NLR to host open house for City Hall's centennial

North Little Rock is holding an open house at City Hall this weekend to observe the 100th anniversary of the cornerstone being installed to begin construction of the building, 300 Main St.

The open house will be 3-5 p.m. Sunday. Free refreshments will be provided by the North Little Rock Woman's Club.

The cornerstone was laid at the building's southwest corner (Main Street and Broadway) on July 27, 1914. The building opened the next year, with a formal building dedication held July 5, 1915.

Mayor Joe Smith said Wednesday that the public is invited to visit City Hall and learn something about its history and North Little Rock's earlier days.

"We're giving people the opportunity to come in on Sunday for a leisurely stroll and be able to see this historic building," Smith said. "This will be a preliminary event for the bigger celebration next year when the building has been officially occupied for 100 years."

City Hall's neoclassical revival design for the two-story building was done by architect John L. Howard and based on the design of a St. Louis bank, according to city history records.

The building's features include Florentine marble throughout the first floor and the stairways, a stained glass with "C of A" etched in it, along the tops of marble columns and on brass door knobs, said Sandra Taylor-Smith, executive director of the North Little Rock History Commission. The insignia stands for "City of Argenta," North Little Rock's name when City Hall was built. The city's name changed to North Little Rock in 1917.

Sixteen photos on loan from the History Commission have been framed and hung along first-floor hallways Wednesday in preparation for the open house. A slide show presentation with narration about the building's history will be presented in the City Council Chambers on the second floor, including photos showing when part of the building was used as a city jail.

"The Police Department was located inside the Broadway [side] entrance," Taylor-Smith said. "There was a portion of the basement that housed the city jail. The PowerPoint [presentation] we will show Sunday will have some photos of what literally looked like cages used there."

The cornerstone contains a copper box "time capsule," but there are no plans to unearth the box, Taylor-Smith said. City Clerk Diane Whitbey found a list of the contents several years ago inside a volume of City Council minutes from 1909-1916, so city officials have previously said that there isn't a need to discover what was left in the box.

The items placed inside the box were witnessed and recorded by Argenta Mayor J.P. Faucette, who then signed the list of contents. The box contains newspapers, rosters of city and school officials and city departmental employees, several coins, and a bottle each of olive oil, corn and wheat, among many other things, according to the list.

"I think the consensus is the building doesn't need to have us bashing around on its corners," Taylor-Smith said of leaving the copper box where it lies. "If the contents were a secret we might be more inclined to get into there, but I think it would harm the building to try to deal with it. And we don't now exactly where it is located in that corner."

Parking for the open house will be available along Main Street and in the Bank of America parking lot across Broadway from City Hall.

Metro on 07/25/2014

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