CAPE GIRARDEAU'S SPANISH DESIGN REVEALS ITS HERITAGE

Early in the 20th century, builders in Cape Girardeau chose an architectural style popular in the Southwest and Florida to reflect the city's Spanish heritage dating to the days of founder Don Louis Lorimier.

The first of these Spanish revival buildings was the Southeast Missourian building at Lorimier and Broadway.

"It was real conscious on the part of the Naeter brothers to memorialize that heritage," says Dr. Bonnie Stepenoff, head of the historic preservation program at Southeast Missouri State University.

"The Missourian building was so striking that people said, 'We like that, too,'" Stepenoff said.

Stepenoff will talk about Cape Girardeau's Spanish revival architecture in a lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday at First Presbyterian Church, Broadway at Lorimier. The event celebrates Historic Preservation Week through Sunday.

Her talk is based on a paper, "Style and Meaning: The Spanish Revival in Cape Girardeau 1924-1937," Stepenoff co-wrote with Jane Stephens, a former Southeast history professor now teaching in South Carolina.

The paper points out the many other Cape Girardeau buildings that illustrate Spanish revival architecture, including the Surety Building and Marquette Hotel across the street from the newspaper, the former Lueders Studio in the 400 block of Broadway, Dr. Joseph Tygett's building at 714 Broadway, and the Playdium building at 1127 Broadway.

The Hecht Building on Main Street has Spanish influences along with some that are French.

B'nai Israel Synagogue on Main Street is another Moorish example.

Characteristics are long, low rectangular shapes and low-pitched roofs with "S"-shaped tiles. Beige brick, stucco or adobe often were used in walls.

Many of the buildings employ decorative details from Moorish, Gothic, Renaissance or Byzantine architecture.

Later this month, Stepenoff will be one of eight international scholars delivering papers at a workshop in Amsterdam sponsored by the International Institute of Social History. At the workshop titled "From Household Strategies to Collective Action," Stepenoff will talk about families and activism among Pennsylvania silk workers from 1900-1920.

Mostly single women, many of the workers were the daughters of the coal miners who were forming a strong union and called huge strikes in 1900 and 1902. To some extent, the daughters emulated their fathers, engaging in strikes and protests.

But Stepenoff says they also were hindered by paternal attitudes.

"The silk workers would ask permission from their fathers (to strike), and the mine workers spoke for them," she said. "They didn't get to speak for themselves."

Because the mine workers favored negotiation over strikes, the silk workers' actions were ended quickly, and they did not become involved in organized labor, Stepenoff says.

"One of the big questions of labor history is why women didn't become more involved (until more recently)," she said.

"In Pennsylvania, they showed a willingness to participate, but every time they did the male miners came in and took over," she said.

The information is taken from Stepenoff's forthcoming book, "Their Fathers' Daughters," to be published this summer by Susquehanna University Press. The book is based on the lives of silk mill workers in northeastern Pennsylvania between 1880 and 1960.