75 ROOMS WITH A VIEW

FOR SALE: 150-year-old former religious educational institution, scenic view of Mississippi River; 23.38 acres plus another 4-acre tract with river frontage. Includes two tennis courts, two handball courts, swimming pool, 2,100-square-foot maintenance building, 5,000-square-foot gym. Main building 52,600 square feet and approximately 75 rooms, includes offices, libraries, meeting rooms, classrooms, sleeping space for 100, spacious chapel with red carpet.

PRICE: $1.135 million, firm.

RENOVATION COST: $165,000 to $2.5 million (1989 estimate).

MAINTENANCE COST: $109,500 per year (also 1989 estimate).

The brick edifice and outdoor handball courts near the west end of the Mississippi River Bridge are familiar landmarks to Cape Girardeans, though many never have been inside St. Vincent's Seminary.

Mark Twain probably never was either, but he praised it anyway. "Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri," he wrote in "Life on the Mississippi."

The seminary, formally known as St. Vincent's College, has been for sale for nearly four years now, awaiting new ownership after nearly a century and a half of service as the training ground for young Catholic men bent on the priesthood.

The institution operated as a true college from 1843 until 1910, and educated most of the Catholic clergy in the West during a sizable part of the last half of the 19th century.

Used from 1910 until 1979 as a high school for boys preparing to be priests and later as a center for religious retreats and meetings, the building has been empty since the last three priests left a year ago. It is protected by a touchy and deafening alarm system.

After so many years, the emptiness surprisingly is not eerie, maybe because the boys have been gone more than a decade now. But their handiwork, from the outdoor grotto to the timeworn names written and carved and left for posterity in a dusky room in the bell tower, remains.

The seminary's first floor primarily is devoted to a library, classrooms and recreation rooms. The hardwood floors in the hallways, which many thousands of young Catholic boys have bounded through in the past 150 years, produce surprisingly few creaks.

"The most impressive thing is it's 150 years old and in impressive condition," says Thomas L. Meyer, whose real estate company represents the owners, the Provincial Administration of the Vincentian Fathers of St. Louis.

Located in the basement are the dining room, a food preparation room, coolers, a large institutional kitchen with bakery ovens, a storage area and a private dining room.

The dormitories are on the second and third floors, which are something of a maze to first-time visitors. Each private room has been recently carpeted and panelled and is equipped with a sink. There are also larger dormitory rooms that sleep 12. Each dormitory area also has a lounge, kitchen and bathroom

The seminary's offices and the building's largest meeting room are also on the second story.

Besides more dormitory rooms, the third floor also holds the red-carpeted main chapel with its stained glass windows and hanging lights. Metal paintings depicting the 14 stations of the cross are stored in the choir loft.

The bathrooms, placed conservatively throughout the building, are equipped with some 25 showers.

Separate buildings on the grounds house maintenance equipment and the school's gymnasium, the latter erected in 1938.

Located at the seminary's southeast corner, a grotto built by the students has the inscription: "O Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to these."

The grotto is 90 feet from the seminary land the state is taking for the construction of the new Mississippi River bridge.

That is one of the caveats to the seminary's list of particulars. The state has claimed 7.2 acres of the land for construction of the new bridge. The Vincentians are challenging in court the $120,000 reimbursement arrived at by the state, and a decision in their favor could reduce the amount the buyer pays.

The bridge plan also land locks another 2.4 acres of the seminary grounds.

Another qualification: four of the acres have been designated by the city for a road connecting the bridge with Lorimier Street and downtown. The city so far has taken no formal action to condemn the land.

Meyer contends that the city's plan to carve the acreage off the western edge of the property "would totally devastate the use of the property."

In 1989, a city council committee estimated the cost of renovating the seminary at $165,000 to $2.5 million. The lesser cost involves bringing the buildings up to code to use as is, and includes $9,000 for removal of asbestos from the building's floors.

Meyer contends the asbestos removal can be done for $5,000.

The committee estimated that remodeling the seminary for office space, probably the most expensive renovation, would cost $2.5 million.

Four groups currently are interested in buying the seminary. They include the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation, which wants to turn the seminary into a museum and Civil War interpretive center, a church group in Illinois, a group based in Minneapolis and another that contacted Meyer from San Francisco.

All intend to preserve the buildings, although the seller has no stipulation to that effect.

The Rev. John Gagnepain, who characterizes himself as "the CEO" for the Provincial Administration of the Vincentian Fathers, said they have no preference how the seminary site is used. Neither is he sentimental about losing a piece of church history.

"We sell property when it no longer meets the need of the church," he said. "We're not landholders."