Missouri bicentennial: Academic Hall a symbol of university, region

This is the 17th in a series of articles with Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation board chairman Frank Nickell, an emeritus faculty member of Southeast Missouri State University, commenting on Show Me State history on the 200th anniversary of Missouri being received as America's 24th state in 1821.

This story has been updated.

On Friday and Saturday, Southeast Missouri State University will hold a total of five commencement ceremonies to accommodate social distancing guidelines and to allow any 2020 spring and summer graduates a chance to walk across the Show Me Center stage to formally receive their diplomas.

Before the Show Me Center opened in 1987, students graduated at Academic Hall.

"Academic Hall, to me, is really Southeast Missouri State. It's not only a symbol of the university but also the region," historian Nickell said.

Academic Hall is now Southeast's administration building and is marked by ionic columns, triangular roof pediments and its well-known copper dome.

Early history

At its inception, Southeast was known as the "Third District Normal School."

The word "normal," in an educational sense, has gone out of use, but when Southeast was founded in 1873, the term referred to an institution devoted to teacher training.

War halted education

Nickell said that during the Civil War and extending into the early years of Reconstruction, formal education was effectively shut down in Missouri.

"Whatever trained schoolteachers we had, left," Nickell said, pointing out that in the mid-19th century, Cape Girardeau County alone had approximately 80 one-room schoolhouses, all of which desperately needed experienced educators.

Fire destroys

The original Third District Normal School burned April 7, 1902.

"(Southeast) was pretty small at the time, with about 300 students at the turn of the 20th century," Nickell said.

"The story is told that rags being used in a chemistry lab were piled into a corner and a fire started overnight," he said.

R.B. Oliver

R.B. Oliver's election to the Missouri House of Representatives was instrumental in the construction of the current Academic Hall, Nickell said.

"He was determined to get enough money to rebuild the college in Cape," the venerable historian said.

Oliver's first introduced legislation, House Bill 161, raised more than $200,000 -- enough to build Academic Hall and to pay expenses for a year, Nickell said.

Threats

In the late 19th century, Southeast was located in a difficult spot.

"It was on the edge of a wetland, the edge of a swamp," Nickell said, adding there were those who, after the 1902 blaze, wanted the college relocated.

Arcadia Valley and Joplin were two locations mentioned.

"If the college had been moved in 1902, Cape Girardeau's history would be quite different," he said.

Impressive build-back

Completed in 1905 and dedicated in May 1906, Southeast's Academic Hall was the biggest public building in the State of Missouri until the current state capital structure was completed in 1917.

"The idea was to make it big, to say to those who had different ideas, 'You're not going to move our college,'" Nickell said.

The building was 260 feet long, 186 feet wide, had 22 classrooms and a copper dome that "glistened in the sun," noted the historian.

Architect

Nickell said while Oliver gets the lion's share of the credit for raising the necessary funds, Jerome Legg (1838-1915) should be mentioned as well.

"Legg was a prosperous, thriving architect with offices in four states and who had designed buildings in 12 states," he said, noting Legg had no formal architectural training.

"For a lot of years, Academic Hall is where a Southeast student began higher education and where it ended," Nickell said.

"No one will ever move Southeast now," he added.