Fred Lynch retired in 2018 after capturing images for the Southeast Missourian since 1975, in that time moving from black-and-white to color, from film to digital and to video. The blog title is a nod to an earlier era of news photography and the 4x5 Speed Graphic: It's more important to be there for the shot than to worry about technical details.

Winter walk on Broadway

Posted Friday, February 19, 2010, at 7:30 AM

G.D. Fronabarger took this picture of two women with umbrellas who may have been at Milady's Shop, 405 Broadway, on a snowy day in Cape Girardeau. The photo was on the front page of the Southeast Missourian Dec. 21, 1960. The caption reads:

Winter arriving some 24 hours ahead of time really blew up a storm as this picture at Broadway and Fountain well illustrates. It was a blizzard of proportions seldom seen in these parts that brought 3 inches of snow and traffic snarls of record size. And, the calendar says Winter actually didn't arrive until this afternoon.

Editor's Note:

Frony himself may been inside the Idan-Ha Coffee Shop, 403 Broadway.

Both stores were below the Hotel Idan-Ha on the corner of Broadway and Fountain Street.

Both businesses were destroyed when the hotel burned June 29, 1968.

The temperature sign reads 28 degrees at First Federal Savings and Loan.

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Fred,

It was a cold 28 when Frony shot his picture, but it was 88 degrees when I shot a fender-bender between a Yellow cab and another car in 1966 at the same intersection.

http://www.capecentralhigh.com/cape-photos/fender-bender-at-broadway-and-fountai...

Fred Kaempfer, Cape's song-writing policeman, directed traffic at the crash.

I shot pictures from all sides of the intersection at the wreck. When I compare them with ones I took last fall, Fountain and Broadway looks much the same. The Iden-Ha is gone, as you point out, and the KFVS tower hadn't been built.

-- Posted by ksteinhoff on Fri, Feb 19, 2010, at 7:52 AM
Do I ever remember some of those cold winter days as a kid back in the 1940s.

Remember truging through snow and ice with some friends to go to the Rialto one evening. An overhead power line broke and scared the bejiggers out of us.

-- Posted by voyager on Fri, Feb 19, 2010, at 5:25 PM
The coffee shop you mentioned was actually called the Idan-Ha Coffee Shop. There was a nightclub/bar on the premises which was called the Rainbow Room. My parents, Eldon and Murriel Bone, owned the Idan-Ha during the 40's and the 50's. It brings back lots of wonderful memories to see these pictures. As we have no photos of the hotel, the only pictures I have seen until you and Ken Steinhoff started your posts have been in my head. It is so wonderful to actually see the real thing!!!

-- Posted by blapp on Sun, Feb 21, 2010, at 3:57 PM
December 21, 1960? That's somebody's brand new 1961 Cadillac in the picture!

-- Posted by CAREFREEBEV on Mon, Apr 25, 2011, at 3:42 PM
my Mom, Irene Neal, worked in the Rainbow Room as a bartender/waitress from the late 40's to May 1958. I worked as a "sodajerk" in the drug store, which was called Boone's Drugstore, from Spring 1956 to May 1958 (I was 13 when I started working, there wasn't such a thing as "child labor law" when I started working there!) Daisy was the manager at the drug store and I think the owners name was Mr Boone(?). My brother, Tommy Neal, worked there too, cleaning and mopping the floors. I remember meeting Mr & Mrs Bone when I would go see my Mom working in the Rainbow Room, they were always nice to me and my brother AND my Mom. I just remember how big and grand the lobby was in the hotel and how nice everybody was that worked there. As "blapp" stated above ... I too only had pictures of the hotel in my memory and now I have a picture of the "real" thing ... Thank you, Thank you, I have truly enjoyed reading your blog and Ken Steinhoff's (he's a hoot!) Do you have any late 40's or 50's pictures of the Broadway/Fountain Street area? I used to live in the house behind the Marquette Hotel on Fountain and also in the house (we rented a room) at Themis and Fountain in 1949 (Lloyd and Louise Loos, Alan and John Hill also lived in that house). I could go on and on, but I'll stop for now and say THANK YOU again for the memories. Sue (Neal) VanHattem

-- Posted by suen on Fri, Jul 29, 2011, at 11:14 AM
Carefree: The '61 models would have came out in September of 1960.

-- Posted by Red Devil on Wed, Aug 3, 2011, at 1:17 PM

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