Downtown Parking, Inc.

The Southeast Missourian's Oct. 5, 1961 edition announced the grand opening of the new parking lot at Broadway and Main streets in downtown Cape Girardeau.

These previous blogs showed what used to be at the site:

Broadway and Main Street 1960

Buildings bite the dust

Cape Girardeau shoppers and others from the east Missouri and Illinois area served by the constantly growing community now have a new parking lot and public lounge for their convenience and use at the north end of the Main Street business district. The parking area, which includes an ultra-modern automobile service station, is a recently-completed project of Downtown Parking, Inc., and will be formally opened this week end.

There is space on the new lot for 125 cars, and coupled with the parking area on the site of the former Frisco Railroad station nearly 700 automobiles can be parked in the Main Street area now at any given time. First hour parking will be free, and a charge of 10 cents per hour for each additional hour will be collected by the parking lot attendant, H.C. Cruse.

All told, downtown merchants and business firms have $160,000 invested in the parking lot, and construction of the service station represents and additional $60,000.

The glass, aluminum and masonry building is the first of its style built for Sinclair in southeast Missouri, and future stations in the area will follow its pattern.

Another innovation is the public lounge as a part of the service station. Light, airy and air-conditioned, the lounge will provide welcome facilities for many shoppers who heretofore have had no place to rest for a time while on a buying tour. In the lounge they will find clean, modern rest rooms, comfortable chairs for relaxing and television for entertainment. (G.D. Fronabarger photos)