OUR CITY STREETS: UP & DOWN LORIMIER (FIRST IN A TWO-DAY SERIES)

From Indian encampments to the nouveau riche wealth of Silk Stocking Hill, from a quiet residential street to a haven for drug dealers, from Vincentian priests to students of the arts, Lorimier Street has been a kaleidoscope of Cape Girardeau history.

For much of its life, Lorimier has been a peaceful residential street where houses of mansion proportions mixed with cottages. The street is lined by some of the city's most architecturally significant buildings, including the Royal N'Orleans restaurant, the Southeast Missourian, the First Presbyterian Church, the Court of Common Pleas. But in recent decades, problems associated with rundown properties, drugs and violence have surfaced. Yet people who value the character and the diversity of the neighborhoods still move in.

"We're down there for the long haul," says resident and restaurateur John Wyman, "and we're going to do everything we can."

At Cape Girardeau's beginning near the turn of the 19th century, Lorimier Street was only a muddy trail paralleling the Mississippi River and bearing north from a spring near Don Louis Lorimier's Red House. Indians visiting Lorimier's trading post camped out near the spring.

Half a century later, the Congregation of the Missions established a seminary on a hill at the southern end of the trail.

During the Civil War, the top of Lorimier Street at the intersection with Bellevue was the location of a Union battlement called Fort A. Trees were cut down to give troops better views. In the days of horses and wagons, the hill was no more than a dirt and mud incline.

The house still standing at the northeast corner was built in the 1870s by Matthew Fagin. During the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, the top of Lorimier Street became known as Silk Stocking Hill because many families built homes there.

Realtor Thomas M. Meyer bought his house on Silk Stocking Hill in 1979. His house at 314 N. Lorimier was built in 1892 for Edward DeLisle, who moved his family to Cape Girardeau from Portageville, Mo., to take advantage of the better schools. The house only has been owned by three different families.

North of Silk Stocking Hill, Lorimier Street is interrupted by a steep ravine before continuing. Some of these blocks bound Missouri Park and Old Lorimier Cemetery. These neighborhoods haven't changed as dramatically as those south of Independence.

Other grand houses were sprinkled among more modest cottages in the section of Lorimier Street south of Independence. The house on the southwest corner of Lorimier and Independence streets was built by Edwin Branch Deane, who designed the Victorian home on Spanish Street that became the museum now called the Glenn House.

A block and a half farther south at 129 S. Lorimier is a house originally built for Edward Lilly, a hardware store owner. The third floor may have been used as a ballroom. Huge verandas wrapped around the first and second floor.

At the southeast corner of Lorimier and Merriwether is a huge Victorian house built in 1885 for the Leon Albert family, whose patriarch was a prominent grocer and banker.

Preferred address

Through the first half of the 20th century, Lorimier Street remained a preferred address. John Blue, retired editor of the Southeast Missourian, and his wife, Mary, moved into an apartment building at 134 S. Lorimier in 1948. "It was a nice street with no problems," he recalls. "The houses were all kept well."

In the 1960s, the lower part of the street suffered a downturn as many of the large old residences were partitioned into apartments. "Owners divided up a lot of the old structures because of utility costs and because people didn't want to live on a grand level anymore," said Thomas M. Meyer.

It was a period when South Lorimier Street no longer was a popular place to live.

Meyer's father, Thomas L. Meyer, has been in the real estate business in Cape Girardeau since the 1940s. He has nine apartments in a building in the 200 block of South Lorimier and 22 apartments in two buildings in the 300 block. In the 1960s, he says, the city allowed the apartment house owners to put too many people into apartment buildings. The Minimum Property Maintenance Code adopted in the 1990s now restricts the number of people who can live in an apartment. Delores Luton was one of the primary owners of rental property from the 1960s through the 1980s. "She ran a good operation for a while," says City Councilman Tom Neumeyer. "But it went to hell when she went to prison."

Luton was sent to prison in 1989 for trying to have her husband murdered. She now is on parole and living in the St. Louis area. She could not be reached for comment.

John Wyman says maintenance of the properties Luton owned suffered both before and after she went to prison. The new landlords rented to people who weren't always good tenants, he said.

"You can't rent those apartments to anybody else."

Thomas L. Meyer complains the city started turning its back when problems began arising on South Lorimier Street. "It seemed like the city kind of forgot us. The police would say, We're aware of it and that was the end of it.

