(SPECIAL) Wednesday, November 29, 1978

"The Joplin Globe"Heyday Recalled
Connor Hotel: 1906-1978
An era in Joplin will come to an end a week from now.
Explosives will bring it to a close, but the cause of death actually will be changing times.
The Connor Hotel, one of the last reminders of the bustling, mining origin of the city and an elaborate former center of business and entertainment, is scheduled to come down Sunday morning, Nov. 12.
The demolition will follow nearly a decade-long struggle to reopen the hotel's marble-lined lobby, restaurants of fine cusine and ballrooms of memorable galas.
Many longtime Joplin residents have special memories of the landmark. One man recalls watching, at age 12, its construction and attending, in 1914, his graduation party on the open roof.
Another states that more mining deals were agreed upon in the Connor Hotel and across the street in the House of Lords than anywhere else in town.
In the fall of 1874, J.H. McCoy led an effort to build a hotel on the northwest corner of Fourth and Main Streets. Named the Joplin Hotel, the structure was ready for occupancy by April 1875.
This facility was sacrificed in 1906 to make way for a new Joplin Hotel to be built under the supervision of Thomas O'Connor, an Irish immigrant and one of Joplin's first millionaires.
Connor (the "O" eventually was dropped) came from his native country to Tiffin, Ohio. After trying to enlist as a 12-year-old in the Civil War, he settled for a position as newsboy.
Later, while driving a herd of steers northward, he settled at Seneca. Joplin was practically non-existent.
After moving to the young mining town, he became wealthy through land holdings that yielded lead and zinc. Connor and a man named W. Kilgore established two hack lines to make daily trips to Carthage and Neosho.
When a "small cyclone" hit Joplin in 1903, Connor donated $5,000 to each of three churches that were destroyed, according to the 1912 edition of "A History of Jasper County and It's People" by Joel T. Livingston.
Connor bequeathed $100,000 of his more-than-$6-million estate to the City of Joplin for its indigent residents. He left the same sum to Tiffin, where he is buried.
Connor died on March 29, 1907, before the hotel was finished at a cost of $750,000. Relatives saw to the completion and changed the intended name to that of Connor.
Originally, the Connor Hotel featured 210 sleeping rooms, each with a window, bathroom, telephone and carpeting. Light switches to each room were controlled by the tumblers in the door locks.
Livingston's account notes that "The Connor hotel has long had a widespread reputation for the excellence of its accommodations and cuisine. It is one of the most modern in equipment and enterprise west of the Mississippi River, and it has suffered no loss in caste or standing since it came into the hands of Mr. Baker."
Mr. Baker was Theodore B. Baker, manager of the Connor at that time. Livingston says that Baker kept the hotel "abreast of the times and added to its completeness and attractiveness, and his genial disposition and obliging manner have very considerably increased the popularity of the hostelry, especially among those modern knights errant, the traveling salesmen."
The annex was built in 1928-29 from the alley west to Joplin Avenue and brought the total to 400 rooms.
The lobby, with the white marble stairway beneath a white marble, circular opening enhanced by a crystal chandelier, may be one of the most memorable of the establishment's ornate chambers.
Originally the hotel featured a Louis XVI-style dining room, an Italian Garden Cafe, a news stand, a billiard room, a smokers' store and a barbershop, also featuring white marble decoration and French beveled mirrors.
An auditorium seated 200 persons and had a dance floor with an elevated bandstand. The glassed-in Roof Garden was the sight of numerous evening parties.
One room of the original structure was devoted to meetings of the Joplin Club, an organization formed in 1888 for the purpose of building and improving the city and promoting friendship among businessmen.
A Connor Hotel dining room menu dated April, 30, 1909, listed the following: "Essence of fowl, Windsor, in cup; olives; celery; broiled milk-fed chicken, sur canape; French peas; new potatoes, rissole; lettuce and tomato salad; Neopolitain ice cream; petis four assortie, and demitasse."
Similar dinners, innumerable dances, featuring local orchestras, and many meeting will be rembered along with the fame of the Connor Hotel for years.
Whether such design and service will be reborn in future hotels again will depend on the changing times.

Connor Collapses Without Warning
At Least 3 Missing In Tangled Debris
The 70-year-old front towers of the former Connor Hotel collapsed "super fast" without warning in a boiling fount of dust at approximately 9:15 a.m. Saturday, 23 hours before its scheduled demolition by explosives.
At least three workmen, possibly five, none yet publicly identified, were believed missing in the debris.
Charlie Cravens, a represetative of A&A Wrecking Company, said a job superintendent was believed in the basement and two other company employees were on the ground floor. Late Saturday night he was trying to trace two day laborers, who were recently hired through the Missouri Division of Employment Security and whose names he did not know. He said they are brothers. None of the names of the missing was disclosed by the company.
