Some Historic Buildings Of Arkansas

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.

Sentinels of History was conceived of as a way to mark the turn of the millennium by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. This generously illustrated book contains thirty-nine essays, each of which showcases an important Arkansas site and is written by a noted authority. Also included is a location map for these sites and a full appendix providing location information, county by county, for the more than two thousand surviving properties in Arkansas (as of June 1999) that appear on the National Register. The essays are as wide-ranging as Roger Kennedy's placement of the Toltec Mounds at the time of Charlemagne, Donald Harington's sensitive look at the "bigeminal" architecture of the Wolf dogtrot cabin, and Neil Compton's egalitarian tribute to the Boxley Valley Historic District on the Buffalo National River. At least one current color photo of the site and one historic image are included with each essay. In addition, illustrations of the locations or structures listed in the appendix are scattered throughout sections. In all, Sentinels of History serves as a lavish inventory of historic properties in Arkansas at the end of the twentieth century.

Arkansas's Old State House, arguably the most famous building in the state, was conceived during the territorial period and has served through statehood. A History of Arkansas's Old State House traces the history of the architecture and purposes of the remarkable building. The history begins with Gov. John Pope's ideas for a symbolic state house for Arkansas and continues through the construction years and an expansion in 1885. After years of deterioration, the building was abandoned by the state government, and the Old State House then became a medical school and office building. Kwas traces the subsequent fight for the building's preservation on to its use today as a popular museum of Arkansas history and culture. Brief biographies of secretaries of state, preservationists, caretakers, and others are included, and the book is generously illustrated with early and seldom-seen photographs, drawings, and memorabilia.

Architects of Little Rock provides biographical and historical sketches of the architects working in Little Rock from 1830 to 1950. Thirty-five architects are profiled, including George R. Mann, Thomas Harding, Charles L. Thompson, Max. F. Mayer, Edwin B. Cromwell, George H. Wittenberg, Lawson L. Delony, and others. Readers will learn who these influential professionals were, where they came from, where they were educated, how they lived, what their families were like, how they participated in the life of the city, and what their buildings contributed to the city. Famous buildings, including the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Old State House, the Arkansas State Capitol, St. Andrews Cathedral, Little Rock City Hall, the Pulaski County Court House, Little Rock Central High School, and Robinson Auditorium are showcased, bringing attention to and encouraging appreciation of the city’s historic buildings. Published in collaboration with the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

"The reader of Ray Hanley's new book on Hot Springs will find it both entertaining and informative. Mr. Hanley is to be commended on the accuracy of his research and his writing."---Orval Allbritton, Garland County Historical Society A Place Apart tells the history of Hot Springs, Arkansas, through words and pictures. Throughout that history, the thermal waters bubbling from the Ouachita Mountains ringing the city are a backdrop to the stories of pioneers, wealthy barons, scoundrels, gamblers, colorful politicians, and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of people who come to the spa city for the pleasures and health benefits of the baths. For all those interested in the history of Hot Springs, A Place Apart is a delightful, and essential, resource.

Series statement from publisher's website.

This handsome full-color guide provides an in-depth look at Washington, Arkansas, from events leading up to its founding in 1824 through its restoration and present-day operation.

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.”