Businesses

North Little Rock citizens have created thousands of small businesses: pharmacies, dry goods, mercantile stores, grocery stores, restaurants, barber shops, service stations, and many others.

A list follows of a few notable businesses in North Little Rock:
*Joseph Wysong Vestal, who first established himself in Indiana in 1868, started a florist and greenhouse operation in Baring Cross about 1880.
*Artemas E. Colburn, a jeweler, opened his shop at Fifth and Main in 1894. He commissioned construction of the existing Queen Anne-style Baker House at 109 West Fifth Street (now 501 Main) in 1896 and lived there with his family until 1901.
*The North Little Rock Times, managed for decades by John Pruniski, published its first newspaper in 1898 and stayed in business for 120 years. Robert McCord’s family bought the newspaper in 1958 and sold it to John Riley in 1968. David and Kitty Chism owned the paper from 1993 to 2006.
*Stanley Hardware began in 1901 in Levy and is still in existence on MacArthur Drive. Flake Stanley, the first mayor of Levy, founded the store, and his brother Oscar Stanley took over a few years later.
*Faucette Brothers Bank, founded by William C. and James P. Faucette in 1901, was incorporated as Twin City Bank in 1904. A household name in the city until Mercantile Bank acquired it in 1995, followed by Firststar and then U.S. Bank, a second Twin City Bank formed in 2000, but its holding company changed the name to Centennial Bank in 2008.
*Owens Funeral Home, founded by Robert and Judith Owens in 1910, moved into an existing Spanish Revival building at Fifth and Main streets in 1928. Denver Roller Funeral Home bought the company in 1976.
*Walter H. Koehler Sr. opened Koehler Bakery in 1919 at 711 Main Street, where the company’s main plant remained until 1972. Its first branch bakery was established at 18th and Pike in 1949 after Walter Koehler Jr. joined the operation. The Koehlers, whose goods were sold to grocers and the public, eventually had 17 branches as well as self-service bakeries and surplus stores.
*U.S. Pizza Company was founded in Levy in 1973 by Judy Waller. She built a highly successful business that expanded with numerous locations around the state.

OTHER NOTABLE BUSINESSES
No attempt is made to list the numerous groceries, drug stores, service stations, mechanics, auto agencies, trucking companies, motels, beauty salons, shoe shops, liquor stores, lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, accountants, architects, photographers, insurance companies, banks, plumbers, HVAC companies, electricians, barbers, nursing homes, and others.

