FAYETTEVILLE -- A Fayetteville physician wants to buy a burned-out house Bill Clinton once lived in and rebuild it.
Dr. J.B. Hays owned the house at 6725 Huntsville Road for five years.
The one-story house, designed by noted architect E. Fay Jones, was gutted by fire June 8.
A rock wall and fireplace are salvageable, along with some of the beams on the east side of the house, said Walter Jennings, a Fayetteville architect.
Jennings has asked Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art if it would rebuild the former president's house on the museum grounds in Bentonville. He said they are scheduled to discuss it today.
Hays said he thinks it's "crazy" to move the stone and beams and rebuild the house somewhere else.
"What they need to do is take the plans and just build it right there," said Hays, referring to the original location on Huntsville Road, also known as Arkansas 16, about 7 miles east of downtown Fayetteville.
Hays said he thinks he could rebuild the house for $100,000.
Hays said he called Stephanie Dzur, one of the current owners, about purchasing the house, but they didn't discuss a price.
Dzur said Hays wants her to sell him the house and a few acres but not the entire 77-acre parcel.
She said the original site was about 80 acres, and they've purchased much of the adjacent land to try to restore the site to what it was like when Clinton lived there.
The former president lived in the house from 1973-75, when he taught law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Clinton wrote about the house and land in his autobiography My Life.
"I told him it's not for sale separately," Dzur said, referring to Hays. "He has not made an offer on the house and property. The historical significance is the house and the land."
Hays said he doesn't know if he would buy all 77 acres.
"I'd have to know the price on it," he said. "All I wanted was the house and eight to 10 acres, something like that. I wanted to try to put the house back like it was and put a plaque on it and say Bill Clinton once lived there."
Dzur said Friday the house will have to be torn down.
"It is too damaged to fix," she said.
The house is owned by Stephanie and Robert Dzur of Albuquerque, N.M. Both are alumni of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
At the time of the fire, Stephanie Dzur's father, Joe Brodacz, was living in the house and escaped with his dog.
The house was designed by Jones for Adrian and Marie Fletcher. It was built in 1957 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Jones won the American Institute of Architecture's Gold Medal in 1990. The architecture school at UA is named for him.
The Dzurs consulted Jennings about the fire damage because he has some expertise with Fay Jones houses. Jennings' father, Maurice Jennings, was an architect who worked with Jones in Fayetteville for 25 years.
Jennings said it was Stephanie Dzur's idea to contact Crystal Bridges about rebuilding the house.
Crystal Bridges already has a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the museum grounds. The Bachman-Wilson House was constructed in New Jersey in 1956. It was taken apart, moved to Bentonville and reassembled there in 2015. Wright was Jones' mentor.
Fayetteville has 27 Fay Jones houses left, said Catherine Wallack, architectural records archivist for the Special Collections Department at UA. Wallack said Jones designed 207 buildings that were completed.
According to Washington County property records, the Dzurs paid $195,000 for the house and eight acres of land in 2011.
In 2005, Hays paid $850,000 for the house with about 80 acres of land. He sold some of the land and deeded the house and 58.3 acres to the Bank of Fayetteville in 2010.
Hays noted that a real estate recession had begun a couple of years earlier.
The Fletcher house isn't "the" Fayetteville house that comes to mind when most people think of the former president. Clinton bought a one-bedroom house at 930 California Drive in 1975.
Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married in the California Drive house and began their life as a family there. That building now serves as the Clinton House Museum.
This was the second former Clinton home to burn in the state over the past few years.
On Christmas Day 2015, a fire damaged the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope. It was repaired and reopened in July.
Metro on 06/20/2017