Rebecca Ward (Blinder Fellow 2014) continues to advance her work on “Reinventing the Broadway Theatre.” In her latest update, Rebecca reported on terrific news: Cape Girardeau’s Old Town Cape — the district in which the Broadway Theatre is located — was named one of three Great American Main Streets nationwide for 2015 by the National Main Street Center and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
As many in preservation and its allied fields already know all too well, small towns and cities have been combatting urban sprawl over the last several decades. The thinking by many: it is more attractive to erect a building on a lot of cheaper land along the highways, built to bypass congestion areas, and to abandon the downtown commercial district. In the 1980s, much of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was, for the most part, abandoned. Shops had moved out to the new mall or to the new strip malls that popped up along the then-new highway.
The impact on Cape Girardeau is highlighted in this video, shared as part of the National Trust’s announcement, this Spring, of its 2015 Great American Main Streets.
GAMSA | Cape Girardeau from NOTICE PICTURES on Vimeo.