If these keys could talk

A historic and storied piano comes home

Earlier this summer as revelers celebrated Flag Day with barbecue, ice cream and merriment throughout the Little Rock Visitor Information Center at Historic Curran Hall, a special guest of honor -- a former longtime resident of the home (for nearly 110 years) -- stood stoically nearby in the restored antebellum home's front parlor.

The former resident, an ornate mahogany square grand piano crafted by William B. Bradbury Co. of New York in 1859, was earlier silenced when its soundboard broke. Nevertheless, today, cosmetically restored, it looks regal and very much at home in the southeast corner of the front parlor of the historic circa 1842 Greek Revival-style home at 615 E. Capitol Ave.

And it should. Where the piano stands today is the very same spot the 1,200-pound instrument rested from 1884 until 1993.

HISTORY OF THE HOUSE

Curran Hall, formally known as the Walters-Curran-Bell House, is one of just a handful of antebellum homes remaining in Little Rock. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was built by Col. Ebeneezer Walters. After several subsequent owners, William E. Woodruff, founder of the Arkansas Gazette, bought the house for his daughter Mary Eliza Woodruff Bell in 1884 following the death of her husband, Col. Samuel Slade Bell, in 1877. At the time, Bell was a 46-year-old widow with four daughters, Eva, Hatty, Mary Rolfe, and Fanny. Before Col. Bell's death, the family lived at the Bell plantation (Fisher-Bell house in Hamburg in Ashley County). Woodruff passed away at the age of 89 in 1885.

Descendants continued to own and live in the house until 1993, when the last inhabitant, Averell Woodruff Reynolds Tate, then in her 80s and in declining health, moved to an apartment nearby. She died in 2003 at the age of 94.

The city and the Little Rock Advertising and Promotion Commission acquired the house in 1996, saving it from demolition. After a six-year, $1.4 million renovation project, it opened as the city's visitor information center in May 2002. The Quapaw Quarter Association currently manages the center, which is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays.

SOUNDS OF SILENCE

For the last two decades, the piano has been in Mountain Home in the home of Cynthia Carter, who bought it in the mid-1990s estate sale after Tate moved out.

"I think I paid about $450, but then I paid to put it in storage and rented a moving truck to bring it to Mountain Home," Carter says about the piano, which wasn't working when she bought it. "I think all totaled, I spent about $1,000 on it."

The piano sat in the front parlor of her newly constructed Queen Anne-style house, which was based on 1870s house plans.

"I just love everything Victorian -- all of my furniture is Victorian -- and it was such a beautiful piece of furniture. All of my children are musical and I like to think that with it sitting there in our parlor, it served as an inspiration for them," Carter says of her children Olivia, Daniel and William Dyer Jr.

In researching the piano's history, Carter says, "My mom talked to Averell [Tate] about the piano. She told her that it was brought here by train; it was supposedly the first square grand piano on this side of the Mississippi River and that William Woodruff had given it to his daughter as a wedding gift."

In late 2014, Rhea Roberts, executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association, was contacted by Carter, who was downsizing and moving to a much smaller residence. Carter wanted to see the piano return to its longtime home -- Curran Hall. Roberts passed the request along to members of the Little Rock Visitor's Bureau Foundation Board, which oversees the site.

Board member Jim Rule, an antique and rare book dealer who had restored several houses in the Quapaw Quarter in the 1970s, began communicating with Carter, who shared verification of the instrument's provenance. Carter also offered to donate the piano to the foundation. The board voted that the piano would be an appropriate and welcome addition to the house even if it were not affordable or possible to return it to playable condition.

Earlier this year, Carter wrote a letter to the Little Rock Visitor Information Foundation board, informing it of her family's decision to donate the piano back to Curran Hall. In her letter, she wrote that she was happy to see the piano going back home and was looking forward to visiting it there in the future.

But the years have not been kind to the opulent instrument.

Using $1,400 donated by several board members, the foundation hired Mike Anderson of Anderson's Piano Clinic in Cabot to retrieve the 1,200-pound piano from Mountain Home, take it to his business and assess it. Anderson recently worked to restore Little Rock Central High's 1927 Steinway. A Welcome Home concert, which is free and open to the public, is set for 2 p.m. Sept. 27 in the school's Roosevelt Thompson Auditorium.

After inspecting the Woodruff piano, Anderson discovered its cast iron plate, which carries all the weight of the strings, was cracked; the instrument had severe structural damage and was no longer playable.

"I think the piano had been dropped at one time," he says.

He explains that once a plate is broken, it can't be replaced. "The piano case was built around the plate and every piano is slightly different; you can't just swap out the plates," Anderson says, adding that it was not possible to restore the piano to the point that it could be played.

"But I didn't want to take it there and let it be shown the way it was because it was ugly," he says.

He planned to clean the piano but discovered that many parts had deteriorated too much to survive cleaning.

"So instead, I opted to redo the interior," Anderson says. "I wanted to make it look presentable to be displayed in Curran Hall."

His restoration work included repairing and refinishing the soundboard, refurbishing the piano's cabinet, putting all new springs in it, adding nickel plate pins, and damper felts. He also cleaned and stabilized the piano's keys, which are made of elephant tusk.

Anderson says the parts, time, and labor he spent on the piano totaled about $5,000, but there was no charge. He considered the costs his donation to the city of Little Rock.

WELCOME HOME

The piano returned to its home of more than a century in mid-April.

"Cynthia came to see it with some of her children around Mother's Day and came again for Flag Day and brought her mother," Rule says. "She was tickled to death to see it here."

Roberts says, "A lot of those who have come by had never seen it when it was in the house before. It's really special because it was here for so long."

KEYS TO THE PAST

In 1939, Mary Eliza Bell's daughter Fanny wrote to the Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Co. in New York, seeking more history on the piano.

The response from a vice president of the company has remained with the piano, going with it when Carter bought the instrument and recently returning to Curran Hall along with the piano.

In the letter, he wrote that the piano was made by the Bradbury Piano Co., which had a factory in Leominster, Mass., and at one time also one in Brooklyn.

"In its day they were a very good medium-priced piano and bore a good reputation though the concern went through bankruptcy many years ago and has not been in existence for at least 15 to 20 years," he wrote.

Averell Tate's daughter, Joan Huot of Lowell, Mass., who lived in the home from the time she was born in 1943 until she married and moved out in 1963, remembers one of her great-aunts playing the piano as other family members stood nearby singing.

"Pianos were a bit of a status symbol back then. Mom used to play on it a little and Aunt Fanny played it the most," Huot says, adding that the piano always stood in a corner between the hallway door and the dining room doors. Originally there was a padded piano stool but at some point it was replaced with a bench, with storage for music inside the seat.

Huot isn't sure about the piano's history. "I was told the piano came to the house on or around the time Mary Eliza Woodruff Bell moved there. I'm not sure where it came from; it may have come up from her husband's family and the Bell Plantation or it may have been owned or purchased by her father, William Woodruff, who then gave it to her."

Huot took lessons from the nuns at nearby St. Edwards Catholic School, where she learned the classics. "I used it from the time I could bang on it when I was very small until I moved out," she says. "I remember the ivory being missing from a couple of the keys by then."

When speaking of her childhood at Curran Hall, Huot paints a picture of an urban farmstead.

"Daddy raised chicken and rabbits and sold them on demand to a nearby store as well as the eggs," she says. "And Mom grew all kinds of things in the garden."

As for the piano's return to Curran Hall, Huot says, "I think it's absolutely wonderful. It's exactly where it's supposed to be."

Carter agrees. "It was just wonderful to see it back in the home."

Style on 08/25/2015

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