OWNER STILL HOPES TO SELL MARQUETTE HOTEL

If old St. Francis Hospital is Cape Girardeau's white elephant, the Marquette Hotel is its faded queen.

The five-story Spanish Revival-style hotel was completed in 1928. With 82 rooms -- 66 of them with private baths -- the hotel was once considered one of the finest in the Midwest.

The Marquette at Fountain and Broadway continued operating until the state closed the doors for safety violations in 1971. That was two years after Cape Girardeau musician and piano store owner Thad Bullock purchased it for $150,000.

Since then, a parade of developers has announced plans to restore the grand hotel or turn it into apartments. At one point, the university contemplated turning it into a dorm. All those plans fell through.

During its long fallow period, the hotel has been the target of an arsonist, and some of the stone ornamentation has fallen off the roof, causing safety concerns.

Calls have been heard from time to time to have the hotel demolished. Those voices are being heard now.

Dr. Bonnie Stepenoff hopes that doesn't happen. Stepenoff, who heads the historic preservation program at Southeast, says the hotel probably would qualify for the National Register of Historic Places. She says the hotel is one of a group of Spanish Revival commercial buildings constructed in Cape Girardeau in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Southeast Missourian building in the same block on Broadway is another, along with the former Lueders Studio in the 400 block and Dr. Joseph Tygett's office building in the 700 block.

Spanish-style commercial buildings are uncommon in Missouri, Stepenoff said, the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City being the most famous example.

She says people were looking for their Colonial roots in the 1920s, and 1930s. Since the Western states didn't have Colonial roots, they reclaimed the past they had, which was in part Spanish.

"I think it would be a loss and a loss to Cape Girardeau," Stepenoff said. "It is part of our architectural heritage. I would hope there is some way it could be saved and used."

Bullock, who plans to make his ninth run for Congress this year, will open his campaign office in the old salon. He is renting space on the hotel's parking lot to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, KFVS-TV and a private party.

Three different out-of-town groups have expressed interest in the hotel over the past six months, but nothing so far has gone past the looking stage. The asking price for the hotel is $495,000.

Ivan Irvan, one of the real-estate agents representing Bullock, said all three groups were attracted to the Marquette Hotel's architecture. None has been interested in demolishing the hotel.

The 80-year-old Bullock has an immediate reaction to new talk of the city tearing the hotel down.

"No way," he said. "Not unless they want to the see the biggest lawsuit the city's ever seen."

Bullock insists he has good prospects for selling the hotel and doesn't want the city tearing it down, even if he's paid full market value.

"I'd hate to see it torn down ... it is a building that should be restored."