CONDEMNED LOG CABIN AWAITS DEMOLITION

Under the rotted green shingles of a condemned house on South Frederick Street stands the framework of history.

In 1994 the abandoned two-story home at 127 S. Frederick was designated as a condemned structure by the city and plans were set in motion to eventually tear it down.

Then the beams of a log cabin, which might be 200 years old, were uncovered beneath the green skin of plank siding that has covered the logs for many years. This put the demolition on hold and the city began working with historical preservation societies to find a way to move the cabin and preserve it.

The house was officially condemned around August 1995 after the required months of hearings and notifications to the house's owner Mandy McClure of Atlanta. Still the city delayed in destroying the building even though no agreement had been reached to move it.

"There was some interest in moving the cabin at one time but that interest seems to have gone away," Kent Bratten, Cape Girardeau's director of planning, said. "We haven't established a deadline for destroying the structure but something has to be done."

Cape Girardeau City Councilman Tom Neumeyer said he thinks the cabin needs to be saved to preserve the city's heritage.

"It's in the heart of the city," he said. "It's probably one of the oldest structures, maybe the oldest, in the city."

Neumeyer said there is no way to exactly trace the history of the building since there are no building permits on log cabins from the city's founding.

Bonnie Stepenoff, coordinator of the historical preservation program at Southeast Missouri State University, said she is not optimistic about the cabin's chances.

"I don't think we can save it," she said. "I think it's going to be destroyed."

She said she will have a student in the program photograph and document the cabin and its demolition. She's been told the structure is unsafe.

"There was an effort at one point to try to move it," Stepenoff said. "We had somebody who was interested in trying to save it but that fell through."

Steve Williams, city housing assistance coordinator, who will be making the final decision with Bratten about when the house will be torn down, said the cabin is a hazard.

"The house is accessible to vagrants and we're afraid someone might go in there and start a fire," Williams said.

The rotted interior of the house, which does contain equally rotted furniture and is littered with piles of old clothing and boxes, is a disaster waiting to happen. Its proximity to two other wooden houses means a fire in the condemned building would also affect two occupied structures.

Bratten said city ordinance does not call for further public hearings on the fate of the building. He and Williams will discuss demolition procedures at an undetermined date.