Marquette Hotel, listed on the NRHP in Missouri
The Marquette Hotel is a six-story brick and reinforced concrete building located at 338 Broadway Street in Cape Girardeau, built in 1928. Its Spanish Colonial Revival style features corner towers with terra-cotta tile roofs, Moorish spiral columns, Romanesque arches, and ornamental wrought iron details, with colorful ceramic tiles and stencil-painted ceilings inside.
The hotel opened in 1928 when a new bridge connected Cape Girardeau to Illinois, bringing more visitors and prompting the community to build a welcoming hotel to support growth. A north wing was added in 1936, and the building operated for nearly 43 years until a health department order closed it in 1971, after which it remained vacant.
When it opened, the hotel became a center of social life where locals gathered in the lobby and attended events and banquets. The colorful hand-painted tiles, high ceilings, and decorative details that remain visible today show how important this place was to the community.
The building stands in downtown Cape Girardeau on Broadway Street and is easy to find on foot, though it has been closed since 1971 and should be viewed from the outside. The exterior remains visible and accessible to those interested in architecture and local history.
In its early years, the hotel housed a studio for local radio station KFVS, which broadcast from inside the building and made it an important broadcasting hub for the region. This connection to early radio history gave the place a role beyond hospitality.
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