Historic Preservation

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Entry Category: Historic Preservation - Starting with G

Galatia Church

The Galatia Church is a one-room, wood-framed structure located southeast of the town of Norfork (Baxter County). Constructed circa 1900, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 2020. Although adjacent to the Galatia Church, the Galatia Cemetery was created several decades before the construction of the first church building on the site. Since its creation, the cemetery has grown to include private family areas as well as additional acreage. According to local oral tradition, the cemetery was in use by members of the Lackey family in the mid-nineteenth century. In February 1886, only three years before his death in 1889, Robert Lackey deeded ten acres of land for a church and cemetery to the …

Gangster Museum of America

The history of Hot Springs (Garland County) and its role in Arkansas and American history has, since 2008, been brought to life in the award-winning Gangster Museum of America, located at 510 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs. The museum was founded by Robert Raines, under the umbrella of Historical Attractions, Inc. (a for-profit corporation), and was the recipient of the 2009 Tourism of the Year Award in Garland County. It was also a 2011 Henry Award finalist in the Arkansas Heritage category. Although there are many artifacts and hundreds of photo exhibits, the museum experience is driven by a tour guide who navigates a series of eyewitness accounts on high-definition video presentations of those who lived through the “glory days” …

Gann House

The Gann House is among the oldest buildings still standing in Saline County. The Gann House also reportedly had the first indoor bathrooms in the city of Benton (Saline County). It was built in 1895 in the Queen Anne style as the private residence of prominent doctor and freemason Dr. Dewell Gann Sr. and his family. Gann was born on March 31, 1863, in Atlanta, Georgia. In Arkansas, his family became well known for its contributions to history and to the field of medical science. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 1976, a few months after what is now the Gann Museum, immediately neighboring it on South Market Street in Benton, was …

Gann Museum of Saline County

The Gann Museum of Saline County, established in 1980, is located in a historical structure at 218 Market Street in Benton (Saline County). Housed in the old medical offices of doctors Dewell Gann Sr. and Dewell Gann Jr., it contains an extensive collection of Arkansas artifacts: Quapaw and Caddo Indian artifacts, Niloak and other pottery made in Saline County, memorabilia depicting early county history up to the present, industrial and manufacturing items, photographs, and old newspapers. It is an incorporated, nonprofit institution, governed by a committee of thirteen county residents. The Gann building is an architectural landmark. Built in 1893 as the office of Dr. Dewell Gann Sr., it is the only known building in existence that is constructed out …

Gann Row Historic District

The Gann Row Historic District was located three blocks from downtown Benton (Saline County). It contained thirteen homes constructed between 1880 and 1924. The district was named for Dr. Dewell Gann Sr., who rented homes on the property to local workers and their families. The oldest homes in the district were in the Folk Victorian style, while the dominant style was Craftsman. The Gann Row Historic District was bordered on the north by West Maple, on the east by South Main, on the south by West Pine, and on the west by South Market. The Gann Row Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 5, 1999. By 2017, all the houses but one, 418 …

Garland County Courthouse

The Garland County Courthouse is located at Ouachita Avenue and Hawthorne Street in Hot Springs (Garland County). The four-story brick building is recognized by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program to be both architecturally and historically significant, with one source calling it perhaps the finest example of Renaissance Revival–style architecture in the state. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. After the Civil War, Hot Springs grew into one of the nation’s leading health resorts. At that time, the county seat of Hot Spring County was in Rockport (Hot Spring County) near Malvern (Hot Spring County), a day-long trip for the citizens of Hot Springs. They urged the Arkansas General Assembly to create a new county, …

Garland County Historical Society

The Garland County Historical Society (GCHS) was organized on April 19, 1960, to preserve and encourage interest in the history of Garland County. The first officers were John Connelly, president; Mary D. Hudgins, vice president; Capitola Glazner, secretary; Dr. Francis J. Scully, treasurer; and Sam Sargo, Nathan Schoenfeld, and Katherine Creason, who formed the board of governors. The same year it was founded, the society published the first volume of its journal, The Record. Originally a quarterly, The Record is now a yearly publication that has won numerous awards from the Arkansas Historical Association. Inez Cline served as the editor of The Record from 1963 to 1986 and as associate editor from 1987 to 1988. The historical material she gathered …