"We didn't get much support from the city. Their attitude was, we know where the element is and kind of contain them down there."

But that didn't stop some people from moving in. The Wymans recognized the uniqueness of some of the housing downtown. "You can't build these homes," he says.

They bought an Arts and Crafts-style bungalow at 143 S. Lorimier in 1985. The neighborhood then consisted mostly of college students renting apartments and single-family houses.

"There were no real problems until they put the basketball court in," Wyman said. The city put the first of two basketball courts in Indian Park in 1972, replacing a little-used tennis court. A second basketball court was added because the first was so popular.

Wyman says the park should be returned to uses more suited to the families who live in the neighborhood.

The Wymans eventually moved into and renovated the Albert house at the corner of Lorimier and Merriwether streets. Since then they have bought a number of other houses in the downtown area in an attempt to upgrade the rental housing stock.

They own two restaurants and a gourmet market downtown.

"We know the viability of the downtown relies on downtown housing," Wyman said.

Revitalization 'pioneers'

City Councilman Neumeyer calls the Wymans "pioneers" in the revitalization of the street.

In 1988, Neumeyer and his wife, Teresa, bought a Craftsman-style house at 25 S. Lorimier built in 1910 by contractor J.W. Gerhardt. The councilman maintains that passage of the Minimum Property Maintenance Code pushed by the Downtown Neighborhood Association in the 1990s has helped turn the neighborhood in a more positive direction, though on Lorimier Street it resulted in the outcome Wyman fears -- a condemned structure on the west side of the 300 block was torn down about five years ago.

He worries that many of the older houses and apartment buildings are deteriorating to the point where they will be torn down, leaving only vacant lots.

Statistically, Wyman says, it takes a generation and a half before new buildings replace old ones that are torn down.

"The next phase of construction in our area is not going to be very pretty," he says.

Other pioneers are Judy and John Hoffmeister, who in the mid-1990s began restoring the Lilly house at 129 S. Lorimier, known informally as the House of Seven Gables. It previously had been chopped up into apartments.

Crime problems

Problems on the street persist. Last October, 19-year-old Jesus Sides was fatally shot in Indian Park, the piece of land where Lorimier's Indian visitors camped 200 years before. A bouquet of plastic flowers sticking out of the snow near 213 S. Lorimier marks the spot where Sides died. The address belongs to Jeff and Jennifer Darnell, who bought the house just over a year ago because it was an inexpensive fixer-upper and close to the university.

A manufacturing engineering student at Southeast, Jeff Darnell says he can watch a drug deal occur in front of his house almost any day. They have been to Neighborhood Watch meetings and were told to take pictures and call police when they see something suspicious. But by the time they call the deal is complete.

"We wonder when the cops are going to get around to cleaning this neighborhood up," Jeff says. "They know who they are."

They were at the grocery store with their children Steven, 9, Alexys, 3, and infant Jeremy when Jesus Sides was shot. Ordinarily, the two older children would be out in the front yard. "I was thankful we weren't home," Jeff says.

He feels safe, especially because the family has a Rottweiler and a black Lab in the house. Jennifer says she feels "pretty comfortable, but I'm not going to go walking around outside at night."

Lt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau Police Department says he understands the frustration of residents who see what they believe to be drug deals and says it's shared by the officers who patrol the area.

"They see these people day in and day out, but they don't have enough evidence to make an arrest."

Cases based on drug investigations take a long time to build, Kinnison says.

At the end of the 1990s, Southeast Missouri State University bought the long-vacant seminary to use as a visual and performing arts campus. Neumeyer is banking the River Campus for the visual and performing arts will make a big difference in helping turn South Lorimier Street around.

But he says attention needs to be paid to the city's downtown.

"If the heart of the city dies, the city dies. There are glaring examples many places where the core of the city was neglected," he said. "You pay a major price for what could have been a small investment."

Thomas L. Meyer thinks the university's development of the River Campus is going to help. "It is helping already, just the idea that something good is happening in the neighborhood," he said.

Cape Girardeau natives won't live downtown because for so long living downtown has had a stigma attached to it, Wyman says. "But people coming into the area with other ideas know how fascinating this can be. The quality of life can be tremendous because you have so many different groups living together."

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer, columnist and Lorimier Street resident.