Ward 2

The Argenta Historic District represents a continuum of the city’s development from its working class origins in the 1870s and 1880s. Between 1890 and 1940 North Little Rock established itself as a city of the first class and emerged as an industrial center. At the crux of the development of North Little Rock was the vital role the railroad played in the city’s economic base and its effect on the industrial nature of the city. North Little Rock’s growth from a small settlement to a city of the first class is an important element in the development of central Arkansas’s urban center. The foresight and ingenuity of early leaders in North Little Rock is a significant example of community planning and development.

The area along the north bank of the Arkansas River in central Arkansas did not parallel the development of Little Rock, Arkansas’s capital city across the river. As early as 1810, white settlers arrived across from “the little rock.” Early maps referred to the area as
“Opposite Little Rock” and two ferry terminals operated on the north bank. In 1845 an army officer named Richard DeCantillon Collins, who surveyed roads and rivers in Arkansas for the government, registered with the Pulaski County clerk’s office eight square blocks for sale on the north bank of the Arkansas River. The first name given to the area was DeCantillon, but the Flood of 1840 washed away any dream at that time of starting a town.

According to some accounts, another early settlement on the north side called Huntersville was named for Captain R. L. Hunter, who surveyed a route for the Little Rock-Fort Smith railroad. More likely, however, the name derived from William Hunter, the U.S. military advisor of the railroad in 1864. The first rail route built in Arkansas was the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad. Completed in 1862, the railroad’s western division ended at a depot adjacent to a ferry terminal on the north river bank “opposite Little Rock.” In 1871 the Arkansas Gazette published an editorial in an attempt to clear confusion about the name of the town “opposite Little Rock.” This editorial explained that during the Civil War the military superintendent of the north side depot was William Hunter and the location was known as the military post of Huntersville. By 1872 fire had destroyed what was left of the Huntersville settlement. Yet another development on the north side, though not as well known as DeCantillon, Huntersville or Argenta, was the town site of Quapaw. In 1865 William E. Woodruff advertised riverfront lots adjacent to Huntersville, but there is no evidence of any deeds recorded.

In 1866 the town of Argenta was surveyed and platted (Argentum is Latin for Silver). Folklore says that silver had been discovered about ten miles north of the town site. In fact, “Kellogg’s Diggins” was a lead mine that yielded some silver and was intermittently mined until the mid-1920s. Another version of how Argenta was named centers around a Frenchman named A. J. Burnett who supposedly built a two-story hotel called the “Argenta” before the Civil War. Although unlikely for a number of reasons, it is said that the area around the hotel and the town of DeCantillon were combined and named Argenta.

A post office was established in Argenta in 1871, but the town had not incorporated. In 1873 the completion of the Baring Cross bridge across the Arkansas River just to the west of downtown Argenta, connecting it with Little Rock and the southwest, heralded the beginning of a long period of growth for the city of Argenta. By the late 1870s Argenta was a major railroad crossing. As the railway-related shops, warehouses, and workforce increased, so did the town of Argenta. Additions to the west and north of the
Original Town of Argenta were platted in the 1870s and 1880s, including Clendenin’s, North Argenta, DeCantillon, Barton’s and Hudson’s additions. Much of the railway labor was migratory and large numbers of these “boomers,” as they were called, passed
through Argenta. The railroad people who settled in one place were called “homeguards.” With a rapidly growing population and little organized means of enforcing the law, the disorderliness of the town inspired an article in the Arkansas Gazette in December 1880
encouraging the town of Argenta to incorporate for the purpose of obtaining control of the “lawless conditions.”

Attempts to establish Argenta as an incorporated city had failed until 1890 when Argenta property owners filed an incorporation petition. However, the Little Rock city attorney advised the City Council that since the boundaries of the cities of Little Rock and Argenta extended to the middle of the Arkansas River, Argenta was contiguous to Little Rock and could be annexed. In an April 1890 election, Little Rock voters decided to annex Argenta and it became the eighth ward of the city of Little Rock. Although C.L. Vogel (owner of Vogel’s Grocery at 323 Main) and others challenged the legality of the election, the Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed the annexation.

At the time of its annexation to Little Rock, Argenta was still considered a “rough” town. Argenta was “off limits” even to soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Roots military post. Saloons and gambling houses filled the buildings along Argenta’s primary street, Newton
Avenue (changed to Main Street in April 1904). There were no paved streets, no water system, plank sidewalks, a small police force, and only bucket-brigade fire protection. Low-lying streets with no drainage system often flooded, leaving Argenta muddy and infested by mosquitoes. Although a “free” wooden bridge was constructed across the Arkansas River in 1897, little improvements were made in Little Rock’s Eighth Ward.

The name Faucette is synonymous with the history of North Little Rock. Brothers William C. and James P. Faucette were foresighted businessmen who played a significant role in the independence and development of Argenta/North Little Rock. After settling in Argenta in 1878, both men worked on the Little Rock-Fort Smith Railway. As an early business venture the Faucette brothers operated a boarding house at 400 Main Street which catered to railroad workers. Later they bought land in downtown Argenta and built a private electric light plant.

As one of the first aldermen elected from the Eighth Ward of Little Rock, William Faucette pushed for improvements in the swampy Eighth Ward. In 1901 a group of men from the Eighth Ward led by the Faucette brothers secretly organized for the purpose of separating Argenta from Little Rock. An area immediately north of the Argenta town site (what is today 15th on the south, 23rd Street on the north, Main Street on the east and the railroad tracks on the west) incorporated as the “Town of North Little Rock” in 1901. The town expanded in 1902 from 15th Street on the south to what is today Pershing Boulevard on the north, Pike Avenue on the west and Olive Street on the east. The Faucette brothers paid the filing fee for the incorporation of North Little Rock and Frank O. Cook was elected the first mayor.

The group from the Eighth Ward then manipulated a bill through the Arkansas Thirtyfourth General Assembly in 1903. Prepared by state senator James P. Clarke, this bill permitted the annexation or consolidation of one municipal corporation located withinone mile of any other municipal corporation. The men from the Eighth Ward paid a lobbyist from Walnut Ridge to ascertain passage of what was called the “Hoxie-Walnut Ridge Bill.” Legislators paid scant attention to the bill, thinking that it was specialinterest legislation to allow the cities of Hoxie and Walnut Ridge to consolidate. The governor signed the Hoxie-Walnut Ridge Bill into law in March 1903. On May 1, 1903, the day after the legislature adjourned, William C. Faucette announced that he had a petition signed by Argenta property owners asking to be annexed to the incorporated town of North Little Rock under the provisions of the Hoxie-Walnut Ridge Bill. In a special election in July 1903, the citizens of Argenta voted to secede from Little Rock and become a part of the incorporated town of North Little Rock.

The annexation of Argenta by North Little Rock was in dispute in the courts for almost a year, but in February 1904 the Arkansas Supreme Court decided in favor of the North Little Rock-Argenta annexation. William Faucette was elected mayor in the city’s first
general election. In addition to the mayoral position, a full slate of city officers was elected and the city was divided into four wards. With a population of 8,203 and an established city government, North Little Rock became a city of the first class.

William Faucette was re-elected mayor in 1905 and 1907. The City Council in 1910 appointed him to fill the unexpired term of the city’s second mayor, E. A. Ramsey, but Faucette resigned in early 1911 to serve in the state legislature. His replacement was James P. Faucette, who was elected mayor in April 1911. City improvement districts were established in 1913 to pave streets and install a sewer system. The privately owned Faucette Brothers Bank (established in 1901) changed its name to Twin City Bank with James P. Faucette as president and then incorporated as a public bank in 1904. Manufacturing and railroad business expanded and the city began to flourish. North Little Rock annexed Baring Cross in an election in January 1905 and expanded to five wards.

On October 26, 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt visited the city and gave a short speech at the foot of the free bridge. It is said that Roosevelt remarked, “Mr. Faucette, I am delighted to meet the mayor of Argenta”. In January 1906 a city ordinance changed the name of the city to Argenta.