Listed here is but a handful of North Little Rock businesses over the past 100 years or more. Although many are gone, some still exist and some are relatively new. Many are left out, due to the sheer volume. However, businesses not on this list may be included in video displays at the Sandra Taylor Smith Gallery in the Heritage Center at 506 Main.
*Hum’s Hardware
*C.B. Thompson store, Fort Thompson
*Fischer Honey
*Jeffrey Sand Company
*Otto Keller Harness Shop
*White Pig Inn, Mexico Chiquito, Hank’s Dog House, Cassinelli’s, Ristorante Capeo, Sir Loin’s Inn, Little Italy Café, Spectators, Jobe’s Café, Fisher’s Steak House, Fisher’s Café, Fisher’s Restaurant, White Eagle Café, Moser’s Café, Wonder Grill, Jo Jo’s Barbecue, Shakey’s, Shotgun Dan’s, Paul’s, Senor Tequila, Rocky’s Pub, Reno’s Argenta Café, Four Quarter Bar, Pizza Pub, Brood & Barley, Creegans, Draft and Table, Skinny J’s, Blackberry Market, Rosalinda’s Honduran, Bellwood Diner, Bo-Bird Café, Woody’s Barbecue and Catering, Sullivan’s Tamales, Felton’s Café, L&M Café, Gandpa’s Catfish, Silver Moon, Hayden’s Chicken Shack, Lakewood Fish & Seafood, Crush Wine Bar, Rudy’s Oyster Bar, Littlefield’s Café, Starlight Diner, LaCasa Real, Maggie Mae’s, Phil Good’s, Starving Artist, Margo’s Catfish Diner, Moe’s Southwest Grill, North Bar,Taqueria Guadalajara, Ol’ Barts, Rivera Italian
*The Joint, Birdie’s Cabaret
*Andy’s Dairy Freeze, Razorback Drive-In, Bray’s Castle, Bigg’s Drive-In, Yummy’s, Wink’s Dairy Bar, Herb’s
*Irma Dumas Dress Shop, Virginia’s Images, Fashion Corner, Acker Men’s Clothing, Tommy’s, Vogel’s, Pat’s Fashion, Riff Clothing
*Diamond Bear Brewery, Flyway Brewing
*Mark’s Donuts
*Tommy Trent’s Fun Barn
*Art’s Continental Warehouse
*Bill’s Lock and Safe
*T-Shirt Shop
*Jones Brothers Pool Table
*Argenta Bottling Works, Grapette Bottling
*Scott’s 5 & 10
*Doyle Venable Lumber Company
*Square Deal Pawn Shop, National, Ideal
*Bill’s Lock & Safe
*Ms. Karen’s Dance Studio
*Hamilton Monument
*Ketcher & Company, Garrison Sheet Metal, Wetzler, Moon & Murray
*Cabot Florist, Witkowski Florist, Lakewood Gardens, Arkansas Nurseries, Tipton& Hurst
*Gus Caple Tractor, Carl Bailey
*KC Baking Powder
*Mountaire
*Coulson Oil
*Hall Tank Company
*Star Bolt & Screw
*Seal Corp, Scenic Solar
*Katterjohn, Shearman
*Rose City Salvage
*OK Furniture, McPherson, Citizen’s, Blake’s, Thomason, Galaxy, Laman’s, Union, Todd’s, Routh, Economy, Park Hill, Eason Brothers, Haverty’s, Hank’s, James Brothers, Julian, Skyline, King’s, King Kash, Sims, White, Standard, Ramhorn
*Daniel Label Printing
*Jim’s Roller Rink
*Stanley Jewelers, Ellis, Wirt’s, Gordon’s, Horton’s, Leverett, Sam Riley, John Riley
*Fashion Park Cleaners, Godsey, Kirspel, George’s, Cecil Ball, Howard’s, Henneberger’s, Lakehill, Kirby, North Main, Massery’s, Satterfield, Rose City
*Goss Service Company
*Charter Mortgage, Lay Mortgage
*Hogg’s Meat Market
*Hudson’s Fish Market, Young’s
*Sportsman’s One-Stop
*Jackson Cookie Company
*Glover Truck & Trailer Sales
*Levy-Loebner Dry Goods, Levy Mercantile, E.O. Manees, Goldberg’s F&I, Rephan’s Department Store, Salinger’s, Weintraub, Riff
*Mayflower Dairy, Clark Dairy
*Koehler’s Candy
*Smith Family Funeral Homes
*Pike Lanes
*WaCo Boat Mfg, Splawn Boats
*Chicopee
*L’Oreal Maybelline
*Arkansas Tool & Die
*Jones & Kerby shippers, Bruce Oakley, Johnson Team & Dray, Reaves Transfer
*Ben E. Keith
*Adams Pest Control
*CBM Construction, Danco, Diamond, Hydco, Alessi-Keys
*Wylie Cavin Enterprises, Jenkins
*Wash Hale Company
*Wild River Country
*Don’s Weaponry
*Garver, Marlar, Thomas
*Halbert Pipe & Steel
*Kirspel-Hollenberg Music, Peaches, Discount Records, Discount Record Mart, Robert’s House of Music
*Stanley Sound & Communications

BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES
Some of the earliest black-owned businesses were run from people’s homes and mostly lost in time. Salons, barbershops, food services, cafes and taverns served black neighborhoods during segregation.

Black-owned businesses in the Shorter College area before Urban Renewal included groceries, barbershops, salons, and restaurants. The 1942 city directory listed 12 black-owned businesses amid residential properties in the area. The directory also listed 11 white-owned grocery stores in the neighborhood.

Among the black-owned businesses listed in the directory were five restaurants, two grocery stores, two barbers, a laundry, a dressmaker, and a midwife. Corrie Spearman’s restaurant was at 622 Beech Street and Eliza Bates’ restaurant was at 801 Beech Street. Glenn Nesbitt, Charles M. Morris, and Thomas Mason ran restaurants on East Ninth Street (now S.A. Jones Drive). Night life in the Shorter College area in the 1950s centered on the Nouvean Drive-in restaurant on Sixth Street, the Savoy on East Ninth Street, and the Hawks Club “around the corner.”

