Architects Of Little Rock

"Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas Press, a collaboration, Fayettville 2014"--Page 4 of cover.

Honored with the 1990 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for a lifetime of outstanding achievement, Fay Jones is an Arkansas original. In receiving the medal from Prince Charles of Great Britain, Jones was hailed as a “powerful and special genius who embodies nearly all the qualities we admire in an architect” and as an artist who used his vision to craft “mysterious and magical places” not only in Arkansas but all over the world. This book accompanied a special museum exhibit of Jones’s life and work at the Old State House in Little Rock. It traces Jones’s development from his early years as a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff, to the culmination of his ability in such arresting structures as Pinecote Pavilion in Picayune, Mississippi; Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas; and Chapman University Chapel in Orange, California. Through the black-and-white photographs of the homes, chapels, and other buildings that Jones has created and the accompanying captions and interviews of the architect, the reader is allowed a view into this man’s remarkable talent. Designing structures that fuse architecture and landscape, the organic and the man-made, Jones has created special places which touch their viewers with the power and subtlety of poetry. Herein we learn why. From the Foreword by Robert Adams Ivy Jr.: “Fay Jones’s architecture begins in order and ends in mystery. . . . His role can perhaps best be understood as mediator, a human consciousness that has arisen from the Arkansas soil and scoured the cosmos, then spoken through the voices of stone and wood, steel and glass. Art, philosophy, craft, and human aspiration coalesce in his masterworks, transformed from acts of will into harmonies: Jones lets space sing.”

From Fayetteville, Little Rock, and Hot Springs to Jonesboro, El Dorado, Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and scores of places in between, the latest volume in the Buildings of the United States series provides the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date guide to the architecture of Arkansas. The result of a lifetime's research and fieldwork by the esteemed historian and preservationist Cyrus A. Sutherland, this book captures the range and richness of the state's buildings and landscapes, whose stories can prove as fascinating and gripping as a novel's plotline. Nearly 500 building entries, accompanied by 250 illustrations and 24 maps, encompass the state's major regions--the Ozark Plateau, the Arkansas River Valley, the Ouachita Mountains, the West Gulf Coastal Plain, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (commonly known as the Delta). The places canvassed include everything from works by Arkansas natives E. Fay Jones and Edward Durell Stone to Sam Walton's Five-and-Ten and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to Bill Clinton's birthplace and presidential library. The volume highlights the role and resilience of mountain, valley, and Mississippi River communities; surveys significant state and national parks; and traces the lively history of such resorts as Hot Springs and Eureka Springs. Along the way, it offers compelling accounts of sites from the well to the lesser known--the magnificent Toltec Mounds near Scott, the New Deal-era Dyess Colony, Tyronza's Southern Tenant Farmers Museum, the Rohwer Relocation Center and McGehee Japanese American Internment Museum, Central High School in Little Rock--and considers modern buildings that herald a renaissance in the state's cultural, economic, and political history.

The book reveals a new understanding of the ways that design shapes our lives and gives professionals and interested citizens the tools to seek out and demand designs that dignify.

One of the most comprehensive studies ever done on a state’s Jewish community, A Corner of the Tapestry is the story—untold until now—of the Jews who helped to settle Arkansas and who stayed and flourished to become a significant part of the state’s history and culture. LeMaster has spent much of the past sixteen years compiling and writing this saga. Data for the book have been collected in part from the American Jewish Archives, American Jewish Historical Society, the stones in Arkansas’s Jewish cemeteries, more than fifteen hundred articles and obituaries from journals and newspapers, personal letters from hundreds of present and former Jewish Arkansans, congregational histories, census and court records, and some four hundred oral interviews conducted in a hundred cities and towns in Arkansas. This meticulous work chronicles the lives and genealogy of not only the highly visible and successful Jews who settled in Arkansas, but also those who comprised the warp and woof of society. It is a decidedly significant contribution to Arkansas history as well as to the wider study of Jews in the nation.

A look at a life in architecture from the architect of the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Newseum in Washington, D.C. James Stewart Polshek has witnessed changing architectural tastes, worked with numerous high-profile personalities, and designed many of America’s most prominent buildings. His notable and immediately recognizable projects include the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the renovation and expansion of Carnegie Hall in New York City. Committed to principles of community, history, and environment, Polshek has devoted his fifty-plus-year career to serving the common good. In Build, Memory, he surveys his life’s work in an accessible personal narrative, with a focus on the process of designing a building and working with clients to implement their vision. A lively narrative and abundant imagery guide the reader through the sixteen diverse and important structures that Polshek has named the highlights of his active and impressive career, revealing details about the history and development of these buildings along the way.