Argenta experienced an economic boom in the first decade of the 20th century. Four railroad lines were located in the city. Cotton oil mills and the lumber industry provided a strong economic base for growth. In 1910 Justin Matthews, a businessman and real estate
developer, built a two-story building with full basement (razed by Urban Renewal in 1976) covering the entire east side of the 200 block of Main Street. Other local businessmen built brick buildings along Main Street, including the Manees family (313-
315 Main and 317-319 Main.

The Faucette brothers were the force behind construction of a new city hall building in 1914-1915 and it remains an outstanding architectural and government anchor in the commercial downtown.

The city’s name was Argenta until October 1917 when the City Council changed it again to North Little Rock (in 1958 there was an unsuccessful campaign to change the name back to Argenta). The 1917 name change to North Little Rock was fostered by James P. Faucette after he moved to California where he saw the economic benefits for a small town close to Hollywood that changed its name to West Hollywood. Faucette was convinced that changing the name of Argenta back to North Little Rock would be a financial boost to the city.

As the city’s business section grew in the early years of the 20th century, its residential area was changing west of Main Street. Although additions had been platted, there was little building in most of the area west of Main Street. Orange and Willow Streets were occupied by African-American families. At least two African-American churches were once located on Orange Street. In the early years of the century, black and white families often lived on the same blocks. By 1915, however, most of the downtown residential neighborhood was occupied by white local business owners and workers and railroad employees.

In 1923 the Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River was dedicated. The “free bridge”, built in 1897, was replaced in 1924 by a Main Street bridge. Replacement of a dangerous wood viaduct over the railroad tracks at 8th and Main Streets by a new concrete viaduct in
1927 accessed the areas north of downtown for further development. A streetcar system existed in the downtown and the city was in such good financial condition that a banner was placed on the eastern edge of town reading on one side “Locate in North Little Rock: A City Without Indebtedness” and “Welcome to North Little Rock, The Industrial City of Arkansas” on the other side.

Both the commercial and residential areas of downtown North Little Rock remained viable through the 1960s. In the latter part of the 1960s Urban Renewal cleared a two block wide path along the Arkansas River. Commercial buildings in the first two blocks of Main Street were razed in the 1970s and two modern bank buildings were constructed in the 200 block of Main. Buildings in the first two blocks of Maple, Orange and Willow Streets were also cleared as a part of Urban Renewal projects. Three blocks east of Main Street, construction of Interstate 30 interrupted that portion of the historic downtown neighborhood. In western areas of North Little Rock’s downtown, more “improvements” and rerouting of traffic arteries opened once serene streets to heavy use.

Although the fabric of the Argenta Historic District has been confined to a small core area, a sense of the original historic character of the neighborhood survives. Comprising 258 buildings (of which only 10 are less than 50 years old), the Argenta Historic District documents the development of North Little Rock from a muddy rough settlement to a city of the first class.

Epilogue:
The Argenta Historic District has embraced its history and used it as a marketing tool in reversing the economic fortunes of downtown North Little Rock (Argenta). With the listing of the Argenta Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places and formation of a local design review commission in 1993 to protect Argenta’s historic character, the stage was set for the emergence of two other necessary entities, the Argenta Community Development Corporation (formed in 1993) and Main Street Argenta (formed in 1994). More recently, the newly formed Argenta Downtown Council has taken the lead in promoting Main Street. Due to the revitalization efforts (both past and present) of all these downtown organizations and support from city government, the Argenta Historic District continues to regenerate itself within the image of its history. Downtown North Little Rock now evokes a sense of time and place, while also
welcoming compatible new construction to infill the vacant lots in the district.

–Sandra Taylor Smith

Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture
Located west of Pike Avenue in North Little Rock — across from the shops now under the Union Pacific banner — Baring Cross was a prosperous town primarily of middle-class railroad workers that took its name from the first steel bridge to span the Arkansas River in 1873. From 1896 to early 1905, Baring Cross was a municipality that encompassed a smaller area than today. North Little Rock annexed the town, which became the city’s 5th Ward and home to several mayors and aldermen. Following national trends, Baring Cross decayed economically in the 1960s and ‘70s as homeowners moved to newer neighborhoods in suburbia. Urban Renewal had little long-term effect on the decline, but a combination of federal and local money through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program in 2010 as well as private investment is spurring revitalization.

The name of Baring Cross comes from the Baring and Company bankers of the United Kingdom, who financed construction of the Baring Cross Bridge in 1872-73. Historians disagree over the origin of “Cross.” Prior to the bridge, which opened in late 1873,
farmsteads of pioneer families of Josiah M. Giles and Emanuel Boone, ruled the fertile bottomlands near the river west of Argenta. In March 1873, the Arkansas Gazette described Baring Cross as “not very populous” with room to grow. “It has one or two small wooden dwellings, and two large railway buildings,” the newspaper wrote. “The ground is covered with main and side tracks, which run in every direction.” A freight depot stood at the end of the track at the water’s edge, but it was “full to the ceiling”because of the difficulty of crossing the river without a railroad bridge, then under construction. Freight had to be loaded into wagons for the trip via ferry.

As the railroad flourished, so did the community that sprang up west of Pike. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, which acquired the Cairo and Fulton in May 1874, first built a 12-stall frame roundhouse and machine shop along Pike Avenue that replaced a smaller building. Then, in 1888, the Iron Mountain, which was acquired by theMissouri Pacific Railway, built a 28-stall brick roundhouse. Later expansion was possible after drainage of the Baring Cross swamp in 1890. The site has served continuously to this day as a railroad hub and the area’s largest employer. The $40 million Downing B. Jenks Shop, dedicated in 1984, is a major diesel engine repair shop in the Union Pacific system. Pike Avenue was the main street of Baring Cross life from the 1870s onward. By 1900, three hotels, a community hall, stores and restaurants drove residential and commercial activities in a town of 389 people. Thriving businesses included the Vestal Florist Company, established in 1880, and the Arkansas Industrial Company, a brick and tile manufacturer that occupied a four-block square north of 11th Street known as the brick yard.

In the 1890s Baring Cross cast a wary eye toward Little Rock, which had annexed Argenta and attempted to annex the Iron Mountain and Vestal properties. A petition for municipal incorporation, signed by 44 prominent residents, was approved in April 1896 and Baring Cross elected its first mayor, Mord Roberts, and five councilmen. Roberts, a master mechanic for the railroad, also developed housing between Seventh and 11th Streets. The town expanded twice, annexing the Vestal Addition to the west in 1898 and the Baring Cross Addition up to 15th Street in 1903. The North Little Rock Times noted in 1899 that 75 pupils were enrolled at the Baring Cross school. Many a community leader also found guidance from the Baring Cross Baptist Church founded in 1905. The late Walter B. Metz, a historian and folklorist who grew up in Baring Cross, wrote of a hardscrabble life, explaining that “families were large, money was scarce and three
square meals a day was actually a luxury.” In October 1905, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt paraded through Baring Cross on his way from a visit at Fort Roots to Little Rock.

The flood and torrential rain in 1927 inundated the Vestal nurseries after the dyke broke during the community’s worst natural disaster. The late Evelyn K. Eubank, a local historian, recounted the plight of a Baring Cross family whose home and new furniture were ruined by the rising river. “All of the dwellings under water were left with deep mud and had to be hosed out,” she wrote. The economic shift that began in the 1960s, exacerbated by middle-class flight to suburbia, the interstate highway and Urban Renewal, was the next disaster from which baring Cross has not recovered. The loss of owner-occupied homes and businesses devastated the neighborhood.

The area known as Baring Cross expanded to include neighborhoods east of Pike and north up to Pershing Boulevard. Pike Plaza opened in 1959 and Memorial Hospital occupied the top of the Giles family’s Blackberry Hill from 1962 until moving to Springhill in 1999. The North Little Rock Housing Authority with federal funding constructed the $2.4 million Heritage House high-rise at 22nd and Division for elderly and disabled people in 1967. In the 1970s, Urban Renewal and the city poured about $4.5 million into the neighborhood between 15th and 27th streets. The work rehabilitated 600 houses, built curbs and gutters, paved new streets, improved drainage and offered loans
and grants to property owners. But the downturn continued. Pike Avenue at 18th Street, the heart of the business district with grocery stores, a movie theater and numerous businesses by the 1960s, was a shell of itself by the 1980s and ‘90s. Poverty and crime took a toll.

