West-Blazer House

The West-Blazer House, located at 8107 Peters Road in the Ebenezer community near Jacksonville (Pulaski County), is a circa 1912 Plain Traditional–style farmhouse embellished with subtle elements of the Folk Victorian and Craftsman styles of architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2017.

Monroe Jackson West was born in the Ebenezer community in northern Pulaski County on July 15, 1863; his future wife, Corilla Elizabeth Winkler, was also born there on May 10, 1868. They married on March 16, 1887. The couple apparently either lived with West’s family or rented a home before he purchased a tract of land in 1908 on which he would build a new home for his family.

West, a carpenter by trade, built a one-story, wood-frame structure clad in weatherboard and featuring a large front porch on its northeast façade flanked by a screened-in porch. The building’s Plain Traditional design is enhanced by turned porch supports that provide minimal Folk Victorian detailing, while exposed rafter tails evidence the Craftsman style that was popular when the West-Blazer House was constructed. This was originally an L-shaped building, but later additions gave the house a squared-off appearance.

The farmstead features a twelve-by-twenty-foot wood-frame shed that was probably built around 1912, the same time as the West-Blazer House, and a circa 1942 wood-frame building that may have been used as a temporary barracks at Camp Joseph T. Robinson before being purchased after World War II and moved to the property to serve as a storage building.

Monroe West died in 1960, and Corilla West died six years later. Their youngest daughter, Ruth Blazer, had moved into the house in the late 1950s to care for the aging Wests, and she lived there until her 1989 death. The current owners purchased the house in 1993, and it remains a privately owned residence in the twenty-first century.

“Today, the [Ebenezer] community has mostly vanished, with only a few scattered home sites where historic homes have been replaced with more modern structures and a small private cemetery just to the east of this property, in a stand of trees near a small pond,” the National Register nomination form states. “The West-Blazer House is one of the only historic homes in the surrounding area.”

For additional information:
Robertson, Richard, and Callie Williams. “West-Blazer House.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form On file at Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Little Rock, Arkansas. Online at https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/pu10040_nr-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=744f8ef2_0 (accessed February 22, 2021).

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System