Garland County Public Library

The Garland County Public Library, located in Hot Springs (Garland County), has the stated goal of connecting the community with materials, information, and services that promote learning and enjoyment for all ages. Located in a spacious facility on Malvern Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Hot Springs, it earned a long history of civic support toward maintaining an outstanding library for the community. The earliest known reference to establishing a library in Hot Springs was in an 1833 letter written by pioneering local resident Hiram Whittington to his brother in Boston, Massachusetts. Whittington described his plan to create the settlement’s first circulating library in his log cabin home at the junction of today’s Whittington and Park avenues in Hot …

Garrett Whiteside Hall

Garrett Whiteside Hall, located at the corner of North Third Avenue and Lockesburg Street in Nashville (Howard County), is a single-story, wood-frame gymnasium built in 1940 through the National Youth Administration (NYA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1994. The public school system in Nashville had its origins in the 1880s when the Nashville Academy opened; it had three teachers and 115 students by 1890. The original 1886 wood-frame school building burned in 1931 and was replaced a year later. As the Great Depression yielded President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies, the school district sought funding for a gymnasium through the NYA. In part through the aid of …

Garrott House

The Garrott House is the oldest surviving structure in Batesville (Independence County) and the first Batesville structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1971). The first house in Batesville’s School Addition, it was built in 1842 by Independence County pioneer George Case, who moved to Batesville from Ohio in 1837. A carpenter and cabinetmaker, Case built the house for his wife’s sister and her husband, Eliza (Ridgeway) and Robert Williams, who were also from Ohio. The house is of braced frame construction, its inner structure composed of squared logs mortised and pegged together at the base and top of each wall, each corner being “braced” by a diagonal log also mortised and pegged into the logs laid horizontally …

Gatewood House

The Gatewood House, designed in the Shingle architectural style, is gambrel-roofed home located in Malvern (Hot Spring County). Constructed in 1905, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1992. The house was constructed by Matthew and Hannah Duffie for their daughter, Annie Sinney Duffie Gatewood. Amie married Edwin Lee Gatewood in Dallas County in 1893, and the couple had three children between 1894 and 1902. Edwin died in Beebe (White County) on April 14, 1905, and Annie lived in the home with her children, Anita, Edwin, and Estell. She died on March 2, 1947, and is buried with her husband in Malvern. The home is located at 235 Pine Bluff Street and faces north. …

Gatewood, Willard Badgett, Jr.

Willard Badgett Gatewood Jr. was a nationally recognized scholar and longtime professor of history at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He also served briefly as chancellor of the university. Gatewood was the author of numerous books, most dealing with African-American and southern history. Willard B. Gatewood was born on February 23, 1931, on a farm on the Park Springs Road in Caswell County, North Carolina. His parents were Willard B. Gatewood, who was a tobacco farmer, and Bessie Pryor Gatewood. He received his BA, MA, and PhD in history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He began his college teaching career at East Tennessee State University in 1957, and it was there that he met …

Gay Oil Company Building

Located at 300 Broadway in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the Gay Oil Company Building is an example of an early twentieth-century Neoclassical-style office building. Constructed in 1925 and covering three lots, the building served as the headquarters for the Gay Oil Company. The business was founded to sell kerosene and various lubricating oils but expanded into the sale of gasoline and various items related to automobiles. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 2017. Thomas Jefferson Gay organized the Richardson-Gay Oil Company in Texas in 1903. Focused on refining oil, Gay sold his holdings in the business in 1905 and moved to Little Rock, where he founded the Gay Oil Company in 1907. …

General Robert E. Lee Monument

The General Robert E. Lee Monument in Marianna (Lee County) is a commemorative sculpture erected in 1910 by the D. C. Govan Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to remember local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and to honor the man for whom Lee County was named. The Arkansas General Assembly created Lee County in April 1873 from parts of Phillips, Monroe, St. Francis, and Crittenden counties at the behest of William Furbush, an African-American Republican legislator representing part of Phillips County. It is likely that he chose to name the county after the Confederate leader of the Army of Northern Virginia to gain favor with the politically powerful Democrats in …

