Agency names additions to list of historic places

The Wilson commercial and residential historic districts in Mississippi County top a list of properties the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program has added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Also added to the register were five Civilian Conservation Corps cabins at Mount Nebo State Park and a home in Washington County located on what was once part of the campus of the Fayetteville Female Seminary, a news release said.

The state's historic preservation program is an agency within the Department of Arkansas Heritage responsible for identifying, evaluating, registering and preserving the state's cultural resources.

The historic commercial district in Wilson was developed in 1922 when Lee Wilson hired architects from Memphis to design the town center. The lots had been owned by the Wilson Company since 1886, and the architects designed a large administration building facing the town square.

The town's Tudor Revival-style theme later was used for company buildings around the square by Wilson's son, Robert "Roy" E. Lee Wilson Jr.

Buildings in Wilson's historic residential district were built between 1925 and 1954 as a cohesive district connected through history, scale and architectural design, according to the historic preservation program. The Roy Wilson house has been rehabilitated to house the Delta School, founded last year as a nonprofit, independent, co-educational school.

The Wiley P. McNair House in Fayetteville in Washington County is a circa-1888 wood-frame building designed in the Queen Anne style. McNair had purchased the property, which once had been a portion of the campus of the Fayetteville Female Seminary for white women and young Cherokee women of the area.

The McNair family owned the house until the late 1940s, when it was sold and used as a family home and professional office.

Cabins 60, 61, 62, 63 and 65 at Mount Nebo State Park in Dardanelle were built around 1933 in the rustic style. They remain an integral part of the park's facilities, according to the preservation program.

Although the preservation program has documented other Civilian Conservation Corps work in Yell County, the cabins at Mount Nebo are among the earliest and corps-built structures in the county.

State Desk on 10/16/2016

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