Effort started to save log cabin in Cape Girardeau

On Cape Girardeau's North Fountain Street sits a home that needs a home.

A log cabin, dating to the 1800s -- experts aren't sure of the structure's actual age -- recently was discovered hidden beneath the wood-siding house that shows today.

Jim Blakemore, a local retired contractor who has helped preserve other historic places in the area, is leading an effort to uncover the original building and find a place to move it, with permission of its owners, sisters Mary Cotner and Marilyn Landewee.

Cotner and Landewee bought the house, at 818 N. Fountain St., several years ago with hopes of renovating it, but found repairs were too costly.

Blakemore decided to ask to work on the house when he read about it on Pavement Ends, a weekly column by Southeast Missourian webmaster James Baughn, who in March photographed logs showing on the house where the siding had been removed and later discovered a building shown in the location on a Civil War military map of Cape Girardeau.

Baughn's research turned up the names of several possible owners over the years, but not much else is known about the house's historical significance.

"The story one of the neighbors told me is that it was a wash house during the Civil War, and the soldiers could come up and clean their clothes," Blakemore said.

Dr. Steven Hoffman, a history professor and Historic Preservation Program coordinator at Southeast Missouri State University, has looked at photos of the house's construction and said he assumes it was built sometime after the 1830s and possibly up into the 1850s or 1860s because of the thatchwork frame with brick infill, which is a traditional German vernacular building technique known to be used in the period.

Hoffman, along with Blakemore, the owners and Bill Hart, a field representative for the not-for-profit statewide group Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, hope the house can be taken down, rebuilt and donated for public education or private preservation when placed in a yet-to-be-determined location. But finding a place to send the cabin, the money needed to do so and the manpower to take it apart and put it back together aren't easy to come by.

"The problem is always what do you do with it," Hoffman said. "It's hard. It's a hard, challenging situation."

Hart said the house would have been a good candidate for the group's 2013 List of Most Endangered Historic Places program, but it wasn't nominated. The purpose of the program is to draw attention to endangered properties and provide technical assistance, advocacy and planning support for the properties. Now that the group knows about the cabin, it will try to help however it can, Hart said.

Compounding the problem of the house not yet having a location to be moved to is that the city approved Monday a demolition plan submitted by Blakemore and the home's owners that will give them a month to take it down. An inspection found the structure in poor condition. Work has begun to take it down, but there still are worries, Blakemore said, the time will not be enough. City inspector Tim Morgan did not return a call to the Southeast Missourian on Thursday after a message was left at his office inquiring about the property and the city's demolition deadline.

On Saturday, Blakemore invites the community to help with the house's disassembly. Interested people can call Blakemore at 573-275-8711. He is also running a Facebook page dedicated to the effort, named Save A Cape Girardeau, MO Log Cabin. On the page, Blakemore also has listed items needed Saturday. He said he expects work to begin on North Fountain Street about 8 a.m.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address:

818 N. Fountain St., Cape Girardeau, MO