Like the adjacent stadium, Houck Field House honors Regent Louis Houck, but the original structure owed its existence to the most renowned evangelist of the 1920s: a major league baseball player-turned-preacher, Billy Sunday.
For five weeks in the spring of 1926, Cape Girardeau hosted the Reverend Billy Sunday. Since no existing church could hold the expected crowds, local ministers constructed a special “tabernacle” on the corner of Bellevue and Middle Streets. Billy Sunday filled the wooden hall’s 5,000 seats day after day. It is estimated that 250,000 souls came to hear him all together, including 20,000 on his Easter finale.
After Sunday’s revival, church leaders donated the building materials from the temporary tabernacle to Southeast to be repurposed for campus construction projects. President Joseph Serena allocated those resources – lumber, windows, and roofing valued at about $2,500 – to Houck Field House.
Completed in March 1927, the original Field House housed our Physical Education Department. The basketball court and locker rooms were the home of Southeast’s basketball teams, as well as Central High School, College High School, and church leagues. The field house also served many of the same community event functions as today’s Show Me Center, hosting political speeches, religious services, concerts, automobile shows, cooking schools, Scouting events, and civic celebrations.
Old Houck Field House – with all its heavenly connections – burned in February 1948 and in 1951 was replaced by the facility used today.
