Exploring South Cape's 99-year leasehold estates

"A town in order to grow must attract laboring men" -- declared a promotional piece circulated at the cusp of ambitious plans for industrial expansion in Cape Girardeau. And low-waged laborers needed housing. Several landowner entrepreneurs responded by filing, with the county recorder, subdivisions of their properties, south of the Cape Girardeau city limits. These neighborhoods succeeded to attract laborers and families, but also concentrated lower-class newcomers to enclaves separate from established city neighborhoods.

In April 1906, Louis and Mary Giboney Houck were the first landowners to file their plat for The Village of Girardeau -- their flood-prone land south of city limits. A few months later, adjacent plats for The Village of Leadville (owned by M.E. and Eugenia Leming) and Smelterville (George Rodenmayer and W.C. Bahn) were filed. New plans for neighborhoods -- laid out in blocks, numbered lots, named streets and lanes -- projected the hope of owners to attract and profit from the influx of laborers.

The Village of Girardeau, platted into 20 blocks of "estate" lots, encompassed territory east of Sprigg Street, on both sides of the railroad tracks, to the river on the east and from Boundary street (aka First Street) south to La Cruz Street.

Houck's concept was unique -- his subdivision lots were to be leased, not owned. Leadville and Smelterville lots were sold and deeded.

A circular promoting the Village of Girardeau (circa 1906) is archived in Special Collections, Southeast Missouri State University. In part, it reads:

"Leasehold Estates at Cape Girardeau

"About 400 lots adjacent to the manufacturing district of Cape Girardeau and in view of the great Normal school will be leased for 99 years at $5.00 ground rent a year. By paying this amount annually you secure for yourself, your children and your grandchildren a home, for no one living now will see the end of the leases... This long leasehold estate is almost as valuable as an absolute title and the holders of the lease can sell and trade the same just as if they had an absolute deed... Apply before the end of March to Chas. G. Juden Jr., Cape Girardeau, Mo."

Village of Girardeau "estates" were managed by the Aquamsi Land Company (ALC), first incorporated by Houck, with investors Thomas P. Fristoe (a local dentist) and, for a short time, Louis Strauss. Houck's son, Giboney, and son-in-law, Charles G. Juden Jr., were among succeeding directors.

The fine print of lease documents seems jarring. Folks, in 1906, entered agreements to rent property until March 1, 2005! Lessees agreed to pay an annual $5 rental fee and all property tax due the city or county. Past due rent would accrue at 6% per annum. Lessees would never own the land, but they could build whatever they wanted -- except a saloon or a house of ill repute.

Houck's self-proclaimed "novel idea" offered "laboring men and poor people" a 99-year land lease, but devolved decades later into deplorable living conditions.

My next article will consider more of the complicated history of Cape Girardeau's southernmost, no-longer existent neighborhoods.