Homecoming activities include rare visit to Academic Hall's dome

On the third floor of the 100-year-old Academic Hall is a door students, faculty members and visitors pass by on a regular basis without giving it any thought.

It looks like any other door in the building, maybe a little reminiscent of a janitor's closet. But when the door opens, 25 wooden steps lead up to the inside of the most visible landmark in Cape Girardeau, Academic Hall's copper dome.

As part of Homecoming celebrations over the weekend, groups of Southeast Missouri State University alumni were given a rare look inside the Academic Hall dome.

The top of the dome is 68 feet above the roof of the building, and can be seen from miles away, said Diane Sides, director of University Relations.

The dome was constructed from wooden beams, made out of poplar trees in the region. Only nails were used to piece together hundreds of beams to create the dome.

Written on the beams are names and dates of past visitors to the dome, the oldest dating back to 1911. Those who toured the dome over the weekend were allowed to leave their mark inside the dome.

Southeast alumni Mike and Dawn Parker, of Sikeston, were part of a tour on Sunday. This was the second time Mike, who graduated in 1967, got to sign his name in the dome.

"When I was going to school here, I befriended a janitor," he said. "The janitor took me and a friend of mine up inside the dome. He let us walk along the very top, right by the windows, and I signed my name up there."

During the tour, visitors weren't allowed to travel to the very top walkway in the dome due to safety issues.

'Could see for miles'

"You could see for miles looking out those windows," he said. "There is just so much history in this building."

Before Academic Hall was constructed in 1904 and 1905, the University was known as the Third District Normal School, an institute for training teachers.

After a fire destroyed the original Normal School, which was established in 1873, college president Washington Dearmont and Board of Regents president Louis Houck announced the school would continue. But a debate sparked about relocating the school to Arcadia Valley or Joplin.

That debate ended when Sen. Robert B. Oliver, a Cape Girardeau attorney, was able to secure $246,000 appropriation funds to rebuild the college at its present location.

A St. Louis architect, Jerome Legg, was selected to design the new structure. Academic Hall was to be a three-story building, and with a sizable appropriation of funding, Legg was able to design the dome to sit on top of the structure.

"At one point Academic Hall was the largest public building in the state of Missouri, even larger than the state capitol building at one time" Sides said. "This is not only a building, but a grand dream."

Unique features adorn Academic Hall. The chandelier-type lights in the front entrance are the originals, which Louis Houck purchased at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. The building is made from limestone, which was quarried out of a site along Henderson Street.

"What is so special about Academic Hall is that since 1906, every student who has graduated from the University, has walked through this building," Sides said. "Academic Hall continues to be the dominant building on campus and in Cape Girardeau."

This was the first time the University has given public tours of Academic Hall's dome.

jfreeze@semissourian.com