Quapaw Quarter celebration

It was 1961, early in a decade that would see entire neighborhoods in Little Rock removed in the name of “urban renewal.” The Little Rock Housing Authority appointed five members to what was known as the Significant Structures Technical Advisory Committee to offer insight on the architectural significance of buildings in the MacArthur Park neighborhood.

The committee decided the declining area needed a new name in order to change its image; 11 were considered before Quapaw Quarter was chosen. The Quapaw Treaty Line of 1818 ran through the area. That, along with an obvious love of alliteration, led to the selection.

This weekend the Quapaw Quarter Association will hold its 50th spring tour of homes in the neighborhood that includes the Governor’s Mansion. Ginger Beebe, the state’s first lady, is the honorary co-chairman of the event along with television personality and gardening expert P. Allen Smith. The tour of homes includes the 1881 Pierce House, the 1884-85 Turner-Back House, the 1937 Mayer Cottage, the 1882 Caruth-Cochran House and the 1927 Old Methodist Parsonage.

“Historic preservation is more than saving old buildings,” Smith says. “It’s a means to revitalizing neighborhoods and returning life to Main Street.”

Downtown Little Rock is experiencing a remarkable renaissance, but the Quapaw Quarter Association was plugging away in the days when focusing on downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods was anything but the “in thing” in the state’s largest city. The Quapaw Quarter Association is the second oldest historic preservation organization in the state. The oldest, the Pioneer Washington Foundation in Hempstead County, was founded in 1958.

The first tour of Quapaw Quarter homes was held in 1963 in an attempt to acquaint residents with the neighborhood’s architecture. There have been a couple of springs without tours, which is why the 50th tour falls in 2014. The association also began putting plaques on well-preserved structures in 1963. The first home to receive a plaque was Trapnall Hall on East Capitol Avenue.

“In 1968, members joined others to incorporate the Quapaw Quarter Association,” Dana Daniels Nixon wrote in a history of the association. “Quapaw Quarter is actually a fictitious name for the area, not a legally or even historically defined place. Rather, it was first defined in the original articles of incorporation of the QQA as a 16-square-block area bounded by Capitol Avenue on the north, Scott Street on the west, Ninth Street on the south and Bond Street on the east. As the preservation movement expanded, the Quapaw Quarter itself grew through amendments to the articles and now includes all the area from the Arkansas River on the north, Fourche Creek on the south, the old Rock Island Railroad tracks on the east and the Central High School neighborhood on the west. The fact that Quapaw Quarter refers to a fictitious entity has caused confusion through the years, so much so that it was one of the factors leading the QQA in 1999-2000 to change its name to Landmarks Trust of Greater Rock.”

That experiment was short-lived since it didn’t take advantage of the brand recognition the Quapaw Quarter Association had built through the years. The association now represents an area covering nine square miles with three large historic districts—Governor’s Mansion, MacArthur Park and Central High—and several small districts. The first spring tour included six houses with an estimated attendance of 1,000 people. By 1968, there were 21 sites on the tour.

“Until the early 2000s, many guides dressed in costume and during most years from the 1970s through the 1990s, street entertainment was provided,” Nixon wrote. This Saturday’s activities will feature what’s known as the Candlelight Tour from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m., followed by a dinner at the Governor’s Mansion and a party with music at South On Main restaurant. Home tours on Sunday will take place from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. with music, trolley rides and food vendors.

Brunch will be served from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Sunday at Curran Hall, the 1842 house on East Capitol that serves as a visitors’ center for the city. The association took over management in 2007 from the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, which had joined a group of volunteers in 1996 to save it from demolition. The house was built by Col. Ebenezer Walters for a young bride named Mary Starbuck, who died shortly before completion of the home. Walters sold it in 1843 to David Baldin, who sold it six years later to a young lawyer named James Moore Curran, who bought it for his wife, Sophia Fulton, daughter of William Savin Fulton, the last territorial governor of Arkansas and the state’s first junior U.S. senator. Curran Hall was constructed in the Greek revival style by Gideon Shryock, who designed the Old State House in Little Rock and the Kentucky Capitol.

“Because of the work of the QQA through the years, the historic neighborhoods of downtown Little Rock have gone from unknown and unappreciated to loved and vibrant,” Nixon wrote. “However, the fight to preserve Little Rock’s architectural heritage is far from over, and many still remain unaware of the great diversity of architecture and culture that awaits them in the historic areas of the city.” This weekend, a new group will become familiar with that architectural diversity.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

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