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f/8 and Be There
Fred Lynch
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.
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Water Street before the floodwall

Posted Friday, April 8, 2011, at 7:30 AM

This picture by G.D. Fronabarger is looking south on Water Street and gives a view of the Mississippi River before the floodwall was built.

Batten-Weiss Furniture Co. is on the corner of Water and Themis streets. The building is now Port Cape Girardeau restaurant.

Construction of the flood control system began in 1956 and ended in 1964 at a cost of more than $4 million.

Here is a previous blog that shows Batten-Weiss Furniture flooded on Water Street.

This blog has links to photos of construction of the floodwall.

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  • I have trouble imagining Cape without the levee. It seems like the sixties was pretty late to build one.

    -- Posted by bobby62914 on Fri, Apr 8, 2011, at 10:15 AM

  • Actually I believe research will show that the flood wall was among the first along the Missippi. Unlike today's mentality, the construction was not considered to be a government responsibility. Cape is an example. The city did not build or pay for the wall, the Downtown Merchants did. As previously argued, it was a costly error.

    -- Posted by semowasp on Fri, Apr 8, 2011, at 11:06 AM

  • I remember the day when we did not have the flood wall. The view was outstanding that is when it was not flooding. The wall kind of sealed off the beauty between the land and the river, but the floods were just wiping out businesses when the river got up above flood stage.

    -- Posted by swampeastmissouri on Mon, Apr 11, 2011, at 12:16 PM

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