Pieces of history preserved along Capitol Avenue five years after Jefferson City tornado

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The May 2019 tornado that swept through Jefferson City marked a historic moment that changed people's lives and the scope of the city, while also taking some pieces of history with it.

It tore through the east side of town, damaging many parts of the city that held historical significance. These included landmarks like the Missouri State Penitentiary and rows of historical houses along Jackson Street and East Capitol Avenue.

Donna Deetz was the president of the Historic City of Jefferson organization in 2019 and remembers the eerie feeling of seeing the damage to Capitol Avenue after the tornado.

"Everybody was just kind of walking around in a daze wondering what was going to happen next and what the damage looked like," Deetz said.

A map provided by Deetz shows 15 buildings within two blocks of East Capitol Avenue were damaged by the tornado. Of the 15 that received damage, most were listed as unsafe. Six were designated as local landmarks.

Some of those buildings are now just empty plots.

This includes the Dix Apartments at 623 E. Capitol Avenue, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is now a slab of concrete.

Or the Dallmeyer House at 600 E. Capitol Avenue, built in 1875 by a Civil War veteran, which is now just a patch of grass.

Deetz said the tornado picked up the Dallmeyer House off of its foundation and it couldn't be reset. All that is left now are a few concrete steps leading up to where the house used to stand.

"It was a hard one to have taken down," Deetz said.

She said it was heartbreaking to see what was happening to the historical buildings in the City.

"There's so much history and so many stories there," Deetz said. "When you lose one of those buildings, you're losing a piece of that history and a piece of those stories."

Not every building that was damaged, though, had to come down.

512 E. Capitol Avenue had an entire wall knocked down into a pile of bricks after the tornado.

The building, originally built in 1873, now houses the Communique offices. CEO Adam Veile said he was surprised the building wasn't condemned.

"We were a building with three walls, and it turns out you only need three walls," Veile said. "So, we kind of just got to work."

Communique has been in that building on Capitol Avenue since 1983.

Veile said he remembers days from his childhood sliding down the banister and attending Christmas parties in that building, and it's for both historical and personal reasons that it was important to him to rebuild.

"It's all the lives that came before you," Veile said. "And, in this building, we've been here 30 years, so, it's not only the people who came before us, it's a lot of our own history."

He said insurance gave them $290,000. So, Veile made that his budget.

"Every once in a while, somebody would walk by on the street and say, 'What are you doing? Why are you even trying to do this?' But, you know ... this is our building," Veile said. "It's important, I think, to this street."

Veile said a large tarp was put up in the meantime to try to keep the elements out and the Communique team worked in a different office.

The rebuild was completed in the summer of 2020, more than a year after the tornado knocked the wall over.

The interior, which used to be decorated with lush blue carpet and unique wallpaper, now looks a bit different with hardwood floors and light blue walls. But, parts of the history were able to be recovered, including a mantle that Veile said was found intact in the large pile of bricks.

Now, Communique is being recognized for its preservation efforts.

Veile and the Communique team are receiving the Golden Hammer Award and the Gregory Stockard Award from the Historic City of Jefferson. Deetz said these awards are given to people who do extraordinary preservation work in Jefferson City.

"It's hard to talk about the City of Jefferson without talking about its history," Deetz said.

Historic City of Jefferson is also doing what it can to preserve pieces of the historic buildings.

Deetz said when a historic building is scheduled to be demolished, such as those along Capitol Avenue, Historic City of Jefferson will ask the owner to salvage any historic pieces like doorways, windows and mantlepieces.

Those items are then resold through Historic City of Jefferson's salvage store for anyone to buy and repurpose.

"There's a lot of ways to re-utilize that material, but there's stories that go along with them," Deetz said.

Deetz said after the tornado that she was focused on fixing the damage to the Historic City of Jefferson office building, which included broken windows, a blown-off roof and a knocked out wall. Other than that, all she could do was support the other homeowners in the area.

"There's not a whole lot that we can do other than physically help clean stuff," Deetz said. "We did a lot of reclamation, a lot of salvaging where buildings could not be saved."

Veile said he remembers so many volunteers coming around to help.

"It was just amazing, it was an army of people, and people calling and texting, everybody wanting to pitch in," Veile said. "We couldn't have done it without all those people."

Jefferson City is currently working through the RFP process to address blight in other buildings along Capitol Avenue due to both the tornado and other pre-existing conditions.

Watch the ABC 17 News special "Rebuilding Mid-Missouri" at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.