In Dark Hollow were Brown’s barbecue, a malt stand, Ruffin and Jarrett Funeral Home, and Jackson’s Cleaners. Peddlers who sold ice, tamales, and vegetables were a feature of life in the neighborhood. There was also a “ragman” who came once or twice a week to collect oil and dirty rags. Local spots on 13th Street included a skating rink and the Owl’s Club, where bluesmen Bobby Blue Bland
and Little Junior Parker performed. Several beauty shops, cafes, a grocery store, Knight’s Shoe Repair, Preacher Burnett’s corner store, the West Sandwich Shop,the Terminal Café, and Lindsey’s Barbecue were popular.

A Dark Hollow resident remembered jukeboxes at the Bisque Café, the Rendezvous, the Honey Dipper, Popeye’s Wagon Wheel, Blue Light Café, and Dokes Eat Shop. “We would stand outside and listen to the music,” he said. “Every place you went to on a Friday and Saturday night, we were too young to go in, but every place you walked by was partying.”

Many of the black soldiers at Camp Robinson during World War II frequented night clubs in Military Heights and other parts of North Little Rock. In the 1950s, black airmen from the Little Rock Air Force Base also took in the club scene at places known as the Blue Diamond, Connie Cole’s, and the Jitterbug Inn in Military Heights. “It was rocking, the place was rocking,” a black resident
remembered.

Black business owners on Washington Avenue included billiards operator and restaurateur Frank A. Snodgrass. There were barbers John W. Wells, James Smith, and Robert Floyd, and shoe repairman Louis Carter. Snodgrass bought the Cuneo Hotel building at 207 East Washington and operated the Deluxe Café. African American barbers George Washington and David C. Wade, beauty operator
Josephine Hardin, and black dry cleaner Cadester S. Armstrong owned businesses in the 300 block of East Washington.

Fried catfish caught in the Arkansas River was a specialty of cafes. Mostestablishments had separate doors for white and Black customers with a board partition to divide the dining rooms.

Harvey Gant of Dark Hollow operated an auto repair business at 618 East Broadway. Dunn’s Victory Cleaners was located at 2719 East Second Street. Archie Mitchell & Sons operated an auto repair shop from the mid-1940s until the late 1960s. The shop first opened at 1601 East Broadway, but for many years was at 119 North Redwood Street.

Some notable black-owned businesses include:
*John W. Smith, North Little Rock’s first Black School Board member, moved to Military Heights in 1940 with his brother Joseph T. Smith. The two men were bricklayers, who started their own business, Smith Brothers General Contractors.
*Donne L. Lindsey, a Dark Hollow resident in the 1950s and 1960s, opened Lindsey’s Barbecue in 1954 when segregation was the law. Even though it was black-owned, Lindsey’s had a white entrance and a separate Black entrance.
*A.C. and Frances Lewis opened an Esso station on Locust Street in 1949. They operated the business first at 901 Locust and then at 518 Locust until moving to a prime spot at Broadway and Locust in the early 1970s.
*Dexter Doyne had experience managing rental properties and doing remodelingjobs when he founded Doyne Construction Company in 1983. The general contracting firm has contracts valued at more than $5 million. *Three funeral homes were among black-owned businesses established in the city. Hubble Funeral Home, founded in 1922 by Walter S. Hubble, also provided ambulance service. In 1931, Edward S. Hubble, one of three brothers who tookover after their father, organized the Cosmopolitan Life Insurance Company to provide life and burial insurance. Oscar T. Smith and Son also operated an ambulance as well as burial service. Ruffin & Jarrett is another established blackowned funeral home opened in 1946 by John and Rose Ruffin and W.L. Jarrett.
*Sanders Hamilton founded Hamilton Monument Company in his backyard whileemployed as a mail carrier. After he retired, he set up the business at 1307 East Washington about 1970. His wife Cora assisted in the business.
*Barnett G. Mays, a Shorter College area businessman, opened the Nouvean Drive-in restaurant at 1101 East Sixth Street in the late 1940s and added the Sixth Street Liquor store in the 1950s as a second business at his East Sixth Street site. After starting a real estate company in the 1950s, Mays became involved in various enterprises, including Urban Renewal developments in the 1960s and 1970s.
*Samuel Holloway opened House’s Sandwich Shop at East Ninth and Hickory in the early 1950s, featuring his “House Burger” with “secret ingredients.” It was a play on his nickname “Big House” in high school. He said the restaurant was popular, but he had to close it when the building was sold. After that, he got into the furniture business and opened what he believes was North Little Rock’s first
Black-owned furniture store. Located at 317 East Washington Avenue, the store didn’t last long, however. “Somehow, my being black and being one of the first to have a store, [the city] condemned the building,” he said. So he had to move. He partnered with a white store owner and moved to Seventh Street in Little Rock where they sold furniture in segregated white and black sections, as if they operated two separate businesses. Holloway, who moved to Glenview in 1962, eventually got into the furniture and appliance delivery and repair business.
*Dr. Lonnie Routen practiced medicine for more than 50 years in Argenta’s East End. His office was located at 515 ½ East Washington until the late 1950s when the property was taken as right of way for Interstate 30. Routen established the city’s first hospital– outside of the Veterans Hospital at Fort Roots—known as Southern Hospital at 1311 East Broadway for Black patients during the 1930s and early 1940s. Cleo D. Nicholson, a dentist, practiced in the same building with Routen. When he had to move for the interstate, Routen relocated his office to his clinic at 1311 East Broadway. Other African American physicians in the East End in the 1930s and 1940s were Dr. Edward W. West on East Washington and Dr.Robert B. Williamson on Cypress Street.

