SOS: Glenn House in need of repairs

The two-story Victorian-era Glenn House has stood tall overlooking the Mississippi River for 136 years. But as of late, its future as a museum is uncertain because of excessive water damage, overwhelming moisture levels, chipping paint, wood rot and crumbling bricks — all requiring repair that outweighs current funding.

Edwin Branch Deane constructed the house at 325 S. Spanish St. in Cape Girardeau, in 1883 for his daughter, Lulu, and her husband, David A. Glenn. The couple remained in the home until 1915, when the John J. Hunter family took occupancy until 1953. Sylvester Doggett and his wife purchased the home before ownership was transferred to Robert Erlbacher and his wife, according to Southeast Missourian files.

The house was presented to the Historical Association of Greater Cape Girardeau in 1969.

Its downstairs parlor, library, dining room, kitchen and upstairs bedrooms contain beatifically adorned carpentry, wallpaper and period-specific relics — but what’s dilapidating underneath all that beauty is what’s worrying Glenn House board president Christy Mershon and other board members.

Why keep it around?

“Most of our visitors are kids, there aren’t a lot of places like this, there aren’t a lot of places where you can interact,” Mershon said. “I don’t want kids to ever leave here and what they remember is, ‘Don’t touch, back away, don’t do, no, you can’t.’”

Mershon said she wants children to remember, “The experience of seeing that kids played with stuff that’s a lot like the stuff they play with today. It’s OK to interact.”

Mershon said, “So we’ve spent a lot of time making the house alive. But how do we keep it standing for the next generation?”

In need of repairs

Josh Hepler, a Southeast Missouri State University historic preservation student, volunteers his time overseeing the Glenn House and property. He said he sees the preservation of the structure as a necessity because it’s “a place you can actually go, see and touch.”

Caretaker Josh Hepler is seen in the kitchen near an air-conditioning unit, dehumidifier and antique wood stove Thursday at the Glenn House in downtown Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

But the home can’t be renovated to today’s standards — though it would be far less expensive — and remain on the National Register of Historic Places, according to Mershon and Hepler.

Inside the structure, climate levels are an ever-growing concern.

“All that heat and humidity in here is not good,” Hepler said. “We need central air and heating; it may not be historically accurate, but to save some of these things, everything in this house we pretty much have to take care of it.”

He said the window-unit air conditioners placed in nearly every room can barely keep up with the humidity, so dehumidifiers must also be placed throughout the home.

Hepler said he “couldn’t even tell” the age of the boiler — still in use — in the basement.

“The radiators that you see aren’t decorative; those rods are what’s heating this place in the winter,” Mershon said.

And most of the electrical wiring also is original, she said.

It’s great for history, Mershon said, but horrifying when you’re a steward and “wondering when it’s going to burn down.”

Caretaker Josh Hepler admires a light fixture near the front door Thursday at the Glenn House in downtown Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

As for the landscaping, Hepler said renovating the present backyard grape arbor would cost nearly $10,000 — the weight-bearing posts are leaning and are near collapsing.

“And those are heirloom grapevines, so we really want to save them,” he said.

The property’s carriage house also could use some restoration. The gutters are riddled with holes, allowing water to pour directly onto the brick, damaging the structure even further, Hepler explained.

He estimates to fix the gutters “the right way” using period-specific galvanized metal would cost upward of $2,000.

A retaining wall facing Spanish Street also is in need of repair, he said. It’s leaning toward the street and over the sidewalk, caused by the ground behind the wall sliding downhill pushing against it.

“That’s going to be a big job, to save that and keep it from collapsing,” Hepler said.

Mershon said, “We kept looking at things through a lens of ‘How much money do we have in our bank account?’ not ‘How much money does it take to fix it right?’ And all that deferred maintenance has gotten us to where we are now.”

Funds for the structure were once raised through Historical Society Balls in the 1970s and 1980s. But now, the museum relies on donations, she said.

Mershon said William Winford “B.W.” Harrison — who donated funds that were used for the Southeast River Campus — bestowed a large gift, “so many people in the community think that this house has a perpetual endowment.”

Which is true, she said, but only the interest earned can be spent on upkeep.

“But now, that’s only like a few thousand dollars,” Mershon said. “So the initial investment is protected, but if we had to replace all the air conditioners, we’d basically spend everything and we’d be back to waiting for the interest to accrue on that account.”

So that creates some confusion in the community, she said. People tend to associate the house, for some reason, “with a little bit of elitism,” Mershon said.

“And that’s one of the reasons, too,” she said. “This is not a ‘Cape Society’ project. ... We still battle that community perception piece.”

She said from 1970 to now, no public money has made its way to fund the Glenn House for repairs.

Mershon said the community once made an effort to preserve the house, “But now we’ve got to figure out a way to get them to recommit to that effort.”

A temporary remedy

Mershon said with a $50,000 endowment gift, everything on the somewhat lengthy list of repairs could probably be taken care of.

“Like actually making it so cold in here that we don’t sweat,” she said, “and figuring out how to do that without window units that just take away from the historical ambiance.”

The amount wouldn’t set up the museum for the future, she said, but it would relieve the museum’s issues that are problematic now — or would be problematic in the future.

“Have you ever known someone that, one day, you see them somewhere and they look awesome and everything’s great, and the next day they have terminal cancer?,” Mershon said. “That’s something like the last year has felt.

“We have all these things that if they’re left untreated, this house won’t last another 20-something years,” she said. “This isn’t my house, or [Hepler’s] house; it’s our community. In my mind, this place belongs to everybody.”

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