HOLDING ON TO HISTORY: HISTORIC SEMINARY PROPERTY SCRUTINIZED AS UNIVERSITY GOES FORWARD WITH RIVER CAMPUS PLAN

~Correction: Spelling should be: Rev. Louis Derbes, C.M.

In 1625, St. Vincent de Paul founds a seminary in France. The Vincentian Fathers derive their name from the order.

In 1828, the Rev. John M. Odin founds the St. Vincent's Male Academy in Cape Girardeau.

In 1843, the cornerstone of the first building is laid.

In 1844, students at St. Mary's of the Barrens in Perryville area transferred to St. Vincent's.

In 1847, the first seminarin graduates.

In 1849, the Seabird, a river boat loaded with gunpowder, explodes on the Mississippi River. Seminary buildings are damaged, but no one is injured.

In 1859, the school begins operating as a theological college. Fro 1893-1910, St. Vincent's offers theological and secular classes.

in 1979, the last class graduates in May, and the school closes.

The Rev. Louis Derbbes arrived in Cape Girardeau from New Orleans in 1938 to start high school at St. Vincent's College and Seminary.

He finished high school there, did a year of college and eventually came back to the seminary to teach for four years.

Now a Vincentian priest and the archivist at St. Mary's of the Barrens in Perryville, Derbbes is proud to be a "Cape boy," one of the select group of St. Vincent's graduates.

Derbbes remembers a "very regimented" way of life at the seminary. Students only went home for summer break and almost never left campus during the school year, he said.

"It was a closed community, very, very closed," he said. "We were almost cut off from the world. We had very limited radio and newspaper, and, of course, there was no TV then. On occasion, the whole school would march into town for a movie. It had to be a very special movie for us to see it. But we all went in together."

The campus was quiet and sheltered, and hitting the books was students' highest priority.

"We had three study periods a day. Many, many a time I got rapped on the head for reading a novel during study periods," Derbbes said.

The seminary has seen a lot of changes since Derbbes graduated, and still more changes are in store.

Southeast Missouri State University plans to turn the property into its River Campus to house the fine arts, music, drama and dance departments.

Cape Girardeau voters will decide in November whether to help fund the River Campus project by increasing the hotel-motel tax from 3 to 4 percent and extending it from 2004 to 2030. The restaurant tax would also be extended, but not increased.

Some question how the $35.6 million development project will affect the historic campus, mentioned in Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi."

"My concern is that they're going to put up brass and glass," said Diana Bryant, who lobbied long and hard to have the campus preserved.

Bryant and others also are concerned about what the redevelopment will mean for the initial tree, a championship beech tree on the property, and for the bell tower, both of which contain the names of seminary students over the years.

Bryant also mentioned the memorial windows in the seminary chapel, which were put in place in the 1880s and 1890s to commemorate families.

"Those things are worth a fortune," she said. "They'd probably pay for a good part of the renovation."

She also wonders what will happen to the crooked staircase, knocked askew when the Seabird, a riverboat loaded with gunpowder, exploded on the Mississippi River in 1849.

Bryant would like to see the university take measures to have the seminary placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Rev. Rick Lause, who graduated from St. Vincent's in 1968, carved his initials into the initial tree.

"But they're way up there now," Lause said. "The tree was a little bit smaller 30 years ago."

Lause, the associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Perryville, wants to see the existing buildings preserved as much as possible.

"I would hope they would take into consideration the integrity of the buildings and the view from the road, and that they would work with the present integrity of the building and keep that," he said. "In a way it's very distinctive."

The university plans on doing as much as it can to preserve the seminary's exterior, said Dr. Dale Nitzschke, Southeast president.

Preserving the buildings was "top priority" when university officials began studying the feasibility of converting the seminary into its River Campus, Nitzschke said.

The project engineers and architects "had to assure our governing board that indeed it was strong enough, sturdy enough and had all the characteristics to preserve it as it is," he said.

The existing buildings, including the gymnasium, will need some masonry repairs. In addition, new windows will be needed in some areas, and the main building will need "some substantial roof work," Nitzschke said.

But the buildings' exteriors will remain largely unchanged, he said.

"A hundred years from now, you'll drive by the seminary and that facility will look the same 100 years from now as it does today," Nitzschke said.

The interiors of the seminary are another story, he said.

"The inside of the facility will have to be remodeled in a very, very substantial way," Nitzschke said.

The buildings will have to be brought up to city code and made accessible to the disabled, he said. Elevators will have to be added, as will fire sprinklers.

Plans call for about 115,000 square feet of new construction, but plans show the new construction not being visible from Morgan Oak, so the historic structures will still present the main view.

Supporters of the River Campus project say it will add cultural opportunities and bring tourism dollars to Cape Girardeau.

Derbbes sees another bright side.

"The Vincentian community is so pleased that it's remaining as an educational institution," he said. "We didn't want it to turn into a tourist trap or torn down for housing. Of all the things it could have been, we're so glad that it's continuing as an educational institution."