Since the 1870s, drug stores and physicians’ offices have provided primary health care to Argenta and North Little Rock residents.

Until 1962, however, no general hospital served the north side. Hospitalization required a trip across the Arkansas River to Little Rock.

Fort Roots, Camp Pike, and Camp Robinson all had hospitals on base for soldiers and civilian workers. In 1921, Congress converted Fort Roots to a Veterans Hospital.

Dr. Lonnie Routen, who practiced medicine for 50 years in North Little Rock and Little Rock, opened two-story Southern Hospital at 1311 East Broadway for Black patients in the 1930s.

In 1947, two medical clinics with hospital services admitted patients. Dr. Beresford L. “Bully” Church and Dr. Mitchell Smith, a dentist, offered medical and dental care at 321 Maple Street to white and Black patients. Dr. William L. Fulton and Dr. Shelby Atkinson also ran a clinic at 517 Main.

Church’s clinic performed surgery, as well as gynecological exams by consultants.

An emergency entrance was available for ambulances. Also housed in the building was Hunt Pharmacy, owned by Gordon Hunt.

Funeral homes offered ambulance service until the late 1970s when private subscription companies entered the market. Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services (MEMS) has had a franchise in North Little Rock and Little Rock since the mid-1980s.

Drug stores for many decades populated the city with more than one per block in some locations. As well as healthcare, they served as informal community meeting places. Soda fountains and ice cream also attracted customers for social occasions.

Argenta Drug Company, founded by Dr. Edwin Sharp in 1909, has been in business the longest of any pharmacy in the city. Joe K. Poch, owner from 1922 until his death in 1968, made personal deliveries and promoted the business and community through contests such as guessing the number of seeds in a watermelon to predicting the weather. His most audacious publicity stunt was the Rattlesnake Derby in 1938.

In 1949, city leaders initiated plans to build a full-service general hospital, which became reality in the late 1950s when federal funds and money from a local bond issue financed construction of Memorial Hospital near Fort Roots, which opened in 1962 with 118 beds.

Operated by Baptist Medical System, the hospital’s name was changed in 1989 to Baptist Memorial Hospital. In 1999, it moved to a 157-acre site on the west side of Springhill Drive near Interstate 40. It was again renamed as Baptist Health Medical Center-North Little Rock.

CHI St. Vincent North opened a 60-bed hospital with 24-hour emergency room services in 1999 at 2215 Wildwood in Sherwood.

Arkansas Surgical Hospital, founded and owned by orthopedic and spine surgeons, opened in 2005 at 5201 Northshore Drive.