In 2010, the city partnered with the Argenta Community Development Corp. and the federal government to provide $8.4 million through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program for home construction and public works projects in lower Baring Cross. Private investment has also restored older homes and holds out the potential of future commercial and residential development. The city and federal government built a $1.9 million roundabout at Pike, Broadway and Riverfront Drive. Third Street was extended as Rockwater Boulevard to link with the $3.8 million Rockwater Marina and the Riverside at Rockwater Apartments that opened this year on the former Vestal grounds. A
smokestack of the Vestal firm was preserved as part of the new roadway.

Cary Bradburn
North Little Rock History Commission

The Dixie Addition, east of the downtown, was platted in 1924 and was annexed into North Little Rock in 1946. The name was taken from the Dixie Cotton Oil Mill at the crossing of the Rock Island and Cotton Belt railroad lines. The Rose City Cotton Oil Mill was also located in the vicinity, along the Cotton Belt. But Dixie remained largely undeveloped until the 1940s. In 1929, the Carl Handy family was listed in the city directory at 312 Dixie Lane. A few other families were living in Dixie at the time. Ellen B. Watkins, whose family owned large tracts in the area, filed the plat and Bill of Assurance in Pulaski Circuit Court that named the addition “Dixie Subdivision.” The purpose was to provide housing for cotton oil mill workers.

Until the 1950s, there was no running water or sewers– only wells and pumps and septic tanks– and for most households no electricity. In 1945, a newspaper article noted that electrical service would begin in August for about 100 households in Dixie. Utilities were not generally available in the area until the 1960s. Water and sewer service also was not provided until the 1960s to all in the neighborhood, which grew to around 800 residents by 1990. The subdivision is bordered by an open drainage ditch known as the Redwood Channel that runs into the Redwood Tunnel built in 1911. Heavy rain causes the ditch to overflow onto the flat terrain with water flowing down hill from Park Hill and Lakewood, making Dixie as well as Dark Hollow among the most flood-prone areas in North Little Rock. Residents recall the Saint Stephens Baptist Church bell that sounded flood alarms when high water came.

While mostly residential, Dixie had a mixture of commercial activity. Among businesses established in Dixie were the Perry Brothers Grocery and Café at 822 East E Street, operated by T.R. and Sarah Perry and J.T. Perry; the Alf Loring Jr. Grocery Store at 900 I Street; Lucille’s Grocery at 1020 I Street; Martin’s Barber Shop upstairs from Lucille’s; Dixie Drive-Inn Ice Cream shop, run by E.A. Anderson at 913 F Street; and Darian Grable’s Dixie Market Grocery 800 D Street. Larger businesses on Dixie Lane included Dixie Gin Company, Adkins-Phelps Seed Company plant, the Zonolite Company, Arkansas Rice Growers Cooperative Association, Southern Farmers Association warehouse and a couple of furniture manufacturers. By the late 1930s, the Dixie Cotton Oil Mill at the crossing of the Rock Island and Cotton Belt lines, just south of Dixie, was replaced by the Monarch Mill and Lumber Company and Fones Brothers Hardware Company.

The Church of Christ at 823 I Street and Saint Stephens Baptist at 902 E Street were an active part of the community. In 1968, Dixie residents raised money to secure a 4 ½ acre site next to the Dixie Addition Day Care Center for a neighborhood playground that became Conley Park. At a fundraiser, the Civic League sponsored a “Musical Festival Song of Praise” with singing groups from Little Rock and North Little Rock helping to raise money to buy the park site.i Conley Park, named for Rev. Cato C. Conley, received $11,300 from the North Little Rock City council in 1990 for construction of restrooms and a pavilion. Also in the Dixie area was the Broadway Drive-In movie theater for whites, which opened in 1940 at 3421 East Broadway and closed in the mid-1960s before racial integration. Woodson Elementary School, formerly the East End School at 326 Clover Street, moved to East Fourth and Redwood streets, a few blocks south of
Dixie in the 1960s.

North Little Rock’s Urban Renewal Agency reported in 1968 that Dixie had “one of the worst drainage problems” in the city. The agency noted: “Because [Dixie] is too large an area for total clearance and there will be too many families displaced, it will be the recommendation of this agency that the area remain a residential neighborhood, with acquisition of all substandard structures and rehabilitation of those remaining which are economically feasible to rehabilitate.”ii Of Dark Hollow, the agency estimated in 1970 that half of the houses there were “unrepairable” and that the neighborhood was “lacking in adequate streets and storm drainage facilities.”iii But neither neighborhood became Urban Renewal projects, though public funds through less comprehensive anti-poverty programs, the federal Community Development Block Grant program and city assistance have helped improve conditions – except the neighborhoods
continue to flood.

Dark Hollow and Dixie have always endured the worst flooding in North Little Rock due to inadequate drainage. Between 1907 and 1912, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had dredged a network of ditches to drain into the main Redwood channel that took water through the 2,600-foot Redwood tunnel to the Arkansas River. But the ditches overflowed anytime a big rain came. In a 1974 meeting, a Dark Hollow resident complained of stagnant water for three months at 15th and Olive streets. Others complained of water in their yards and homes. There was hope in 1974 that drainage issues would be alleviated. The Corps had an $11.4 million plan, endorsed by residents and the city of North Little Rock, to enlarge the Redwood channel from Interstate 40 to the Missouri Pacific Railroad hump yards and to dig a new channel from there beneath the MoPac rail yard and Rock Island tracks to the south through a new tunnel east of the old
Redwood tunnel to empty into the river. But the plan died in Washington, where the Army Corps of Engineers Board of Rivers and Harbors ruled in 1978 that the project was ineligible for funding because it violated an executive order to deny federal funds for new development in a flood plain.iv Later and more expensive drainage plans were proposed in the 1980s and 1990s – the most recent plan carried a tab of more than $30 million — but they didn’t meet the government’s cost-to-benefit ratio. City engineers and contractors routinely monitor the more than 100-year-old Redwood Tunnel, which carries a risk of collapsing in a major storm according to engineers.

For its part, Dixie has had strong neighborhood advocacy. But Dixie, as well as Glenview and Tie Plant, lived with the consequences of being near the railroad. On New Year’s Eve 1984, a highly flammable liquefied gas, ethylene oxide, began leaking from a railroad tank car in Missouri Pacific’s switchyard about a half-mile from Interstate 40 west of Prothro Junction. The homes of an estimated 1,000 people in Dixie, Glenview and Tie Plant were evacuated because of the threat, but residents returned home the next day after authorities determined the areas were safe. Dixie residents and members of the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now had a contentious meeting with railroad officials in mid-January 1985 in which they demanded that Missouri Pacific take responsibility for the nausea, sore throats, dizziness and other ailments reported by some residents since the chemical leak. Missouri Pacific officials countered that tests at the spill site showed “conclusive evidence” that the ethylene oxide “never left the train yard.” Residents disputed the test results. In 1986, Dixie residents and Acorn presented a list of demands to the city of North Little Rock for more fire hydrants, new playground equipment in Conley Park and construction of a recreation center, among other things. In 1990, the city appropriated $11,300 to build restrooms and a pavilion in Conley Park, where the community celebrates its annual Dixie Days. Dixie also formed a community development agency to deal with abandoned and problem houses.

–Cary Bradburn

The East End is an area bounded by East Fourth Street on the north, the Arkansas River on the south, Rose City on the east and Interstate 30 on the west. In the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railroad tracks ran down Fourth Street to divide it from the Shorter College area. The neighborhood comprises the East Argenta, Washington Avenue, Choctaw, Crockett, Gribble,and Topf additions, which were platted between the 1880s
and the 1920s. Both the Buckeye Cotton Seed Oil Mill and the Arkansas Fertilizer plant, built in the early 1900s along the Rock Island tracks in the Choctaw Addition, provided work for residents. The Buckeye mill burned down in 1917 and was rebuilt. The area east to Buckeye Street was part of Little Rock’s Eighth Ward in the 1890s until 1904 when North Rock annexed it. Later in 1904, North Little Rock annexed east to Redwood Street, which was North Little
Rock’s eastern boundary until 1946.

