Fire and limestone

It took a fire to build Southeast Missouri State University's Academic Hall.

A fire 100 years ago destroyed the turreted, brick Third District Normal School in Cape Girardeau and sparked construction of the limestone edifice that has become a landmark for Southeast Missouri State University.

Without the blaze, the university would have become a "red-brick campus" patterned after East Coast schools, said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast.

But the fire ruined that blueprint. Southeast ended up with copper-domed Academic Hall, and subsequent buildings carried on the limestone character of the campus.

"I really think it did change the image," Nickell said.

Academic Hall gave new importance to what had been a small, teachers college in rural Missouri, he said.

At the time of the fire, the college was housed in a single building atop a hill where Academic Hall now stands. The school had 363 students, most of them women who were being trained as teachers.

"This was known as the 'old maids school,'" said Nickell, pointing out that women in those days had to quit teaching once they married.

Normal beginnings

The Normal School building opened in April 1875. At the time, the campus was on the outskirts of Cape Girardeau on a site that once was used for a brewery, Nickell said.

"Some people said it was too far from town," Nickell said.

Mark Twain penned the most famous description of the Normal School. "There was another college high up on an airy summit -- a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled -- a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete," he wrote.

But that image remains only in Twain's comments and a few old black-and-white photos. The blaze reduced the four-story building to rubble.

The fire broke out around midnight on April 7, 1902. With only rudimentary fire equipment, townsfolk could do little but watch the school burn.

George Davidson was a student at the time. In 1927, he recalled the fire in a newspaper article in the Southeast Missourian.

Davidson said the school janitor woke him up and he ran into town and started ringing a church bell. "There were no fire alarms in that day and church bells were soon ringing everywhere over town and whistles were blowing," he said.

Townspeople used a hose, hooked onto a fire hydrant, to spray water on the flames.

"In an hour, about 500 people were gathered about the flaming building, throwing bricks in the windows to make the pressure strong enough to get the water inside the building," Davidson recalled.

"It was a losing game from the first. The building was so constructed with winding stairs around a shaft leading up to the top that it furnished a natural chimney through which to draw the flames," he said.

Nickell said there's no clear evidence of how the fire started.

But Davidson said the prevailing opinion at the time was that the fire started in the chemistry lab, probably from a chemical explosion.

After the fire, classes were shifted to the Common Pleas Courthouse, churches and other buildings in town.

No brick support

At the time of the fire, construction had begun on a science building, now Carnahan Hall. It was designed to be a red-brick building.

But after the fire, school officials decided to build Academic Hall and develop a limestone campus, and the science building was given a stone exterior. Based on writings from those involved with the project at the time, the choice of limestone was purely aesthetic. By 1903, the school had opened a science building and the art building.

Academic Hall was constructed between 1904 and 1906 after school President Washington Dearmont, civic leader Louis Houck, state Sen. R.B. Oliver and others secured $200,000 in state funding. At the time, it was one of the biggest public works projects in the state, Nickell said.

Al Stoverink, who heads up facilities management at Southeast, can't imagine a more fitting landmark for a university.

"This is a magnificent building, typical of a major state capitol building," Stoverink said.

But the 96-year-old building is showing its age. It needs major renovations both inside and out, he said. The slate roof needs repairs and the 200, single-glazed windows should be replaced, Stoverink said.

The project also would involve cleaning and waterproofing the exterior stone walls as well as upgrading mechanical and electrical systems and classrooms in the building.

Whatever is done, Stoverink said, it's important to maintain the building's stately look. "You don't want to change the character of the building," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123