A&A Wrecking of Tulsa, Okla., had purchased the demolition contract from Coy Blagg Wrecking Company, the general contractor on the job, also of Tulsa, Cravens told a Globe reporter in a brief encounter late Saturday night.
Knowledgeable comment concerning the cause of the accident could not be gained by press time.
Massive rescue operations ensued almost immediately to locate wrecking company workmen believed trapped under the two-story-high mound of steel concrete, brick and dust that once constituted an eight-story, twin-tower building plus roof-garden penthouse structure.
The 50-year-old annex section of the complex listed on the National Historic Register, remained standing to the west. It also was scheduled to be brought down this morning. Except for dust-related problems and two broken windows in a bank building across the street there appeared to be no damage to nearby-by property. Two passers-by were reported injured, but not seriously.
Dust permiated the downtown area.
"We're keeping an eye"on a narrow, eight-story corridor tower that connected the north sides of the seperate sections of the building, said Public Works Director Harold McCoy late in the day. There were reports that the section appeared weak. The portion that collapsed contained two towers.
Ted Tankersley, city building inspector, said the cause of the sudden collapse had not been deterimned. He confirmed that the wrecking company working on the demolition had been in the process of cutting vertical steel members of the front section's superstructure, both on the first floor and in the basement. Tankersley had recalled an uneasiness about his personal safety following a visit in the lobby on Friday.
Tankersley said that no explosives had been placed in the building before its collapse.
City Manager James Berzina, when questioned, indicated an offical investigation ot the accident by the city's building inspection department is possible. He spoke highly of the voluntary turnout of rescuers and equipment.
Not until 11:20 p.m. was The Globe able to make contact with responsible representatives of the wrecking contractor concerning the count of missing workmen. Police and fire officials earlier had relayed reports that three, possibly four or five workmen were missing.
The owner of the property, a not-for-profit organization was contracted through its attorney, inviting comment on the dramatic turn of events, but no response was received by The Globe.
Comments by citizens who witnessed the demise of the hulk, stressed the speed of the gigantic collapse--a matter of a few seconds.
Two persons reportedly received minor injuries while in the vicinity of the thundering crash. Michael Shireman, Joplin Route 1, who was driving past the structure, was taken by ambulance to St. John's Medical Center where he was treated and dismissed.
Ralph Lindgren, 2209 Kentucky Ave., a passerby, also was treated at St. John's.
The curious, numbering in the thousands on an accumulated basis through the day and night, pressed toward the Fourth and Main Street "epicenter" of the catastrophe, but most generally were kept at a distance by the police.
"It was just super fast," said Steve Paul, Johnlin route 1, who heard and saw the collapse from just across Fourth Street next to the First National Bank and Trust Company Building. "It came down quick...just slid down." A slower downhill "slide" of the hotel, economic in nature, began in the early 1960s when competing motels began blossoming along Joplin's South Range Line Road--U.S. Highway 71.
The Landmark building had not been a hostelry since June 28, 1969, and a latter-day restaurant operation that was part of Realtor Burl Garvin's unsuccessful effort to save the building, was closed Feb. 24, 1977.
The demolition was being undertaken as a square-block clearing to provide a site for a new Joplin library building. Library Landholders Inc., a not-for-profit corporation put together by local businessmen and downtown interests, acquired the property for future transfer to the library board.
A vacant one-story building, two doors north of the aging Connor on Main Street (Missouri Highway 43), was smashed by the fall. This was in keeping with the results of the planned demolition. The one-story building and two to its north were to be demolished anyway.
The contractor for the demolition, had elected to do most of the wrecking by explosives. Placement of the explosives--special-shaped charges and dynamite sticks--was to have gotten underway Saturday, according to Jim Redyke, president of Dyke Explosive Service Company, a subcontractor.
A somewhat festive mood, tinged with nostalgic regret had been building up for the planned adieus to the Connor shortly after 8 a.m. today. The demolition contractor had planned a Saturday night dance and a breakfast today for invited guests. "In recognition of the Connor," The mood suddenly changed to concern, remorse and regret as rescuers ripped and gouged at the ugly ruins.
Dozens of persons, construction company machinery operators, National Guardsmen, municipal employees and workers from other firms and agencies, gave up their private Saturday schedule to involve themselves in the rescue operation.
"It's going to get slower," McCoy said at late afernoon, noting that some of the earlier debris removal was off the top of the tons of ruins.
The roof garden penthouse, which had housed many festive events since its enclosure during World War I, apparently disintergrated upon collapse of the building and broke into countless framents atop the main mass.