Historic Preservation

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Entry Category: Historic Preservation

Tower Building

The Tower Building is an eighteen-story commercial structure located at 323 Center Street, which is at the northeast corner of 4th and Center Streets in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). It was constructed between 1958 and 1960 and, as the state’s tallest building at the time of its completion, was usually referred to as a skyscraper. On September 23, 2011, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Amid the prosperity and optimism of the postwar era in the 1950s, the building was the brainchild of Winthrop Rockefeller, an influential state resident and future governor who lived at Petit Jean Mountain in Conway County. Rockefeller was interested in economic development for the state, claiming that Arkansas would not …

Trapnall Hall

Located at 423 E. Capitol Ave. in the MacArthur Park Historic District of Little Rock (Pulaski County), Trapnall Hall is an exquisite example of Greek Revival architecture. It was constructed in 1843 of brick at a time when most houses were made of either wood or rock. The architect is unknown. The house was built for Frederic and Martha Trapnall. Frederic Trapnall was a lawyer who spent several sessions in the Arkansas General Assembly. Frederic fell ill and died in 1853, and Martha lived in the home until her death in 1861. Frederic’s brothers became the heirs to the property, and, as they lived out of state, quickly sold the home. In 1929, Julia Taylor purchased the home and donated it …

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, located at 310 West 17th Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is a parish church and the seat of the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. From the arrival of the first bishop in 1839 until late 1884, the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas operated without a cathedral. On October 19, 1884, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral was formally established and held its first services. Designed in English Gothic Revival style, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is a common-bond brick structure with the main section in the shape of a cruciform. The interior is primarily darkly stained pine, punctuated with numerous stained-glass windows and motifs representing the trinity, including …

True Grit Trail

Arkansas is home to a number of trails commemorating different aspects of the state’s history and culture. In 2019, the Arkansas General Assembly established the True Grit Trail, highlighting events and places in western Arkansas that were part of the storyline in the 1968 Charles Portis novel True Grit. In 1968, a serial written by El Dorado (Union County) native Charles Portis was published in the Saturday Evening Post. The series told the story of a young girl named Mattie Ross who, in the late 1800s, attempted to bring her father’s murderer to justice. From her home in Dardanelle (Yell County), she traveled to Fort Smith (Sebastian County), where she received the assistance of U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn. The serial …

Tuckerman Water Tower

The Tuckerman Water Tower, located on the south end of Front Street in Tuckerman (Jackson County), was constructed in 1935 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act included an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was created on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. The City of Tuckerman decided to …

Twelve Oaks

The Twelve Oaks estate, located in a rural setting just south of Harrison (Boone County), is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which notes its local significance for its Craftsman- and Colonial Revival–style architecture. The house is one of the best examples of a Craftsman/Colonial Revival estate—and an unusually large example of the style—in the Harrison area. With the rise of the railroad industry in Harrison in the early twentieth century, a building boom hit the city. Among those who had worked on many high-profile buildings in Harrison was J. W. Bass, a steel contractor based in Detroit, Michigan. His J. W. Bass Erecting Company and Atlas Iron & Steel Company had offices in Detroit; Chicago, Illinois; and …

Two Rivers Museum

The Two Rivers Museum, located on the corner of Constitution Avenue (Highway 71) and Main Street in Ashdown (Little River County), opened in 2005. The museum, which was created by the nonprofit Little River County Historical Society has a mission of preserving the history of the local community. The museum gets its name from the two major rivers that flow through Little River County: the Red River and Little River. The Two Rivers Museum is located in the Bishop building in the Ashdown Commercial Historic District. The building is a renovated hundred-year-old storefront that was once a pharmacy and, more recently, an antique store. The Bishop building, built in 1908, is a two-story brick structure with a flat roof and …

Tyronza Water Tower

The Tyronza Water Tower, located northeast of the junction of Main and Oliver streets in Tyronza (Poinsett County), was constructed in 1935 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act created an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was established on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. The farming community of Tyronza …

Tyson Family Commercial Building

Located in downtown Camden (Ouachita County), the Tyson Family Commercial Building is an example of early-twentieth-century commercial architecture that continues to be utilized for that purpose in the twenty-first century. Constructed around 1923, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1994. Founded on the Ouachita River in the early 1800s, Camden became an important regional commercial hub. Crops grown in the surrounding area were taken to the city for shipment downriver. In 1873, the Iron Mountain Railroad constructed a line to Camden, increasing economic activities. By the early twentieth century, the town served as a major industrial and agricultural center in southern Arkansas, with numerous businesses operating in the area. One of the …

U.S. Marshals Museum

The U.S. Marshals Service, the nation’s oldest law enforcement agency, was established in 1789 by President George Washington when he signed the Judiciary Act into law. A Smithsonian exhibit about the U.S. Marshals Service, “America’s Traveling Star,” was displayed at locations throughout the United States and then housed in Laramie, Wyoming, from 1991 until 2002. After the museum in Laramie closed, the Marshals Service began an active search for a new museum site. Several cities indicated interest in the new museum, including Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Community leaders in Fort Smith felt that the city was a logical choice for the museum because of Fort Smith’s western heritage, the presence of Judge Isaac Parker’s court, the work of early intrepid …

