windows and shuttered bell tower falling into ruins in its twilight.

Squatters moved in, some eight or 10 families and even put in their own electric lights. Finally, the Board of Education had to evict them.

Razed

The death knell came in May of 1935 when the board, knowing the needs for a modern and additional school in the system, voted to raze the 62-year-old structure and build another on its site.

That new building, retaining the Lorimier name, is the one now being abandoned for elementary school purposes because the city has outgrown the neighborhood, and per pupil costs are too great to continue.

Miss May Greene, whose father, George H. Greene, was called the Father of Cape Girardeau Public Schools, turned the first spade of earth for the new Lorimier School on Jan. 6, 1937. She, in her own right, as observed by the school named in her honor, was a guiding light of education in Cape Girardeau, serving as teacher for 53 years.

Miss May had started teaching in 1879 at Lorimier, recalling later that her pupils sat on boxes the first few years. She taught at one time or another in every grade from one through eight and was principal at Lorimier, Broadway and Washington schools over the years.

Costs

The second Lorimier School was opened on Sept. 7, 1937, and Broadway School was abandoned. The total bid cost of the structure was $120,300. A total of $85,000 in school bonds was augmented by a Public Works Administration grant of $57,000.

There has been some conjecture that the Lorimier School site, because it has been used so long and memory dims with time, was the school land granted to the city by Louis Lorimier in his will.

It was not. The Lorimier site was purchased in 1871 from William Cross and the contract for the original building, designed by E.D. Baldwin, was awarded to D.F. Tiedeman for $15,000.

The Lorimier will and a deed conveyed by his heirs, Louis Lorimier Jr., D.F. Steinbeck, Victor Lorimier and Thomas P. Rodney as guardians of minor heirs, provided that the present site of Schultz School (Schultz Senior Apartments at 101 S. Pacific St.) be used in perpetuity for school purposes.

The deed describes the property – the original Central High School – as follows: “An outlot marked (h) containing about three acres and a quarter, bounded by Pacific Street and westwardly by John Scripps purchase of six acres, on the north by outlot (g) and on the south by outlot (j) which lot, including a large spring, is destined for the establishment of a Public School.”

Public education apparently began in Cape Girardeau in 1834, although not in the sense we know it today. In that year Ezra J. Dutch, Alfred P. Ellis, George Henderson, Levi Lightner and Abner Vasant were elected trustees to buy land and establish a school. A small brick building was erected and was used for several years.

During the Civil War, education was disrupted. The old building had been destroyed, possibly by the 1850 tornado which devastated the city. In 1865, led by George Greene, citizens called an election for a tax-supported school.

Board

A board was chosen, consisting of Mr. Greene as president, J.M. Cluley, M. Dittlinger, H.C. Harrison, G.G. Kimmel and H.G. Wilson. The first school was held in the basement of the Presbyterian Church, on the same location as the present First Presbyterian Church at Broadway and Lorimier.

Felix E. Snider and Earl A. Collins in “Cape Girardeau, Biography of a city”, record that by 1870 a total of 2,081 children were enrolled with an average daily attendance of 450 which made the church quarters and a room rented on Good Hope Street inadequate. By then there were eight teachers, including one Black teacher.

This brought on the demand for a new school, and Lorimier was the result.

Classes began in September 1872, and on Dec. 5, 1873, the first students of the Third District Normal School began their work there and established what is now Southeast Missouri State University.

Institution

Arrangements for use of Lorimier School were made with public school officials by the regents of the newly designated institution which was no more than a high school. The city’s first high school pupils were taught by the Normal School faculty.

The arrangement was continued until the completion of the Old Normal School building in 1875 which preceded Academic Hall on the university campus. That building burned on the night of April 7, 1902, and from its ashes came the present Academic Hall, opened in 1904.

That, then, is a rather circuitous recognition of the history of Cape Girardeau education in skimpy detail as it revolved around Old Lorimier School and its successor.

The present Lorimier, a fine building of outstanding architectural style, isn’t destined for the scrap heap – at least not now.

In making its decision last week, the Board of Education said Lorimier will remain open for some as yet undesignated purpose.

It must. And preferably for an educational and community purpose. A museum? An art gallery? A community center? What other idea?

There is much too much history wrapped up on the location for Cape Girardeau to lose Lorimier.

– JOHN BLUE

I find it interesting that John Blue's final lines about the former school being used as "a museum... art gallery... community center" are all coming true under the guidance of Bert and Mary Ann Kellerman and the Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation.

Lorimier ceased to be an elementary school in June 1975. In January 1976, the City of Cape Girardeau purchased the building for the bargain price of $200,000, offering it to the Public Library Board as the site for the city's new library. The board turned down the offer, and the structure was ultimately renovated into office space for Cape Girardeau's City Hall.

The Kellerman Foundation bought the property in July 2023, after City Hall was moved to its new digs at Ivers Square.

Sharon Sanders is the librarian at the Southeast Missourian.