What Could Have Been: The Missouri State Capital in Sedalia

After American independence had been won, President Thomas Jefferson and associates used rationalism and geometry to plan how the trans-Appalachian west was to be occupied. To administer the new lands, they focused on the principle of centrality. Administrative centers were to be located in the center of the land being administered. County seats were to be in the center of counties. Schools were to be in the center of the township on a designated “school section.” State capitals were to be in the center of their states. Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Springfield, Illinois, served as examples of centrally located capitals before Missouri.

State commissioners located the site of the Missouri capital in the center of the state, on the Missouri River, and named it Jefferson City. That choice was a real winner for “centrality,” because two centuries later (2010 census) the center of Missouri’s population was just outside Wardsville, or only seven miles south of the Capitol. The center of Missouri’s geographic area is just west of Etterville in Miller County, 21 miles southwest of Jefferson City.

Over the years some Missourians have questioned the suitability of Jefferson City as the location of the state capital, and all would-be rivals were in the state’s central part. In the early decades of state history, Columbia, Fayette, and Boonville were proposed as better locations. But it was Sedalia that mounted the most determined effort to remove the capital from Jefferson City.

Sedalia had grown rapidly in the post–Civil War years, thanks to its railroad connections and development of the surrounding rich farming and stock-raising lands. In contrast, river-located Jefferson City grew more slowly after railroads superseded steamboats as the primary transportation mode. By 1890, Sedalia had more than double the population of Jefferson City (14,068 to 6,742), and promoters of that booming railroad town mounted a vigorous campaign to relocate the state capital to their town.

The Commonwealth Land Development Company of Sedalia, composed of those promoters, proposed a “Capitol Addition” in the southwestern part of the city. It was an irregular polygon of 211 square blocks that lay between Broadway on the north, 32nd Street on the south, and west of Barnett Street.

A tract of six square blocks was reserved for the Capitol and surrounding grounds. Locations were also designated for a Governor’s Mansion, a Supreme Court building, and an armory. A divided lane parkway, named Capitol Avenue, connected the Capitol to Sedalia’s chief thoroughfare, Broadway. Laid out in the days of horses and carriages, it was designed to be a ceremonial esplanade.

Apparently the entire addition was to be residential, since the company provided no information about land for commercial, industrial, or even neighborhood parks and churches. Capitol Addition comprised approximately 9,000 lots of different sizes, sufficient for more than 25,000 people. Most lots were only 25 feet wide! That narrow width allowed the promoters to maximize the number of lots in the addition, and thus the promoters would maximize the amount of money they would raise from sales. It was necessary to raise as much money as possible from lot sales because money raised from sales was to pay for the retirement of bonds sold to finance the capital removal, which was estimated to be a whopping $3,810,000 ($114,300,000 in 2022 dollars). For comparison, construction of the new Capitol and expanded grounds in Jefferson City in 1915 cost Missouri taxpayers less, $3,500,000 ($94,800,000 in 2022 dollars).

By means of clever parliamentary maneuvering, Sedalia was successful in getting passed a concurrent resolution in the Missouri state legislature requiring the state to vote at the general election in November 1896 on removal of the state capital—the Capitol building and all associated state functions—to Sedalia. Eighteen ninety-six was also the year the Missouri River bridge was opened, which greatly enhanced Jefferson City’s position. Despite Sedalia’s efforts, the statewide vote went solidly against removal by a vote of 65 percent to 35 percent. The initiative won approval in only 19 counties, most of which were around Sedalia.

Fifteen years later, 1911, when fire destroyed the Capitol in Jefferson City, the issue of keeping the state’s capital at Jefferson City once again came up, but the legislature’s quick decision to rebuild the Capitol in Jefferson City effectively ended all questions as to whether the city would remain the capital of Missouri. Nevertheless, some Missouri government officials, politicians, and lobbyists continue to grumble about smallish Jefferson City as their capital city.

Missourians could have had a capitol on uninteresting topography overlooking nothing but flat land. Instead, Missourians today are proud of their magnificent state Capitol rising majestically on a high bluff in Jefferson City overlooking our state’s namesake Missouri River.

Map courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri

Text ©Walter A. Schroeder, 2022

Schwartze Blacksmith and Wagon Shop Building, 630 Jefferson Street

Below is the text and image for the "Munichburg Memories" ad that ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune on September 19, 2021, as a promotion for the Old Munichburg Association's annual Oktoberfest, which was held September 25.

The image is from the Missouri State Archives. To see it in more detail, click on it to enlarge it.

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The intersection of Jefferson and Dunklin streets is Munichburg’s center. By 1873, Mauritz Laudel had a blacksmith shop on the northwest corner, catty-cornered from Farmers Home. Henry Schwartze bought Laudel’s shop before 1900 and turned it into one of Munichburg’s major businesses. Schwartze added wagon making and repairing, which became more important than the blacksmith business. The large, two-story brick building on that corner, still standing today, was erected in the 1890s, possibly in the 1880s. The photo, circa 1912, shows the wagon business occupying the ground floor; above, the large Schwartze family, who lived upstairs, are peering out the windows. The family had a separate recessed, arched entranceway on Jefferson Street. A separate paint shop was affixed to the north side on Jefferson Street in 1912. When autos began replacing horses and wagons, Schwartze—seeing the writing on the wall—moved his business to Vienna in rural Maries County in 1914.

