Lohman Building (1839)    Date: 1990

 

Jefferson Landing, Jefferson City, Missouri

 

When the only highways wee the rivers, when settlement began at the Jefferson City waterfront and developed up to the crest of its hills and beyond, Jefferson Landing was the gateway to Missouri’s Capital city.

The Lohman building constructed by James A. Crump in 1839, just over a decade after Jefferson City became the seat of state government, is now the last building of its kind along the Missouri River, a link between today’s citizens with the pioneers who founded and built our town. 

 

Crump ran a grocery store in part of the basement, leased the upper floors as a hotel, and sold the rest of the building to two other men who used remaining basement space as warehouses for river freight.

 

In 1852, Charles Lohman and his brother-in-law, Charles Maus, bought the building and used it for a merchandising center.  Ferry operators, businessmen traveling by steamboat, and fur traders knew Lohman’s Landing as it was the called.

 

The arrival of the Pacific Railroad in the mid-1850s brought new life and commerce to the old landing.  For a time, trains would bring freight to Jefferson City, and the cargo would be loaded form them to steamboats for transportation upstream to St. Joseph.  Business was good at the Landing in those years, so good that Maus built the hotel across the street to the east. 

 

The hotel building now houses an art gallery and, appropriately, the train station for AMTRAK.

 

As river traffic declined, the building was used for storage.

 

For many years the building was used as a warehouse for the Tweedie Shoe Corporation.  In the 1960s, the state bought it for a warehouse.

 

The people who constructed the building had permanence in mind, with walls 18 inches thick and a foundation 30 inches thick.  But the old building’s future was in doubt in the late sixties and early seventies before a concerted local effort stopped plans to clear the land for a parking lot and let to renovation of the building and two nearby historic structures as part of the state park system.  The building was restored to appear as it had in a painting made of the area in the 1840s.

 

The Lohman Building, the Union Hotel to the east and the Maus house to the south, were restored and dedicated as the Jefferson Landing Historic site on July 4, 1976.

 

Today the Lohman Building is a visitor’s center for guests in the Capital City.  Slide shows on the area’s history and a museum concentrating on the development of Jefferson City as the seat of Missouri government and the role the building played in that development are in the basement.

 

Visitors walk the stone floor, touch the limestone walls, and sense the atmosphere of history in the building.

 

Cole County Historical Society wishes to acknowledge Mr. Bob Priddy as the author of this text.