The Washington Avenue Business District and East Third Street (now Broadway) were gateways to North Little Rock before construction of Interstate 30 and the work of Urban Renewal. Commercial and residential developments were well underway before North Little Rock became a city. The state’s first railroad company, the Memphis and Little Rock (later merged with Rock Island) established a rail yard and shops on East Fourth Street in the 1875. Rock Island built a
passenger depot in 1913, which the city restored in 1998 and leased to the Sherman Park Community Development Corporation. The building is now operated as an innovation hub by Shorter College. Farther east, at Arkansas Avenue and Buckeye Street, the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad (which merged with Southern Pacific) operated a large train yard and the Cotton Belt Route.

African Americans from Argenta’s East End featured in the Blue Book of 1907, which profiled prominent Black citizens. Physicians Clement A. Smith and Mitchell W. Blackwell, who had clinics on East Broadway, were among residents from the north side. The Blue Book wrote of Smith, the “doctor has a steadily increasing and paying practice. During the four years that he has lived in the city he has acquired seven houses and lots just three blocks from Main Street [at
310 East Washington], valued at $6,000.” The Blue Book noted that Blackwell owned “a valuable place [at 1100 East Washington] in Argenta, upon which he has a very nice two-story building and an office fitted up as nicely as one could reasonably wish.” The city directory for Argenta in 1906 listed two other black doctors, Samuel C. Coleman of 200 East Washington and Louis J. Wells of 314 Beech Street. A notable entry in the Blue Book was W.A. Springfield, an Argenta property owner who managed a printing plant in Little Rock. He organized Capitol City Savings Bank to attract African American investors and depositors. Another in the Blue Book was the Rev. George W. Turner of 1311 East Broadway, a garbage subcontractor for the city and an ordained elder of the Church of the Living God.

City directories for Argenta in the early 1900s indicate that the East End (east of downtown) was mostly residential with a vibrant commercial base. Black residential areas were largely separate from white neighborhoods. But they were adjacent to each other in the days before suburban sprawl and several blocks had a mix of black and white occupants. The business district on East Washington was racially mixed. Black-owned businesses thrived in the area alongside white establishments owned by people of European descent, mostly Irish, German, Russian, Greek, and Italian. In the eight blocks of East Washington between Locust and Smothers streets, the 1914 city directory listed 11 grocery stores, three restaurants, a large general store, a dry goods store, a saloon, barber shop, shoemaker, drug store, tailor and upholstery shop, among others. In the downtown, the Ritz Theater at 219 East Washington catered exclusively to Black customers. The Rialto Theater at 205 Main opened in 1930 and confined black patrons to a side entrance that led upstairs to the balcony.

The Colum Brothers Funeral Home at 505 East Washington was a prominent African American business that contracted with the city of North Little Rock to bury paupers during the early 1900s, according to city council minutes. That is, until the three Colum brothers became involved in a feud with a white family that led to murder and riots in 1906. Robert Colum was killed during a coroner’s inquest and his brothers, Garrett and Charles Colum, along with shoe store owner Louis Styles, fled the city after a white man was killed in front of the Colums’ funeral home. The Colums’ business and their homes in the 1600 block of East Second Street and Styles’ home at 522 Locust were burned to the ground by a mob. Homer Blackman, who was associated in business with Styles, was arrested and then lynched after being kidnapped from the Argenta city jail by four masked men. African American families sought refuge from roving mobs and the railroads and mills complained to city officials because Black employees were afraid to go to work until order was restored.

Two funeral homes were among the businesses established on East Washington Avenue. Hubble Funeral Home, founded in 1922 by Walter S. Hubble, also provided ambulance service. In 1931, Edward S. Hubble, one of three brothers who took over after their father, organized the Cosmopolitan Life Insurance Company to provide life and burial insurance. Another undertaker was Oscar T. Smith and Son, which also operated an ambulance as well as burial service.
Hamilton Monument Company on East Washington sold memorial and grave stones, advertising itself as the only Black-owned company in the monument business. In the 1940s, African American business owners on Washington Avenue included billiards operator and restaurateur Frank A. Snodgrass and 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. Most establishments had separate doors for white and black with a board partition to divide the dining rooms.

The East End had a number of black-owned restaurants, beauty salons, and a few plumbers and auto repairmen and other small businesses. Many of the businesses were located on or near the city streetcar’s Washington Avenue line that ran out to the 2800 block at Redwood Street from 1908 to 1937. East Washington out to the city limits at Redwood Street was predominantly white in the 1940s and 1950s, according to city directories. But several blocks of East Washington were racially mixed: east from Main Street to the 600 block at Cypress Street, from the 1100 block at Hickory Street to the 1800 block at Elm Street and from the 2700 block at Cherry Street to Redwood Street. East Broadway was almost all-white to the 800 block at Vine Street and predominantly black from Vine Street out to the city limits. Harvey Gant of Dark Hollow operated an auto repair business at 618 East Broadway. East Second Street was mostly black
from the 700 block at Pine Street east to the 1900 block at Plum Street and from the 2600 block at Palm Street to the city limits at Redwood Street. 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.

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. East End was home to numerous churches, including Greater Shiloh Baptist, Leach Chapel, Eastern Star Baptist, Morning Star Baptist, the Church of God in Christ and St. Augustine
Catholic Church and school. St. Augustine opened a school at 1421 East Second Street for African American students in 1929. The school integrated in 1964 when it began enrolling white students. Damascus Spiritual Church, led by Bishop A. Harris, moved from Scott to an existing church building at 2401 East Washington in the East End in 1977. The previous occupant, Washington Avenue Methodist, a white church, operated a library and soup kitchen during the
Depression and also provided medical care through its Riverside Mission for people in the neighborhood. Greater Shiloh Baptist was organized in 1877 as Shiloh Baptist Church. The congregation met in a small frame building on a farm at a site now on Buckeye Street, with a Rev. Rumpf as its first pastor. In 1890, Rev. Alexander Yarbrough moved the congregation to a building purchased by Austin Walker at Third and Hazel streets. In 1957, Rev. M.L. Brantley
initiated a building fund and the church built a new home in 1963 at 217 Hazel Street. Rev. J.W. Johnson, pastor of Greater Shiloh Baptist from 1987 to 1996, was the first African American president of the North Little Rock School Board in 1990.

The Shorter College area and East End have been known more recently as Sherman Park, which is the name of a community center and park. Bishop Odie L. Sherman of the AME Church was active in North Little Rock’s African American community from the 1930s to the early 1960s through involvement with the Civic League and parks system.

–Cary Bradburn

Glenview was an African American subdivision built between 1956 and 1960 north of Tie Plant in North Little Rock’s Rose City area. Built by the Glenview Development Corporation, headed by Reed McConnell and Harry Pittard, the subdivision was advertised as the “first fully planned subdivision available to Greater Little Rock’s Negro Families,” according to a newspaper advertisement in 1956. FHA, GI and conventional loans were offered. By September 1956, work was underway on 21 houses, with 10 nearing completion. Features included paved streets, public utilities, covered carports, central heating, and a new school, Roosevelt Elementary, which was
completed in November 1956.The principal, Calvin Muldrow, was among Glenview’s earliest residents and namesake of one of the new streets. Numerous families moved to the new and modern Glenview after being displaced by construction of Interstate 30 and Urban Renewal. Also among the incoming residents were black airmen and their families from the Little Rock Air Force Base, which opened in the mid-1950s. The city of North Little Rock annexed Glenview in 1956.

The name Glenview was the idea of Gladys Catherine Adair Young, the wife of Allen W. Young, principal of the Carver school in Dark Hollow and an organizer of the African American YMCA branch in North Little Rock. Prior to the development the land was used as grazing fields and had a row trees in the middle that separated two parcels. McConnell and Pittard decided not to cut down the trees and instead created a wide tree-lined boulevard and median. Houses built on the boulevard were more expensive. An anniversary booklet in 2001 explained: “The Glenview community began because of a small group of people having a vision. The vision, however, did not come without a price. People had to be willing to sacrifice their time for meetings and stand as a unified group. They knew that African Americans wanted to live in a nice subdivision. Those persons were A.W. Young, E.H. Hunter [principal of Jones Junior and Senior high], Calvin Muldrow, Roscoe Whyte, Daisy Bates [publisher of the black-owned State Press and NAACP leader during Little Rock’s 1957 school integration crisis] and Norvell Rayford.”