In 1914, the building was completely renovated and repurposed for retail business downstairs and offices above. The original wide doorways were bricked in and replaced with new entrances and windows. The original limestone foundation was preserved. The former paint shop addition was also converted into retail space below and offices above, with separate entrances to both. Very important, the soft-brick exterior walls from the nineteenth century were covered with new wire-brushed, resistant brick to give the building the completely different appearance you see today that belies its age. The former paint shop was similarly rebricked. It was incorporated into the original corner building so seamlessly that the two buildings appear as one today, although at slightly different elevations.

The Southside Post Office (the city’s first branch post office) and Southside Drug Store were the first to occupy the renovated buildings, with doctor and dentist offices above. In 1921, the corner building became the ill-fated Cole County Bank, which was forced to close in 1938 during the Great Depression.

This more than 130-year-old building, now owned by Prairie Farms, is one of the signature historic buildings in the Southside.

Text ©Walter A. Schroeder, 2021

Photo credit: Missouri State Archives

The 700 Block of Jefferson Street in the Southside

Below is the text for the "Munichburg Memories" ad that ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune on September 12, 2021, as a promotion for the Old Munichburg Association's annual Oktoberfest, which was held September 25.

The image that this post refers to is the property of C. Trenton Boyd, who graciously allowed us to use it in the newspaper promotion. He did not provide permission for any other use, so the image does not appear here. A verbal description of the image appears at the end of this post.

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Jefferson Street has always been a major street in the Southside. However, its 700 block—the hill from Dunklin past ECCO up to Ashley—presented problems for traffic. When it had a dirt surface in the nineteenth century, wagons used every bit of its 80-foot right-of-way to zigzag up the steep grade through deep ruts. The hill was so troublesome, going both up and down, that horses and wagons often detoured over to Washington Street past Central Church.

A chief impediment was a rock ledge in the middle of the hill and an oozing spring above it. This spring was associated with a natural cave just to the east of the street, which Farmers Home used for natural cooling. The constant seepage in the street was not overcome until the mid-twentieth century.

The steepness of the hill was lessened by grading down the road bed. The photo (ca. 1910) shows thirteen men (all with hats) removing several feet of rock from the crest of the Jefferson Street hill at Ashley Street. They are using a single pneumatic jackhammer (used by the man in back, right), plus picks and shovels. Men in suit coats are hauling away rock in two mule-pulled wagons. Central Church is visible in the left background. Today’s Calvary’s Gifts is located where the black steam boiler is. The two-story, frame Kielman house (no longer there) is on the right, atop undisturbed rock; when the grading was done, it was eight feet above the new street level.

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Image description: The black-and-white photograph was taken from roughly east-southeast of the intersection of Jefferson and Ashley; the view is roughly north. Central Evangelical Church is at the far left, in the background, and a clapboard-sided, two-story house is at the right. The center foreground is dominated by a wide area of excavation into bedrock. Within the excavated area are two mule-drawn, open-bed wagons (in line, with both facing toward the left) and thirteen men standing at their various work locations to pose for the picture. Several of the men are leaning on their shovels or other tools. In each wagon, a teamster stands holding the mules' reins. At the right, a man at a higher level of the excavated area appears to be jackhammering and is the only person not facing the camera. A large steam-powered generator stands in the background, with smoke coming from its exhaust stack and drifting toward the south. A shadow, apparently cast by an off-camera structure to the left, falls on the lower left portion of the image, shading the front part of the front mule and the south part of the excavated area.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2021

Flooding Turned Dunklin Into Waterside Dock

One thing we’ll remember about the summer of 2019 is the prolonged, extensive flooding along the Missouri River, its tributary Wear’s Creek, and other low areas in Jefferson City. Did you know that in 1844, a major flood allowed a Missouri River steamboat to float up the east branch of Wear’s Creek—whose course essentially ran along today’s 50/63 expressway—all the way to the 100 block of East Dunklin? The low backyard of Busch’s Florist is where the boat docked.



The watercraft, in this case, was a small, short steamboat—more like a river ferry, or a large steam-powered raft—not a monster like today’s “Delta Queen.” It was carrying German immigrants, including members of the Nieghorn and Hartenstein families, who were among the first Bavarians to farm in Cole County. After crossing the Atlantic, they had traveled on steamboats north from New Orleans on the Mississippi, then, on smaller craft, west on the Missouri. Boats were the best way to get to Jefferson City in its early years, since there were no railroads to town at that time.

The flood of 1844 was the Missouri River’s greatest flood ever in recorded history, by volume of water. The Great Flood of 1993 was actually somewhat less in volume, though it rose higher due to later channel engineering and levees. The 1844 flood, which occurred before the river had been contained, created 10-foot-high sand dunes in the Missouri River bottoms. The river channel changed its course in several places that year. River pilots navigated their steamboats over the tops of completely submerged trees and croplands in the river bottoms. Considering the floods of 1993 and 2019, it’s not hard to see how the backed-up water of Wear’s Creek, in a time before the Whitten Expressway, could allow a steamboat of German immigrants to navigate as far as where Busch’s Florist is today.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2019, with information from Gary Schmutzler, a Nieghorn descendant

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 25, 2019.

