North Little Rock's historic Baker House, a Queen Anne Victorian-styled home long known for its erroneous local legend, will close as a bed-and-breakfast Nov. 1, co-owner Scott Miller said.
The Baker House, at 109 W. Fifth St., just off Main Street in the Argenta Historic District, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the most recognizable buildings in North Little Rock's downtown. It was built in 1898-99.
Miller also runs a civil engineering business out of a nearby home where he lives with his wife, Sonja. His engineering work is keeping him too busy to continue the separate bed-and-breakfast, which is managed by an on-site innkeeper, he said. The Millers now want to sell the Baker House, which they bought in 2005 as Argenta Holdings LLC, a corporation they own.
"We have a couple of people interested in it," Miller said recently. "We're in no hurry.
"Basically, the engineering business is doing so well, we don't really have a need to operate that bed-and-breakfast, and it is a drain on resources from a family manpower standpoint. In 2008, 2009, 2010 -- during the economic downturn -- without the Baker House, the engineering business would not have survived. So it was a blessing for many years."
The three-story Baker House -- with its 35-foot-high front tower -- is important to the Argenta district and to the city's history, said Sandra Taylor-Smith, the North Little Rock History Commission's executive director. That's true whether someone operates it as a bed-and-breakfast or buys it for a residence, she said.
"I just want the house to stay as it is," Taylor-Smith said. "It is a beautiful house. It's one of two Queen Anne Victorian-styled houses left in the city. It's an excellent example of that architectural style.
"It's very picturesque. Its proximity to Main Street makes it a visual icon to the neighborhood."
The Baker House is well-known for an erroneous legend that was told on a historical marker planted in the front yard for almost 30 years. According to the legend, a black jockey named A.E. Colburn built the house but never lived there because of racial tensions in the neighborhood that forced him to sell.
Colburn, however, was white and a jeweler, History Commission records show. The Baker House name came from the C.J. Baker family, which owned the house for about 60 years.
The confusion came, local historians determined, because of a famed black jockey's connection with the city's other Queen Anne Victorian house, at 2105 N. Maple St., near North Little Rock High School. That house is known as the Engelberger house for the Joseph Engelberger family.
Alonzo Clayton bought the Engelberger House in 1893 and lived there for a time until leaving in 1899, according to History Commission records. Clayton was not only a jockey, but research in 2005-06 determined that the one-time North Little Rock resident was the same Lonnie Clayton who at age 15 rode a horse named Azra to a Kentucky Derby victory in 1892. Clayton was the youngest Derby-winning jockey at the time and one of 11 black jockeys who rode 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derby winners, according to Derby history.
Clayton sold the house after falling behind on property taxes, not because of racial discrimination, the History Commission's Cary Bradburn said in 2005. Clayton died in 1917 in Los Angeles. Once the History Commission verified Clayton's connection, the Baker House's historical marker was removed seven or eight years ago.
"The [Baker House] marker is gone now because it wasn't true," Taylor-Smith said. But that doesn't diminish the Baker House's historical significance for its architectural style, she added.
"Not at all," she said. "It will, however, probably always go down in history as 'the house the black jockey built,' but, as we all know now, that is not true."
Some current rumors aren't true either: The bed-and-breakfast hasn't already closed, and the Millers aren't moving to Key West, Fla., a favorite vacation spot for them, Miller said.
"We still have reservations, still have guests coming through the end of October," Miller said. "It will cease operations Nov. 1. We're not moving. We're not going anywhere.
"The Key West rumor comes about because people read their own thing into what we're telling them. We have a time-share down there for two weeks a year and have had for 10 years. We'd like to reinvest the money we make from selling Baker House, assuming we make any money off it, into a rental house down in the Keys so we can get rid of the time-share. That's being interpreted to mean that we're moving to the Keys next week.
"We may end up there in 20 years, but no. You'll know we're moving when you see a 'for sale' sign on my house and my business."
Metro on 09/20/2015