It was my first meeting as a member of the Historic Arkansas Museum Commission. I sat in the Loughborough Room, looking up at the portrait of Louise Loughborough. Arkansans have Loughborough to thank for what long was known as the Arkansas Territorial Restoration in downtown Little Rock. She's a fascinating figure in Arkansas history, though it's a safe bet that the vast majority of Arkansans can neither spell nor properly pronounce her name.
She was born in Little Rock in 1881, the daughter of Louisa and William Fulton Wright. Her father was a Confederate veteran. The state's last territorial governor, William Savin Fulton, was an ancestor. She married Rose Law Firm attorney J. Fairfax Loughborough in October 1902 and then threw herself into the capital city's civic scene.
"She was a charter member of the Little Rock Garden Club and a member of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America," says Bill Worthen, who has headed what's now the Historic Arkansas Museum since 1972. "She served as vice regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, the organization that restored and maintains the home of George Washington. Her involvement in historic structures in Little Rock began when the Little Rock Garden Club sought to improve the appearance of the War Memorial Building and its grounds in 1928. The grounds were littered with signs and monuments, and the roof of the Greek Revival building sported figurative statues of Law, Justice and Mercy, which had been installed above the pediment after being salvaged from the Arkansas exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. To take the façade of the edifice back to its original 1830s appearance, Loughborough had the statues removed without the permission of the War Memorial Commission, which had legal authority over the building."
The War Memorial Building, now known as the Old State House, is an Arkansas treasure, recognized nationally as the place where Bill Clinton spoke on the night he was elected president in November 1992.
Loughborough was appointed to the Little Rock Planning Commission in 1935 and again made her mark when she heard of a plan to condemn houses near the intersection of Cumberland and Third streets. One of those was the Hinderliter House, the oldest building in the city. Loughborough had heard that the Hinderliter House had been the last territorial capitol. She recruited well-known architect Max Mayer, and they came up with the term "town of three capitols" in an effort to gain support, giving what they thought was the old territorial capitol the status of the state Capitol and the Old State House.
The Hinderliter House had been built in 1827 by Jesse Hinderliter as a tavern. Loughborough was persuasive and was able to convince Floyd Sharp of the federal Works Progress Administration to help fund the project. During the 1939 legislative session, the Arkansas Territorial Capitol Restoration Commission was created. The WPA provided labor and materials, and Loughborough raised private capital to complete the restoration project.
The Arkansas Territorial Restoration opened July 19, 1941. Worthen calls it "the first Arkansas agency committed to both the restoration of structures and the interpretation of their history, and it served as a model and inspiration for historic preservation in the state." Loughborough was the founding chairman of the commission. The restored Hinderliter House was joined on the grounds by three other antebellum structures that used the names of Arkansas pioneers William E. Woodruff, Elias N. Conway and Charles Fenton Mercer Noland.
Loughborough stepped down as board chairman in 1961 due to declining health, and architect Ed Cromwell took over, serving as chairman until 1977. Cromwell, a 1931 Princeton University graduate, came to Arkansas during the Great Depression as an architect for the federal Resettlement Administration. Frank Ginocchio and Cromwell designed the Governor's Mansion. Cromwell practiced architecture in Little Rock until 1984.
Worthen, a Little Rock native, graduated from Little Rock Hall High School and Washington University in St. Louis. He taught high school in Pine Bluff for three years and then became director of the Territorial Restoration in 1972. In 1981, it became the first history museum in the state to be accredited by the American Association of Museums.
Earlier this year, Worthen was inducted into the Arkansas Tourism Hall of Fame. Prior to Worthen's arrival, Cromwell used funds from the federal and state governments to acquire additional land downtown. A former Fraternal Order of Eagles building was turned into a reception center, and the Hinderliter House was listed in March 1970 on the National Register of Historic Places.
Beginning in 1972, Cromwell teamed with Worthen to secure a more professional staff, more educational outreach programs and more historic research. It was determined that there was only circumstantial evidence that the last territorial assembly had met at the Hinderliter House. Additional research led to the names of the Noland and Conway houses being changed. In 1976, the antebellum Plum Bayou log house was moved from its original location near Scott. And in 2001, the name of the complex was changed to the Historic Arkansas Museum. Loughborough died in 1962, and Cromwell died in 2001. Their legacies, however, live on at the Historic Arkansas Museum.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate communications for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 04/13/2016