Dunklin Street Closure Reminds Us It Wasn’t Always a Beeline

One thing we’ll remember about the summer of 2019 is the closure of West Dunklin Street! We’re glad the city’s making major improvements to the 300 and 400 blocks of Dunklin, including a new bridge over Wear’s Creek. But detouring around the construction zone has certainly grown wearisome!



Few people know that until the 1920s, the Southside was shut off from both east and west sides of Jefferson City, because Dunklin stopped at each end. A steep hill on the east side of Jackson Street closed off access to Lincoln University, and a steep bluff west of Broadway and Wear’s Creek closed off access to the west.

But when cars came in and subdivisions sprouted up around the city center, something had to be done. Dunklin was selected to become the Southside’s major through street. The steep hill in the 500 block of East Dunklin was graded down and paved to handle cars. Likewise, the bluff in the 300 block of West Dunklin was graded down and paved, and a substantial bridge was built across Wear’s Creek in the 400 block. These two street improvements simplified access to the emerging Fairmount Boulevard and Moreau Drive neighborhood on the east, and to the emerging Washington Park neighborhood, along the new US 50 (now Missouri Blvd.), to the west.

When city buses replaced streetcars in the 1930s, they joined thousands of local drivers in using the new beeline that Dunklin offered—and which we have missed using this summer. It’s easy to see why this summer’s improvements to Dunklin are necessary. Not only is Dunklin the Southside’s “main street”—it’s a critical east-west connector in Jefferson City.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2019

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 22, 2019.

The 1880 Tornado and 218 West Elm

The tornado of May 22, 2019, wasn’t the first to hit Jefferson City. Just after 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 18, 1880, a tornado struck nearby Cole County and the far west side of town. The injuries and ruin it caused were described in the Peoples Tribune and the Evening State Journal. The quarter-mile-wide tornado ravaged the Centertown, Elston, and Scruggs Station neighborhoods and continued as far east as the present Jaycees Fairgrounds, Country Club, and Capital Mall.

Lengthy newspaper accounts named forty families and individuals affected by the tornado, detailing their injuries and property damage. About twenty-five frame and log homes were damaged or destroyed. Farm animals were killed or blown away, orchards were downed, and people were hurled from their homes as far as forty feet. A house was blown onto the Missouri Pacific tracks, and a train crashed into it in the dark, nearly killing the engineer and fireman.

One of the tornado’s frightened survivors was eighteen-year-old Nannie Pollock, who lived with her parents and sisters on a farm near present-day Turnberry Drive (just west of the Country Club). Eleven years later in 1891, when she married John C. Renner and moved to Jefferson City’s Southside, she insisted that the house he was building for them, at 218 West Elm, have double-thick brick walls. She wanted it to be able to withstand a tornado!



That solidly built 1891 brick house with extra-strong walls is still standing, 128 years later, testimony to a young woman scarred by the terrible 1880 tornado on the west side of Jefferson City.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2019, with information from Pat Renner Schroeder

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 25, 2019.

Jefferson City’s First YMCA

Jefferson City’s popular Firley YMCA, at 525 Ellis Boulevard on the southern edge of the Southside, recently reopened after serious damage from the tornado of May 22, 2019. Most people don’t know that Jefferson City’s first YMCA was organized in the Southside (then called Munichburg) on November 2, 1881, at Central Evangelical Church, now Central United Church of Christ. At the time, it was a German-speaking congregation, so its YMCA was called the Christliche Jünglingsverein der Evangelischen Central Gemeinde (Young Men’s Christian Association of Evangelical Central Congregation). It was affiliated with the national YMCA organization.


The Central Evangelical Church's school (left, shown in 1881) was the home of Jefferson City's first YMCA.

It was common for German American churches to be among the first Midwestern sponsors of YMCAs, perhaps because of the German penchant for calisthenics and exercise, and for forming organizations. Membership began after confirmation at age 13 and lasted until age 30, when one became a honorary member. The organization’s constitution had rules, with cash fines, on attendance, language, and smoking (prohibited during singing and praying).

In keeping with the congregation’s openness to those of other faiths, Central’s YMCA included young men from other local congregations, including English-speaking ones. It also included members from families of all socioeconomic levels and thus was an “equalizer.” By 1895 the YMCA had 66 members but lost its affiliation with the national organization because it began to accept young women. The name was then changed to Christlicher Jügendverein (Christian Youth Organization).

Central’s YMCA was briefly resurrected in 1920, when the church’s Men’s Association authorized the YMCA to sign the contract with Brunswick to construct a bowling alley. By that time, the congregation had switched to English. Central’s YMCA disappears from the record not long after and was replaced by several youth groups.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2019, with information from the Central UCC archives
Photo illustration from CUCC archives and from Harold Horstmann and Mrs. Gus Schwartz Sr.