SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI AND SURROUNDINGS • 1889


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(previous page) build up all the newly acquired territory.

Messrs. Foster and Rightmire, well known and sterling real estate and investment brokers of marked public spirit, whose field of operations covers the entire region tributary to Springfield, and whose opinion in this connection has more than ordinary value, see no cause for wonder in the expenditure of a million or more in the building enterprises of the last fifteen months, and believe the near future will prove quite as rich in material development for the city.

L. M. Hill & Co., who are among the livest and most courageous real estate and insurance men in the city, and always keep their colors at the masthead, report the past year one of great activity in all departments of their work, and have no doubt of an equally active and satisfactory future.

Mr. J. W. Allmon, a careful and sagacious operator in real estate, who has recently returned from Oklahoma and other portions of the Southwest, comes back to his favorite city with renewed confidence in its capabilities for future advancement

Mr. A. R. Fearn, the owner of Fearn’s addition, a very valuable tract lying between Main and Campbell streets, and a large amount of well improved business property in the heart of the city, has great confidence in Springfield investments at present prices of realty, and with the keen sense of a sagacious financier believes the future has rich returns for the careful investor

Jas. R. Bell, of Jas. R. Bell & Co., well known abstractors and real estate brokers, who are familiar with the real estate transactions of the city, says the active trading and building operations of the past year are based alone on the merits of the location, and are not in any degree traceable to unhealthy speculation.

Robert L. Bone, another busy abstractor, thoroughly familiar with local conditions, expresses the same opinion, and is confident of a long lease of prosperity for builders and investors. One of the most encouraging features of the Springfield situation is found in REAL ESTATE VALUES, which from center to circumference of the city are cheap by comparison with current values in any other city of prominence in the West. Central properties in the business quarters are buying and selling at figures that invite investment either for business or speculation. Choice frontage in popular residence quarters is equally reasonable and every where offers big returns to the investor. Outside property in the new additions is fully 50 per cent. cheaper than in any other prosperous city in the Southwest. The investor may enter Springfield blindfolded and plant his capital anywhere from the public square or Commercial Street, to the outer limits of the city, and DOUBLE HIS MONEY in three to five years. The people are conservative beyond any of my knowledge in the great and growing Southwest, and don’t know what it is to see property go booming to dizzy heights. Realty was very low ten years ago, and though it is 300 and 500 per cent. higher today, it is RELATIVELY CHEAPER than in 1880. Prices may go 50 per cent. higher all along the line, and still leave the city a safer field for investment than any town of 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000, in the western country. EVERYTHING INVITES CAPITAL to Springfield. Real estate, manufacturing and trade, all have the elements of indefinite expansion. The city has grown because it must grow under the STRONG IMPULSE given by the great and growing country surrounding it. The railways have doubled its commercial area, and now from month to month and year to year it GROWS WITHOUT EFFORT of its own people. It has always grown from extraneous impulse, rather than from any organized forces within, and with the same element that transformed the hills and frog ponds of Kansas City into a radiant and booming metropolis of 200,000 people, Springfield, with its matchless location and splendid tributary country, might easily have reached the high estate of 100,000 people. That it will rise to that dignity, some time in the near future, is as certain as the sunshine and the tides. That such a consummation is not a dozen years off, is clear enough to many a visitor, who comes here first from buoyant and booming cities, grown to noble proportions at the hands of BRIGHT AND BUSY TOWN BUILDERS to whom the work of rearing a noble city is a grander prerogative than “two per cent. a month,” and who know how to make the most of situations an hundred times less inviting than Springfield, and THEY ARE COMING HERE. A goodly company of them are already come and more are on the way. They are coming with their wealth of brain and gold, and rich experience in the practical ways of town building, and with ungloved hands, will join the workers already on the ground in rearing upon this fair commanding Ozark plateau, a city worthy of themselves and the location. My impressions of the future of Springfield are neither singular nor exceptional, and (next page)


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