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- Willow Grove Rockets Skate Club (8/15/18)
- Central Municipal Pool built in 1979 (8/13/18)
- Hecht's Store founder returns to Main street (8/8/18)
- Land acquired to build SEMO Port (8/6/18)
- St. Vincent's Seminary ends after 136 years (8/1/18)1
The Chero-Cola bottling company lasted just 18 months in Cape Girardeau, but a sign advertising the soft drink was hidden for many decades by the Orpheum Theater building on Good Hope street.
Published May 2, 1993. Nip Kelley Trucking & Equipment Co. employees found a piece of Cape Girardeau's history Friday while removing a wall of the 74-year-old Orpheum Theater at 615 Good Hope. A colored sign painted on an adjacent building just east of the theater advertising Chero-Cola soft drink. The sign has been hidden by a wall of the theater. The theater and the building east of it are being demolished after a fire damaged the building in December 1991. (Don Shrubshell/Southeast Missourian archive)
This sign was painted on the west wall of the former C.W. Stehr Mercantile Co. building.
Hundreds of people gather outside Lorberg Furniture and Undertaking Company at 625 Good Hope Street for its grand opening June 23-24, 1916. At left, the Orpheum Theater west of Stehr Mercantile Co. is under construction. (Lueders Studio photo)
[When this picture was taken, the Chero-Cola bottling plant was no longer operating in the Morrison Building on South Spanish Street in Cape Girardeau. The Orpheum Theater building would hide the Chero-Cola sign until 1993 when the building was razed. The sign and the former Stehr Mercantile Co. building would also fall to the wrecking ball.]
From the June 16, 1916, The Daily Republican:
"The Chero-Cola Company, which has been operating in Cape Girardeau the past 18 months, has quit business and all the machinery, bottles and other property of the company has been hauled to the levee, where it will be loaded on a boat and taken to Paducah..."
Sharon Sanders shares this in her blog: Chero-Cola: "A tasty beverage..."
Chero-Cola fared better further south. It was developed by Claud A. Hatcher, a grocer in Columbus, Georgia. Today, we know the drink as RC Cola or Royal Crown Cola.
A.H. Haas built the Orpheum Theater, 616-617 Good Hope St., in 1917 and leased it to Henry Sanders and Clarence Nenninger, the two having operated the original Orpheum in the 500 block of Good Hope. It was the first Cape movie house to feature talkies (1929) and color film (1919). Sanders and Nenninger operated the Orpheum for several years and in 1929 it was purchased by Fox West Theaters. It closed in February 1954 because of lack of patronage. In March of that year, Lester Rhodes purchased the building and renovated for business use. It was razed in 1993. (circa 1920, Southeast Missourian archive)
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