The first homes were built on North Woodland Drive. Edmonds and Bethany roads already existed and original plans called for a shopping center on Edmonds. But Pittard teamed up with Winrock Enterprises to build houses instead. Every house south of the boulevard had the same floor plan, concrete driveways, and Mimosa trees. New streets were named after residents, including Young Road, Hunter Road, Muldrow Drive, and Whyte Drive. According to the 2001 anniversary booklet, Glenview was called “silk stockings” because of a large number of female school teachers living there. While true, people from numerous walks of life resided in Glenview. The Glenview Improvement League incorporated in 1959 with William L. Lindsey, Herbert L. Tyson, and Calvin Muldrow Jr. as officers. In 1975, the city built and opened the Glenview Community Center for recreation and community activities.

Glenview attracted lawyers, doctors, business owners, educators, and others. Among them were photographer Jordan Davie and physician Joycelyn Elders, who served as U.S. surgeon general for President Bill Clinton. During Glenview’s 50th anniversary in August 2006, Willie Vincent recalled: “People got out and met each other and watched out for each other.” Vincent bought a three-bedroom home in Glenview in 1960 and helped organize the community’s Imperial Club, which mentored African American youth. Other residents who attended the 50th anniversary talked about how the neighborhood was close-knit and safe enough to keep doors unlocked.
“Most of the neighbors had Mimosa trees,” North Little Rock Alderman Linda Robinson remembered at the anniversary. Robinson said she moved to Glenview with her grandparents, William and Etta Robinson.

Samuel Holloway, who owned a furniture and appliance delivery and repair company, moved to Glenview in 1962. He served on the North Little Rock Parks and Recreation Commission in the 1980s. Holloway’s daughter, Charlotte Thomas, was the first African American to work in the mayor’s office, serving for seven mayors for more than 50 years until retirement. Mable Mitchell, the first black woman elected to the North Little Rock School Board in 1989, moved to Glenview in the early 1960s. In 1963, she was a founding member of the interracial Panel of American Women, which backed desegregation. Mitchell taught school for 33 years in North Little Rock and Little Rock before retiring in 1984. She ran for School Board in 1988 when seats were held at large. But zones were established in 1989 as a result of litigation. Mitchell was initially appointed to the board in June 1989 and then won election in her zone in September 1989. The School Board elected her board president in 1991. Mitchell served on the School Board for more than 16 years until December 2005 and was replaced in January 2006 by Dorothy “Dot” Williams, a Glenview resident who continues to serve on the School Board.

Glenview resident Dee Bennett was the first African American elected to the North Little Rock City Council in 1990. Bennett had lost elections for alderman in 1984 and 1988 to Olen Thomas before winning the 1990 race. In 1992, she was elected to the State House of Representatives and served three terms as a legislator through 1998. Bennett opposed Thomas for alderman again in 2000 but lost in a close election. She sat as acting mayor of North Little Rock from February 13- 18 in 1992 while Mayor Patrick Hays was out of town. Earlier in her life, Bennett was a member of Jeanne and the Darlings, a gospel and R&B group that released six records and were studio
musicians at Stax Records. Another Glenview resident, Ira Scoggins, was elected alderman in 1992 to replace Bennett. A retired educator who taught at Roosevelt Elementary, Scoggins was music director of Bethel AME for more than 50 years. Scoggins lost a bid for re-election to the City Council in 1998 to fellow church member Dwayne Dobbins of the Shorter College area.

While primarily residential, small businesses added to life in Glenview. Winston Grocery Store and William Deloney Jr.’s barbershop were two of the earliest establishments. Rose Robinson, Savannah Whitehead and Jessie Tyiska ran a beauty shop. Later, Lela Colclough operated a beauty and barber shop. John R. Coats was owner of a popular dairy bar and recreation center on Bethany Road. The Wagon Wheel restaurant and night club was a hot spot in Glenview, operated by Mrs. GoLee. “People would come from miles [to patronize the Wagon Wheel],” according to the 2001 booklet. “One could not enter unless a [50-cent] cover charge was paid. Upon entering, there was a large room where one could dance all night. Customers could dance to the jukebox during the week and on weekends they were entertained by a local band.”

The Glenview Urban Renewal project encompassed some 260 acres of the Tie Plant, Pecan Grove and Fairmon subdivisions where outhouses, septic tanks and poor drainage made the area one of the city’s worst remaining slums when work began in 1968. Of 280 structures in the area, 237 were deemed substandard. Plans called for a neighborhood park, community center and an industrial park. Residents of homes targeted by the North Little Rock Urban Renewal Agency had the choice to rehabilitate their property, with assistance from federal loan and grant programs, or sell their property to the agency. “A few people upgraded their homes but most sold
to Urban Renewal for very little,” according to a history of Glenview. Expenditures of North Little Rock’s Urban Renewal agency in this area totaled around $3.5 million. Rehabilitation work totaled $32,470 in federal loans and grants as well as cash outlays by residents. The
Glenview Urban Renewal project was completed in 1974.

In 1971 over the objections of the Glenview neighborhood, a private housing project of 104 units, Prothro Manor Apartments, were built east of Glenview on land sold by Urban Renewal.ii Glenview residents sued to prevent the use of the federal rent supplement funds to subsidize low income tenants, but lost. The lawsuit contended that the housing project would lower Glenview property values. The residents had earlier defeated a proposal for a low-income public housing project in Tie Plant in favor of single-family dwellings in a subdivision called Glenview Renewal. “It was during this time that two neighbors on 19th Street, Mrs. Dorothy Cross and Rev. Joseph Hall sold their property to Urban Renewal,” according to a history of Glenview. The property became the new Glenview home of the New Hope Baptist Church, which relocated from Tie Plant.

In 1975, a new $439,000 Glenview Community Center and swimming pool opened. Features at the center included a gymnasium, basketball courts, a senior citizens area, a daycare, an exercise machine and a trampoline, among other things. Paved streets with curbs and gutters, storm drainages, sanitary sewers and electrical, gas and water lines had been installed or were nearing completion at the end of 1974, according to the North Little Rock Urban Renewal Agency’s annual report in 1974. Most of the residential rehabilitation work was completed by 1975. Bethany Road, north of the neighborhood with access to the industrial park, was to be widened to
four lanes from Edmonds Street to Highway 161 in 1975, including improvements made to alleviate flooding.iv As land became available, commercial developments moved to Bethany Road. Lots in the 145-acre industrial park north of the neighborhood had either been sold or were under contract at the end of 1974, according to that year’s annual report of the North Little Rock Urban Renewal Agency. Among occupants in the industrial park were the Tennenbaum Company’s scrap metal processing plant, Gray Supply Company, Davenport Moving and Storage and warehouses. Olen Thomas, Urban Renewal Agency director, said in 1973 that about 26 acres had been “sold or committed” to Warehouse Development Company of Arkansas. The city of North Little Rock began operating four solid waste incinerators on Edmonds Street adjacent to the Koppers tie plant in 1977, after previous efforts were delayed by protests from
residents and settlement of a lawsuit by Hall Tank Company at East Fifth and Buckeye streets.

Glenview has maintained a strong neighborhood identity since its inception in 1956. The Glenview Neighborhood Association provides forums on community issues, organizes National Night Out celebrations and promotes the neighborhood’s history through anniversary events. With varying success, residents have actively fought commercial and industrial rezoning proposals that encroach upon the neighborhood. In 1998, the interim director of the North Little Rock Parks Department proposed closing Glenview’s community center and swimming pool to save an estimated $225,000 to boost funding for the Rose City Community Center. But Glenview was having nothing of it and city officials quickly backed off. “If [city officials] want to hear some noise and some racket, let them come and propose that,” Roger Johnson of Glenview told a reporter, while the matter was still pending. “It’s deplorable that they are even thinking about it, especially when we have the resources in this city,” he added. Linda Robinson of Glenview, a city planning commissioner at the time and president of the Glenview Neighborhood Association, complained that the city Parks Department had let the center and pool deteriorate: “If they had been distributing money evenly, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Robinson said the center was providing valuable programs for young people as well as for senior citizens and was needed in the community.

