Out of the past: Oct. 17

1999

Cornerstone Church of Cape Girardeau holds a dedication service for its new facility in the afternoon; a reception and open house immediately follow the service at the church, 922 Koch Ave.

The crews were ready, roads well marked and everything in order for the Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day held yesterday at Arena Park’s 4-H building; organizers were determined not to have the traffic tie-up and long waits that accompanied the first collection day in 1998; crowds were so overwhelming at the inaugural collection day that a second day had to be added later in the year; but no one was turned away this year, as long as they were in line by noon.

1974

The route for this year’s Southeast Missouri State University Homecoming parade will be longer than ever before; the parade, which begins at Capaha Park at 9:30 Saturday morning, will march down Broadway, turning right onto Main Street and continue to Independence Street, where it will disband; it was decided to take the parade down Main Street because merchants along that route, through the years, helped subsidize the cost of parade floats and the like.

More than a dozen business and civic leaders met at Jackson last night to discuss the Missouri Highway Department’s proposed Highway 72 relocation south of Jackson; the proposal calls for four lanes of divided, limited-access highway from near the Interstate 55-Highway 61 interchange between Cape Girardeau and Jackson to Highway 25 a mile south of Jackson; two additional lanes later would be added from Highway 25 westward to where the new highway would rejoin Highway 72.

1949

A building permit has been issued by the city to F.X. Roth, owner of Roth Motor Co., for construction of a 12-unit apartment building to cost $30,000 at the northwest corner of Bellevue and Lorimier streets; the building, the permit states, will be three stories in height and of brick construction over a concrete foundation; plans call for six apartments with two rooms and a bath and six others with three rooms and a bath.

The City Council delivers into the hands of Cape Girardeau voters the disposition of three bond issue propositions by passing an ordinance calling a special election Dec. 6 for balloting on new fire stations, a new swimming pool and completion of the Arena Building; in total, the bond issue will be in the amount of $390,000.

1924

Fire, believed to have originated from an overheated electric piano, breaks out early in the morning in the American Legion building, one door west of the New Broadway Theatre; the blaze destroys the fixtures off the Ideal Lunchroom and the Legion club rooms; the stock of the Watkins Grocer store in the same building is ruined; total monetary loss is estimated at $10,000.

An informal dance inaugurates the opening of the new addition to the Idan-Ha Hotel in the evening; the dance is on the ground floor of the new addition; this room is 30 feet wide and 80 feet long, and is said to be the largest dance floor in Cape Girardeau; Peg Meyer’s orchestra furnishes the music, and no admission is charged.

Southeast Missourian librarian Sharon Sanders compiles the information for the daily Out of the Past column. She also writes a weekend column called “From the Morgue” that showcases interesting historical stories from the newspaper.