Geographical Center of Arkansas Marker

The Geographic Center of Arkansas Marker was dedicated on April 12, 1936, as part of the state’s first centennial celebration. The marker was placed at a spot designated by the Arkansas Department of Transportation as the physical center of the state on Highway 5, then called the “Hot Springs Highway.” The presiding officers who participated in the dedication ceremony were Mrs. Charles H. Miller and Jeanne Weinmann, both representing the Colonel Samuel Cherry chapter of the Arkansas Society of the Daughters of American Colonists in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Little Rock branch had been formed just four years before on January 29, 1932. That chapter was also responsible for a number of other historical markers across the state between 1928 …

George Berry Washington Memorial

The George Berry Washington Memorial, located near Earle (Crittenden County), is the burial place of a man born a slave who rose to become an African-American social leader and one of the largest landowners in the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. George Washington Jr. was born on December 25, 1864, the son of George Washington and Hanna Washington. His parents were both born in Kentucky and were possibly the slaves of James G. Berry, one of Crittenden County’s largest landowners, who moved to Arkansas from Kentucky as early as 1833. In May 1883, Washington—who now went by the name George Berry Washington—married eighteen-year-old Ella Rostelle. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1886 and a second daughter, …

George Klein Tourist Court Historic District

aka: Klein Center
aka: Racheau Center
aka: Green Elf Court
The George Klein Tourist Court Historic District at 501 Morrison Avenue in Hot Springs (Garland County) is a well-preserved example of Craftsman-style roadside lodging. Built by 1939 as a tourist court and apartments consisting of seven bungalows around an octagonal two-story office building, it later became the Green Elf Court Apartments. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 8, 1993. Hot Springs was an established resort town before the Civil War because of the widespread belief that the hot springs had medicinal qualities. The first bathhouses predated the federal government reserving the land around the springs in 1832. Access to the area increased over time, first via a narrow-gauge railway from Malvern (Hot Spring …

George W. Mallett House

The George W. Mallett House was, for a while, the only antebellum structure still standing in Princeton (Dallas County). Constructed in 1853 as a dogtrot house, the building was modified over the decades. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983, but no longer stands in Princeton. George Mallett was born in Mecklenburg, Virginia, on April 13, 1826, and moved to Arkansas in 1847. He worked as a tailor in Princeton. Before moving to Arkansas, George married Mary Smith in Virginia, and the couple had three sons and two daughters. Evidence suggests that the couple had another daughter who died as an infant. He entered politics and served as the county treasurer from 1852 …

Gillham City Jail

The Gillham City jail is a small one-room jailhouse located in the town of Gillham (Sevier County). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 2012. In the 1890s, a railroad was constructed through the remote farming community, leading to the relocation of most of the population of the neighboring town of Silver Hill (Sevier County) to Gillham (originally known as Silver City but renamed after a railroad engineer). This large relocation led to a boom in the town, bringing a train depot, an ore mill, and a post office to the community. Commissioned by town officials and constructed in about 1914, the Gillham City Jail was typically used as a temporary holding place for …

Girls Domestic Science and Arts Building (Arkansas Tech University)

aka: Old Art Building (Arkansas Tech University)
aka: Browning Hall (Arkansas Tech University)
The Girls’ Domestic Science and Arts Building, located at 1505 North Boulder Avenue on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville (Pope County), is a two-and-a-half-story brick building built in 1913 and rehabilitated in 1934–1935 with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 18, 1992. Arkansas Polytechnic College (which later became Arkansas Tech University) had seventeen major buildings, including several dormitories that the U.S. Office of Education deemed “unfit for human habitation” at the time Joseph W. Hull became the college’s eighth president in January 1932 and embarked on a major building campaign. In early 1934, the college received funding from the PWA—a …

Glade Community Historical Society

The Glade Community Historical Society (GCHS) was incorporated on November 14, 2011, to preserve the history of the rural northwestern Arkansas area of Glade (Benton County). The nonprofit GCHS is a 501(c)(3) charity. The purpose of the Glade Community Historical Society is to promote the recounting, recording, publishing, preserving, and disseminating of historical matter of the Glade community and surrounding communities. The mission is to collect histories and artifacts that represent the lives of earlier generations who lived in the area. Dr. Anita Frevert was its first president. Along with board members, Frevert established phases and goals for the organization. Board members meet at least eight times a year, with four educational meetings for the public each year. A minimum …