Tie Plant in the Rose City area was a predominantly African American working class neighborhood that settled around the Ayer & Lord Tie Company (now Koppers Industries Inc.), which opened in 1907 to treat railroad cross ties and other wood products with creosote. The Rose City Cotton Seed Oil Mill, another major employer in the area, was located nearby along the Cotton Belt and Rock Island lines. Rows of identical frame houses, mostly shacks, were home in the late 1930s to about 250 Tie Plant workers and their families. A dirt street cut between the rows of shanties in a rural setting of gardens and farm animals, with wire fencing wrapped around wood posts to enclose individual yards. No electricity or plumbing existed in Tie Plant until Urban Renewal. Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1874, has been a mainstay in the community to this day. In the area were Riverview AME Church on Tie Plant Lane and the Church of God in Christ at 709 Ira Street. First Baptist Church at Tie Plant was organized about 1930 by the Rev. Horace H. Johnson.

Tie Plant had a post office from 1908 to 1958 on the Ayer-Lord tie plant (now Koppers) property. The post office had a postmaster, with a window and about a dozen mail cubbyholes. It served both Tie Plant and Pecan Grove. A newspaper article in 1953 estimated about 500
residents by that time, including about 150 Koppers employees within the postal service area. The article noted that until 1950 the post office, which was not part of the North Little Rocksystem, received mail through direct delivery by train. A considerable distance from North Little Rock in the early 1900s, the Tie Plant post office was established mainly to serve the Ayer & Lord plant and its employees. Before then, residents had to ride by mule or wagon into town to get their mail as well as supplies. Rose City, including Tie Plant, was annexed into North Little Rock in 1946.

In 2000, more than two dozen residents of Glenview, Tie Plant and the Poe Addition sued Koppers Industries in Pulaski County Circuit Court, contending that creosote emissions from the plant, established by the Ayer and Lord company in 1907, were causing noxious odors, ill health and declining property values. The residents asked for compensation. They complained that residents suffered from headaches, eye irritation, asthma and other respiratory ailments caused by emissions from the Koppers plant. But officials at Koppers, based in Pittsburgh, Pa., said the plant was not a health threat and was in compliance with federal and state agreements made over
the years to remediate problems. The suit was eventually settled.

In the past, federal and state regulatory agencies have investigated and issued numerous orders, even fined the plant a couple of times, and continue to monitor emissions. Test wells in the late 1980s and 1990 confirmed groundwater contamination connected to chemicals in the wood treatment process. In 1990, residents were advised to stop using wells and the plant began pumping contaminated water out of the ground, decontaminating it and pumping it back into the ground, according to Koppers officials. At a meeting in 1998 at the Glenview Community Center, a former resident and a retired employee of 33 years at the plant, told a crowd that improvements had stopped many of the past problems. “There is concrete everywhere now for the runoff,” he said. “They’ve done away with the open ponds. They scraped [the dirt] out and put fresh dirt in.” But many residents at the meeting weren’t persuaded that enough had been
done to protect them.

–Cary Bradburn

Glenview Community began in 1956. Reed McConnell and Harry Pittard were the developers. The first homes built in the community were on North Woodland Drive. The majority of the homeowners didn’t move in until 1957.

Prior to homes being built, the area was an open field. The area was separated by a fence and a row of trees indicating two different ownerships. Mr. McConnell had the fence removed. The row of trees was so beautiful that he could not bear to cut them down so he decided to leave the trees and tum that section into a divided street or a boulevard.

The subdivision needed a name. Mrs. Gladys Young suggested to her husband Professor A. W. Young to na,me the community Glenview. Professor Young submitted the name to Harry Pittard. Mr. Pittard then submitted it to the FHA in Washington D.C. for approval. The Glenview name was readily approved.

The Glenview Community began because of a small group of people having a vision. The vision however, did not come without a price. People had to be able to work together as a team. They had to be willing to sacrifice their time for meetings and stand as a unified group. They knew that African Americans wanted to live in a nice subdivision. Those persons were A. W. Young, E.H. Hunter, Calvin Muldrow, Roscoe Whyte, Daisey Bates
and Norvell Rayford. Mayor William “Casey” Laman: and R. Snowden who were white joined them.

They worked very hard to bring the concept of this sub-division to fruition. Because of the period of time it was difficult. They pushed hard and even had to bring in outside people to help with this endeavor. Reed McConnell and Harry Pittard, his business partner, indicated that they were able to get three types of home loans for the area. The houses on the boulevard were considered the elite houses and were somewhat larger than the others; therefore, they cost more. People who moved into houses on the boulevard had to pay larger down payments. People on North Woodland paid a smaller down payment, and the people south of the boulevard homes cost much less and some were able to get their homes with no down payment but they had longer to pay for them.

As this special project was being developed, the developer ran into financial difficulty. The people were slow moving into the community for various reasons. So, Mr. McConnell contacted FHA to get special permission to allow Black Airmen and their families from the Little Rock Air
Base to move into the homes on North Woodland. The FHA approved and several of these families moved to the community.

As people began moving into the community, the developers began naming the streets; North Woodland and South Woodland were wooded areas. Muldrow Drive was name for Calvin Muldrow, Whyte Drive was name for Roscoe Whyte, Hunter Road was name for Dr. E. H. Hunter, and
Young Road was name for Professor A. W. Young.

The street called Edmonds and Bethany Road were already in place before the construction of the new sub-division. Originally, the developers planned to make the stretch of land on Edmonds a shopping center. However, the project got so big that Mr. McConnell turned this project over to his business partner, Harry Pittard, who joined WINROCK Enterprises. WINROCK Enterprises is the company that built the homes south of the boulevard. After much consideration WINROCK chose to build new homes instead of a shopping center. They also built new homes on Edmonds as well.

The community was completed in 1959. The neighbors were proud of their homes. Every other home south of the boulevard had the same floor plan. Every house had a concrete driveway and just about every house had Mimosa trees. The neighbors took pride in their new subdivision. After all there was a push across the United States for nice subdivisions for African Americans and according to Mr. McConnell, Glenview was one of the first.

As a part of community development a school, grocery store, barber/beauty shops were also being built. Franklin D. Roosevelt Elementary School was completed in 1956 and Calvin Muldrow was the first Principal. The school was remodeled in 1978 after being renamed Glenview Elementary School. There were many teachers who lived in the community, and some of the staff consisted of people who lived in this community. During the early days there was Winston Grocery Store, a barbershop ran by William Deloney, Jr., located on the corner of Bethany and Edmonds; a beauty shop ran by Mrs. Jessie Tyiska, Mrs. Rose Robinson, and Mrs. Savannah Whitehead; and later another barber/beauty shop ran by Lela Colclough. Also, located on Bethany Road was a dairy bar and recreation center for young people owned and operated by John R. Coats.

Several small communities also located in the area surrounded Glenview. They were Tie Plant, New Town, Pecan Grove, Chiquita Road and Fmily and people who lived on Bethany. The Tie Plant area during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s was the section from 19th Street to East Broadway.

Sometime during the latter part of 1969 and the early 70’s Urban Renewal came through and asked the people in the Tie Plant, New Town,
Pecan Grove and Bethany Road to bring fheir houses up to standard with those in the Glenview area .or the properties would be condemned. The
Urban Renewal also agreed to buy the homes if they wished to sell. A few people upgraded their homes but most sold to the Urban Renewal for very
little. After purchasing the land from homeowners businesses began to buy the land and build commercial buildings on Bethany Road.

