Forensics influences Main Street project

The 1910 photo of the intersection of Third and Main streets caught the eye of developers Doug Meyer and Dave Bruning.

It turned up during research for a plan to redevelop two buildings at that intersection.

The building on the east side of Main had two floors in those days. That stirred the developers’ imagination. So their firm, Terraforma LLC, decided to make a bricks-and-mortar statement.

The second floor will be restored. It will help create a “gateway” to the new old Main Street, which is undergoing a rebirth. Meyer announced the plan Feb. 27.

“We both just loved that,” Meyer said of the photo. “All along, we just wanted to keep the feel of Main Street but yet have a more modern look to historic buildings. And I think that does it perfectly. I think they’re just going to be wonderful.”

The truncated building shows no evidence of a historical name. It evidently was not dignified with a stone nameplate, as was the Fulk Building across the street. For the past 37 years it has housed Mr. Cool, which will close at the end of the month. The front of the structure has a false second-floor front that fools no one.

It will be more as it was early in the 20th century, when a series of hardware stores occupied the ground level and a hotel was on the second floor, said Tommy Jameson, architect for the project.

In 1897, it was the Arcade Hotel. By the time an itinerant photographer took the picture of the intersection, it had become the Imperial, Jameson said. The photo, from the National Archives, shows the Imperial.

He glommed that information from old Sanborn Insurance Mapping Co. maps.

At some point when the Imperial was the occupant, evidence strongly suggests, the hotel burned; the solution was to remove the second floor and put a new roof on the first.

Little Rock-based Jameson, who calls himself a “forensic architect,” led the investigation into the past of that building and the Fulk Building.

All three floors of the Fulk Building, built in 1900 in the Romanesque Revival style by Francis M. Fulk, a lawyer and Francis M. Fulk, a lawyer and judge, will be the new home for Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, a public relations and advertising agency. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Jones Film Video, will occupy the first floor of the Mr. Cool building. The reclaimed 7,000 feet of the second floor will be used by Terraforma LLC partners Meyer and Bruning as they see fit.

The Fulk Building as it looked in the late 1920s will serve as the model in the application for a federal Historic Tax Credit of 20 percent of the cost of the restoration, plus another 25 percent under the state income-tax program.

Because the building across the way has been altered so much and, unlike the Fulk, cannot qualify for the National Register of Historic Places, it would be eligible for only a 10 percent federal tax credit and no state credit.

The applications for the buildings must be approved by the National Park Service and, just for the Fulk, by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

Redevelopment of the Fulk has its own history, with a punchline. “We’ve been working with Doug and [his wife] Sheree since 2009,” when they almost had a project together, “a combination of retail, offices and apartments,” Jameson said.

That fell through when a potential tenant for all of the office space backed out. Before that piece of the puzzle was lost, another was on its way from Houston.

Comedians Steve and Vicki Farrell were going to establish a club on the ground floor. “We had already started designing the stage,” Jameson said.

But, as they say, the joke was on them, which they turned into an opening-night routine, “Between Little Rock and a Hard Place,” when The Joint opened on another Main Street, this one in North Little Rock.

Turns out the Fulk will be home to a different brand of creative people.

If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or email him at