U.S. Senator Hattie Caraway Gravesite

The first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, the first to preside over a session of the Senate, the first to chair a committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing was Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway of Jonesboro (Craighead County). On September 20, 2007, her Jonesboro gravesite was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Caraway was born on February 2, 1878, in Tennessee. While attending college at Dickson Normal College in Dickson, Tennessee, she met her future husband, Thaddeus Horatius Caraway of Clay County, Arkansas. They were married in 1902 and moved to Jonesboro. Thad Caraway was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912 and the U.S. Senate in 1920. After his …

Underground Hospital

aka: Fifty-fifth General Hospital
The Fifty-fifth General Hospital, “the Underground Hospital,” at Robinson Maneuver Training Center in Pulaski County was activated on May 25, 1943, during the United States’ involvement in World War II. Documents relating to the hospital were declassified on September 27, 1958; these stated that the Underground Hospital was the brainchild of then commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Charles Chute Gill of the United States Army Medical Corps. Prior to other modern medical ventures, such as the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units implemented during the Korean War, the Underground Hospital experiment sought to simulate battle conditions and assess the potential for providing protected medical care at or near the frontlines. Gill, a graduate of the Medical School at the University of …

Union County Courthouse

The Union County Courthouse is located in downtown El Dorado (Union County), a 1920s oil boomtown about twenty miles from the Louisiana state border. The four-story Union County Courthouse, like others across the state, is situated in a public square where businesses, banks, and law offices occupy rows of buildings around the seat of justice. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the courthouse as historically and architecturally significant for its symbolism of El Dorado’s growth and its example of the Classical Revival style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1983. The first building used as a courthouse in Union County was a storeroom owned by Albert Rust at Champagnolle (Union County) in the …

Union Station

aka: MoPac Station
The original version of what became Union Station in Little Rock (Pulaski County) was built in 1872–73. This building was demolished in 1906 to make way for a concrete and brick structure built in 1907. This station burned in 1920 but was rebuilt, opening again in summer 1921. Also known as the Missouri Pacific or “MoPac” Station, Union Station is located on Markham and Victory streets and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1977. In the twenty-first century, it is used as a stop for the Amtrak Texas Eagle and as part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. It also serves as an event venue and houses office space. The fire in 1920 that destroyed …

United Daughters of the Confederacy

The first United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) chapter in Arkansas—and the second west of the Mississippi River—was Pat Cleburne Chapter 31, chartered on March 7, 1896, in Hope (Hempstead County). As with all Arkansas chapters, the objectives remain the same: historical, educational, benevolent, memorial, and patriotic. Mrs. C. A. Forney was the chapter’s first president. On January 21, 1952, the Arkansas UDC was incorporated as a non-profit organization. By 2020, Arkansas had twenty-two chapters. The United Daughters of the Confederacy was the outgrowth of consolidating benevolent organizations and auxiliaries of United Confederate Veterans Camps, which were formed after the Civil War. On September 10, 1894, Anna Davenport Raines of Georgia and Caroline Meriwether Goodlet of Tennessee met in Nashville, …

University of Arkansas Museum

The University of Arkansas Museum at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County) developed from a geology teaching collection begun in 1873 for university students. Housed in Old Main, the collection grew to include not only rocks, minerals, and fossils, but also zoological specimens, cultural and historical objects, and archaeological artifacts, with a particular emphasis on objects and specimens from Arkansas. The collections were then made available to students, researchers, and exhibit designers for use in university classes, for study by researchers, and for exhibit loans. The collections were once on public display at UA but are now only open to researchers and available to loan for other institutions for exhibition and research. Professor Francis L. Harvey was the …

University of Arkansas Senior Walk

The Senior Walk at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) is one of the oldest and most distinctive traditions maintained by the university. The walk, which contains the inscribed names of over 200,000 seniors and graduates, snakes through the campus for several miles and includes the names of famous athletes, architects, poets, heads of state, a Miss America, and some honorary names including Bill and Hillary Clinton. The university claims it to be the only one of its kind in the United States. It is believed that the origin of the walk lies in a request by the Class of 1905 to inscribe the names of class members on a campus sidewalk. Once permission was given, the …

USS Hoga (YT-146)

aka: City of Oakland [Boat]
The USS Hoga (YT-146) is a Woban-class District Harbor Tug built in 1940. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989 in recognition of actions during the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It later served as a fireboat, called the City of Oakland, in California before becoming part of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 2015. The keel of the Hoga—named for the Sioux word for fish—was laid down on July 25, 1940, by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Corporation of Morris Heights, New York, and it was launched on December 31, 1940. Designated YT-146 (for Yard Tug), the Hoga was put in service on May …