Later on the Glenview neighbors heard that a housing project was being proposed for the Tie Plant area by a local pastor and his church. The community ban together and stated according to Rev. R. K. Young. “We would prefer homes.” The neighbors fought hard and instead of the new area becoming a low-income housing project another sub-division was established and named Glenview Renewal. It was during this time that two
neighbors on 19th street, Mrs. Dorothy Cross, and Rev. Joseph Hall, sold their property to the Urban Renewal. The New Hope Baptist Church now
resides on the properties of Mrs. Cross and Rev. Hall. Originally the church was located in New Town. The Glenview Community Center came
along during the 1970’s as well.

Between 1969 and 1970 the community was faced with yet another problem. A businessman wanted to place a housing project in the area. The community hired an attorney but lost the fight. The housing project was built east of Glenview. It was named Prothro Manor Apartments.

In 1998, the community joined together to fight rezoning of several properties in and adjacent to the community. The neighbors were not anti-business but they were concerned that the zoning changes would affect property values, the quality of life of the neighbors and change the character of their neighborhood. North Little Rock Planning Commission has ruled in favor of the community on some of the rezoning but not all.

In February 2000, the neighbors of Glenview along with the neighbors of Poe Addition filed an environmental lawsuit against Koppers Industries.

The community has been in existence for forty-five years because of the hard work, pride, dedication and determination of neighbors in this community. The community has a strong cnme watch and neighbors that love the Lord. One attorney said that “there are a lot of God fearing people in Glenview and they take swearing under oath very seriously.”

Many outsiders felt this community was “middle class.” Some people called it “silk stockings” because a lot of the women that lived in the neighborhood were school teachers. The people that lived here did not pay the outside talk any attention because they knew that the community consisted of working people with a wide range of occupations.

We are very proud of the neighbors of the Glenview Community. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those pioneers for the part that they played in the development of this community. We also take pride in knowing that our neighbors support the community and take an active role in its continued success.

SCHOOL
The children that lived in the New town, Pecan Grove, Tie Plant and Glenview communities attended school at Carver G. Woodson Elementary. This school was located near the Dixie Addition community. The children were transported to school by bus.

In 1956, the North Little Rock School Board decided to build a school in the Glenview Community. The children that lived in these communities would continue to attend Carver until the new school was completed.

The school was finally completed in November, 1956. The school was flamed Franklin D. Roosevelt Elementary and in later years the name was changed to Glenview Elementary School. The first principal was a young man named Calvin Muldrow. Mr. Muldrow was the principal from November, 1956 to 1979. The second principal was Mrs. Thelma Banks and the third principal was Mr. Harold Allen who retired in May, 2001.

About 1900 the area east of Argenta became Rose City, a name given by a cotton farmer, physician, merchant and politician named Hassell Prothro in honor of his daughter, Rose, according to North Little Rock historian Evelyn Eubank. Another version, mentioned in a 1948 radio program by a long-time resident, says the name derived from the Rose City Cotton Seed Oil Mill constructed in 1901. “The cotton seed oil mill was built and at that time Little Rock was known as the City of Roses,” the resident said, according to a transcript of the program. “Mr. Justin Matthews and Mr. J.P. Faucette, who built the mill, called it the Rose City Cotton Oil Mill. As the town gradually grew it became known as Rose City, a very pretty name indeed.”

Whatever the true origin of the name is, the area had a rich agricultural background prior to residential and commercial development in the 20th century. The economic king was cotton and timber in this land that had thrived mainly on plantation agriculture and slave labor going back to the 18th century. The earliest plantation owners were descendants of French settlers and Quapaws who inhabited the Arkansas River valley at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Leon LeFevre established a plantation in 1820 in present-day Rose City, but it was replaced two decades later by Judge Anderson Mills, who built a fine plantation home in 1842 on LeFevre’s Spanish land grant. Mills’ house, which stood until 1966 at 4401 East Broadway (at Atkins Street), was known as Cedar Cliff because of the huge Cedar trees on the property. Two cornerstones shed light on its history: one bearing the inscription, “Leon de Lefevre to Eudie Mills 1840 to 1892” and the other, “Anderson Mills 1892.” In 1912, Mills sold the plantation of 1,200 acres to John L. Atkins.

Cedar Cliff, which was also known first as the Master’s House, then the General’s Headquarters and later the Atkins plantation, was the venue where two Confederate generals and their cohorts met on the morning of September 6, 1863, to go over the ground rules for a duel. In a clearing by the river, south of the present-day intersection of East Broadway and Baucum Pike, Gen. John Marmaduke fatally shot Gen. Lucius Walker, three days before the Union Army marched into Little Rock and occupied the railroad facilities on the north side of the river. Historians say that the duel was the last one fought in Arkansas.

Another large plantation in the vicinity was established in 1885 by Col. George Baucum, a contemporary of Prothro, who had purchased land about 1880 with his brother Edward for a cotton farm. Even after the Civil War in 1865, plantations continued to dominate life in the Arkansas Delta, a region that extends from the Mississippi River westward to the area we know today as Rose City. Although slavery was abolished, the plantationbased economy preserved antebellum ways during the last decades of the 19th century and into the 20th century through the use of tenant laborers known as sharecroppers.

But the plantation culture began to give way in Rose City as other employment opened up, starting in the 1870s with the construction of four major railroad yards in Argenta and the collateral development of industries in the form of giant cotton seed oil mills, the state’s largest fertilizer plant and a railroad creosote plant known as Ayers-Lord, now Koppers Industries. The migration from farm to industrial work was in full swing.

Sprouting up along side the railroad and heavy industries were a number of small businesses to serve the growing population. Justin Matthews, the developer of Park Hill, and others also acquired large tracts that filled the need for housing developments in the areas known as Rose City, Tie Plant and Dixie. Matthews built the Rose City Cotton Seed Oil Mill in 1901 at the present site of the Rose City Shopping Center.

By the 1920s, motor vehicles and the paving of primary roads aided the development of subdivisions for the blue-collar workforce in Rose City. In 1927, the North Little Rock Times newspaper reported that Twin City Bank was aggressively marketing unsold lots in the Atkins Addition along the east side of East Broadway (also known then as Galloway Pike). An advertisement in the Times on June 1, 1927, provided a map and directions on how to get to the Atkins Addition. The Times praised the addition as “one of the fastest growing residential spots adjacent to the city, and already many fine new homes are located there.” The paper noted that the Atkins Addition “has the advantage of regular bus line service several times hourly, making it easily accessible to all parts of Little Rock and North Little Rock.”

Rose City was still an unincorporated area on the outskirts of North Little Rock in the 1930s and up to the mid-1940s. The Rose City Elementary School on Earl Street, built in 1924, was part of the North Little Rock School District, although the neighborhoods were outside the city limits. The early street names reflected some of the prominent families in the area, such as Atkins, Mills, and Baucum. In 1946, North Little Rock annexed Rose City. This was during the post-World War II period and another round of housing development was taking off. The city built a fire station at 4613 East Broadway in 1949. By 1951, according to the city directory, more than 300 households and commercial businesses were listed in the area bounded by Lynch, Rose, Baucum and East Broadway.

Lynch Drive was the new name for what had been called Claytor Road. The City Council changed the name to Lynch in 1949 in recognition of the Cecil Lynch electric plant built on old Claytor Road. Over the years, other residential streets were renamed, too. As examples, today’s Boyer Street was named Rice Street in the early 1950s. Oak also became Rogers, Cherry became Gardenia, and Blossom became Kay. The 1951 directory made no mention of several streets developed later in the area, including Compton, Imboden, Ryan, Rose and Healy. Along Broadway, the 1951 directory listed a number of commercial properties. Grocery stores were prevalent, such as the C.B. Thompson market that opened in 1931 at 4328 East Broadway. A fire in 1989 closed the grocery for good, but the family’s sporting goods store, Fort Thompson, is going strong today. Tourist courts or motels, barber shops, lumber companies, auto repair shops, restaurants
and more contributed to the economic life on Broadway.

Rose City includes the subdivision of Delta Lawn, North Shore, and Greenlea. The older neighborhood of Tie Plant goes back to the early 1900s. The name derives from the tie plant established in 1907 by the Ayer-Lord (now Koppers) creosote company that manufactured railroad ties.

