Tips on making the past present

It is so easy for the past to slip away, a building gets a new tenant, a new use or a new name and bingo! The past is gone. But in Cape Girardeau, Lindsey Lotz, a Southeast Missouri State University, has created posters to bring history into the present for  four downtown buildings. The buildings…

Gawkers: Opportunity knocks

‘Tis the season — for home and garden tours. Each day, my inbox is flooded with releases about historic homes, via my Goggle alerts. Now, it’s filled with announcements for tours and it gives me an opportunity to bemoan Columbia’s lack of annual historic home tours. Sure, we have the Kitchens in Bloom, a tour…

Four surprising ways to peek inside historic homes

Getting a look inside a historic home can be a challenge. Few of us are willing to knock on someone’s door and ask for a quick tour. But these four ways can give you a genteel way to see inside historic homes. But these are only four ways to look inside a historic home. How…

This is why you get lost in Columbia, Missouri

Bet you didn’t know that Chapel Hill Road used to be West Boulevard South. Which now makes sense of the fact that the rest of West Boulevard often has addresses such as 121 West Boulevard North. This street name tidbit came out at the April 1, 2014 event honoring the 2014 Most Notable Properties named…

What’s an LP and why should we clean it?

When I was in high school in the 1970s, the newest music technology was an LP, short for long-playing record. It was a big improvement on the 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) record that only played for a few minutes and then had to be replaced with another record if you wanted to listen to…