The view from the streets in modern Little Rock--experts sometimes call it Architectual Identity--is largely due to the efforts of a few men who, as the leaders of the state's big architectural firms from the 1930s through the 1980s, left their imprimatur on the city and its neighbors. There were giants in those days. One of those giants was Ed Cromwell, who was largely responsible for the renovation of the Capital Hotel and the preservation of many of the city's most historic buildings.
The legacy of the Princeton graduate, who died in 2001, was the subject of a recent Architecture & Design Network lecture at the Arkansas Arts Center.
Conclusion, summed up by Charles Penix, chief executive officer of Cromwell Architects Engineers: Ed Cromwell made Little Rock a better place.
Lauded as a visionary and, perhaps above all, a generous collaborator, Mr. Cromwell was among the first to bring engineers into an architectural firm in 1941--a decision that played a big part in getting military and government commissions for things such as Camp Pike, which we now know as Camp Robinson. Along with saving the 19th-Century Capital Hotel from the wrecking ball in the early 1980s, Mr. Cromwell's firm was involved in the design and construction of the Governor's Mansion, which opened in 1950. Other significant projects: buildings at Arkansas Children's Hospital, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock's regional airport, the Arkansas Arts Center addition, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.
Equally important was Mr. Cromwell's passion for saving and restoring the city's older structures. Getting additional property for what started out as Arkansas Territorial Restoration (now we call it the Historic Arkansas Museum) was Mr. Cromwell at his civic best, according to the museum's director, Bill Worthen. "He was the father of historic preservation in the Quapaw Quarter," Mr. Worthen said. "He put his money into saving houses and revitalizing old Little Rock, and motivated a generation of urban pioneers."
Along with a reverence for the past, something every community needs more of, Ed Cromwell's decades-long career also looked to the future. Oh, by the way, that vision ended up creating something we now call Maumelle, his vision of a planned community built on 5,000 acres north of the Arkansas River.
Ed Cromwell, says his associate Don Evans, "was always a gentleman, but he loved radical thinking. He saw opportunities that other's didn't see." And the anatomy of Little Rock is stronger because of that vision.
Editorial on 05/22/2015