This paper investigates why and how six historic urban churches in Little Rock, Arkansas adapted architecturally to changing community needs. In approaching this research, the researcher examined a wide variety of information: what events motivated building alterations, how the community and congregation viewed the church structure, and how churches utilized their buildings to house community services. The churches selected for this study are located within the original nineteenth century city boundary. The social and cultural landscape of the city have changed dramatically over the last century with the urbanization and reform of the Progressive Era, the social unrest and rise of fundamentalism during the War Years, racial tension and urban renewal efforts of the 1950s through the 1970s, and downtown revitalization and preservation concerns of the present era. The researcher compiled primary source documents to discern each congregation's growth pattern within each era, then analyzed the churches in each time periods in Little Rock's history for a variety of architectural and social themes. The trends that emerged resulted in typologies of church growth. Churches followed similar trends architecturally with regards to style, building materials, and furnishings, as well as patterns in building use. This investigation seeks to look at the churches holistically, not simply as significant architectural structures, but also as community hubs, housing critical spaces that shaped Little Rock's urban community.

Winner, 2017 Ned Shank Award for Outstanding Preservation Publication from Preserve Arkansas Shadow Patterns: Reflections on Fay Jones and His Architecture is a collection of critical essays and personal accounts of the man the American Institute of Architects honored with its highest award, the Gold Medal, in 1990. The essays range from the academic, with appreciations and observations by Juhanni Palaasma and Robert McCarter and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, to personal reflections by clients and friends. Two of Arkansas’s most accomplished writers, Roy Reed and Ellen Gilchrist, who each live in Fay Jones houses, have provided intimate portrayals of what it’s like to live in, and manage the quirks of, a “house built by a genius,” where “light is everywhere. . . . Everything is quiet, and everything is a surprise,” as Gilchrist says. Through this compendium of perspectives, readers will learn about Jones’s personal qualities, including his strong will, his ability to convince other people of the rightness of his ideas, and yet his willingness, at times, to change his mind. We also enter into the work: powerful architecture like Stoneflower and Thorncrown Chapel and Pinecote Pavilion, along with private residences ranging from the modest to the monumental. And we learn about his relationship with his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright. Shadow Patterns broadens and enriches our understanding of this major figure in American architecture of the twentieth century.

Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings in a style Mockbee describes as "contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture."".

Both parents and children will love Iggy Peck, Architect, a fun-filled, inspiring, colorful New York Times bestselling picture book, from author Andrea Beaty and illustrator David Roberts, about the power of teamwork and the importance of celebrating individual gifts and self-expression. Watch Iggy Peck in the Netflix television series Ada Twist, Scientist! “Read it at bedtime (it’s a quick read!), chuckle with your children, and send them to dreamland.” —American Institute of Architects Some kids sculpt sandcastles. Some make mud pies. Some construct great block towers. But none are better at building than Iggy Peck, who once erected a life-size replica of the Great Sphinx on his front lawn! It’s too bad that few people appreciate Iggy’s talent—certainly not his second-grade teacher, Miss Lila Greer. It looks as if Iggy will have to trade in his T-square for a box of crayons . . . until a fateful field trip proves just how useful a master builder can be. A story told in verse, this is a book that shows the power of education and science. Iggy Peck is a child who once “built a great tower—in only an hour—with nothing but diapers and glue.” The structured rhymes and lively illustrations fit the architectural theme, and the text uses absorbing details of Iggy’s world to bring the tale to life. Each of Iggy’s classmates has their own unique quality, implying the variety of personalities and potentials to be appreciated in any group of children. Young readers will love their time spent with Iggy Peck. They’ll love the story, colorful illustrations, and also learn about the passion and practicality of science (STEM). Check out all the books in the Questioneers Series: The Questioneers Picture Book Series: Iggy Peck, Architect | Rosie Revere, Engineer | Ada Twist, Scientist | Sofia Valdez, Future Prez | Aaron Slater, Illustrator | Lila Greer, Teacher of the Year The Questioneers Chapter Book Series: Rosie Revere and the Raucous Riveters | Ada Twist and the Perilous Pants | Iggy Peck and the Mysterious Mansion | Sofia Valdez and the Vanishing Vote | Ada Twist and the Disappearing Dogs | Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake Questioneers: The Why Files Series: Exploring Flight! | All About Plants! | The Science of Baking | Bug Bonanza! | Rockin’ Robots! Questioneers: Ada Twist, Scientist Series: Ghost Busted | Show Me the Bunny | Ada Twist, Scientist: Brainstorm Book | 5-Minute Ada Twist, Scientist Stories The Questioneers Big Project Book Series: Iggy Peck’s Big Project Book for Amazing Architects | Rosie Revere’s Big Project Book for Bold Engineers | Ada Twist’s Big Project Book for Stellar Scientists | Sofia Valdez’s Big Project Book for Awesome Activists | Aaron Slater’s Big Project Book for Astonishing Artists