Rose City, which had benefited by the railroad lines (particularly the Cotton Belt), continued to develop economically, but in the 1960s the orientation moved away from the railways. East Broadway, also known as Highway 70 or the Memphis highway, took on greater economic importance in the transition to reliance on automobiles and trucks for travel and shipping in the latter half of the 20th century. But East Broadway also began to feel the unintended ill effects of the interstate system in the 1960s. Once known for the many tourist courts and motels along Broadway, the highway lost business to Interstate 40 and decline set in during the 1970s and later.

In 1976, the city’s Urban Renewal Agency completed $776,313 worth of work in the Glenview Urban Renewal Project area, mainly in Tie Plant. Paved streets, sanitary and storm sewers and new homes replaced outhouses, tarpapered houses and debris-littered alleys.

Like many older neighborhoods of North Little Rock, Rose City had seen its better days. Some older businesses remain, including Hum’s Hardware and Don’s Weaponry on East Broadway. Despite its economic decline, the area continues to offer decent residential and business opportunities.

–Cary Bradburn

The Iron Mountain Addition in Argenta was divided by the rail yard of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad and included neighborhoods in the Shorter College area south of the tracks and Dark Hollow north of the tracks. African American families began moving to the Iron Mountain Addition in the 1890s. Shorter College moved to Sixth and Locust in 1897. With the influx of well-educated residents, the college campus became an intellectual and cultural center, as well as a spiritual anchor in the neighborhood, influencing its development over several decades. The Shorter College area was part of Little Rock’s Eighth Ward in the 1890s until 1904 when North Little Rock annexed it.

Bounded on the north by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad tracks and on the south by the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad tracks, the Shorter College residential area was almost surrounded by industrial uses. Though the hum of industrial progress was evident, dirt roads and the lack of utilities were common in the primarily residential neighborhood. The state’s first railroad, the Memphis & Little Rock, was acquired by the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad, which in turn was taken over in 1902 by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. The Iron Mountain was absorbed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1917. East of the neighborhood, along the Iron Mountain (Missouri Pacific) line, which was also used by the Cotton Belt starting around 1910, were the Federal Compress warehouses and the American Excelsior Corporation. The McLean Lumber Company on East Fifth Street was a block from the Rock Island line. Also east of the Shorter College area were fertilizer plants, an acid and sulfur company, and a chemical company. In the late 1950s, the Chicopee Manufacturing Company built a fabrics plant at 1301 East Eighth Street, east of Smothers Street.

Julia E. Brown, who taught at Jones High School for 25 years, compiled a history of the city’s early black schools. She wrote: “After the Iron Mountain Addition was advertised for sale, a great many colored people bought lots… Their children were too small to go as far as the school in the western part of the city, so they applied to the School Board to give them a teacher to each the first and second grades.”i In 1907, a first and second grade school mentioned by Brown opened at 326 Clover Street in the East End. In 1909, the Argenta Colored School moved to Ninth and Hickory streets in the Iron Mountain Addition. The move reflected the fact that a sizable number of Black families had moved into the addition. In 1911, the school was renamed as the Hickory Street School (later Lincoln Elementary).

The Blue Book of Little Rock and Argenta, published in 1907 by E.M. Woods, featured accomplished African Americans, who were recognized as the “most intelligent, enterprising, aggressive and successful people in the twin cities and vicinity.” Included was the Rev. B.W. Alexander of 806 Walnut Street, a former pastor of the First Baptist Church. Argenta educators highlighted in the Blue Book were connected with Shorter College. Among them were Andrew H. Hill, Shorter president from 1904 to 1912; Professor A.D. Delany; and Kathryn Johnson, principal for women and teacher of French, German and science. The Rev. J.W. Walker, who lived at Shorter College, was presiding elder of the Little Rock District of the AME Church and served as trustee and treasurer for the college. Also included in the Blue Book was Mary Ida Kile, a 1902 Shorter graduate who was born in Argenta and attended public schools in the town.

Another Blue Book profile was of Charles G. Harris, a photographer located in the old West End neighborhood. He photographed President Teddy Roosevelt standing and waving in a carriage at West Washington and Maple Street in 1906. Roosevelt had reviewed the troops at Fort Roots and was on his way to cross the free bridge to Little Rock. The photograph was later mass produced as a postcard.

Alex Hill, who grew up near Shorter College in the 1910s, became an accomplished jazz pianist whose work came to fruition during the swing era. His father, Andrew H. Hill, was president of Shorter College, as was his brother Solomon Hill in the 1960s. Alex Hill’s parents taught him to play piano with emphasis on classical and religious compositions. But their youngster was drawn to popular music and started touring with jazz bands at age 16. A talented lyricist, he wrote and composed songs with the best popular musicians of his day. Hill’s earliest work was with Alphonso Trent, a pianist and band leader from Little Rock. He also worked with Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and others. In 1935, Hill led Ellington’s orchestra while Ellington was sick. Among Hill’s most popular songs were I Would Do Anything For You, Beau Koo Jack recorded by Louis Armstrong, and I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby (And My Baby’s Crazy ‘Bout Me) recorded
by Fats Waller.

In 1909, the North Little Rock School District bought six lots on the corner of Ninth and Hickory streets in the Iron Mountain Addition and built a two-story brick building for the Argenta Colored School. The building had eight rooms, a superintendent’s office and a basement. In 1911, the school was renamed the Hickory Street School. Hickory Street’s earliest principals were W.E. Steward, Professor Calhoun, Jacob S. Pleasant and James P. Strickland. After Strickland, the principals were Ish, Wilburn, Samuel Massie Sr., Hunter, Guy and K.J.I. Blakley. In 1928, seven classrooms, a hall and an auditorium were added as an annex and the Hickory Street secondary school was renamed in honor of Scipio A. Jones, a successful lawyer and donor and advocate for black education.

Elza H. Hunter, the last principal of Jones Junior and Senior High from 1942 until it closed in 1970, first arrived at the school in 1935 as an industrial arts teacher. As principal and de facto superintendent of African American schools in North Little Rock, he oversaw the expansion of the Jones campus during a period of escalating enrollment that included demand for adult education. Hunter tapped Ulysses S. Harris to oversee adult education after World War II. The
popularity of the program led to the construction in 1948 of the Jones Veterans’ Building, which featured 14 classrooms with an auto mechanics shop, building trade shop and counselor’s office. In 1950, the Home Economics Cottage was built at 10th and Walnut on the Jones campus with two classrooms, a large cooking department, a living room, fireplace, an office three storage rooms and an attic. Crowded classrooms led to additional construction. In 1952, a new one-story junior-senior high school building provided 13 classrooms, two study hall rooms, a dining room, kitchen, library, principal’s office, first-aid room, lounge, storage rooms and multi-purpose rooms for the school band and chorus. In 1958, Hunter was able to start a vocational course at Jones in printing, after securing printing presses. Catherine Marshall taught the class. By 1960, the school was using three portable buildings to deal with the teeming number of students.

Jones had a strong athletic program led by A.B. Calvin, who coached the Dragons to 10 state black basketball championships and three state black football championships in the 1940s and 1950s. Jones, which had won a state title in football in 1942 under Coach C.L. Horn before Calvin’s arrival, also won state football championships in 1957 and 1958 when Calvin was athletic director. One of Calvin’s basketball greats was 1959 Jones graduate Eddie Miles, who
played for the Detroit Pistons in the National Basketball Association. Calvin coached and taught math with a stint as dean of students at Jones from 1944 to 1961. A disciplinarian, he demanded that his athletes be students first.ii Although his teams in football and basketball played whatever style fit their talent, what they all had in common was intensity and discipline. “He made me a man,” said Samuel “Big House” Holloway, who excelled in football and basketball at Jones before graduating in 1947. Calvin encouraged all his players to be their best, not just the star athletes, and he was available for students outside of school hours. “He was the guy who opened gyms on the weekends and holidays,” Clay Wisham, a 1950 graduate of Jones, told a writer. After leaving Jones in 1961, Calvin taught at Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock before retiring. In 1996, the Jones Alumni Association established the A.B. Calvin Hall of Fame to
honor the school’s best athletes.

The music program at S.A. Jones High School featured one of the best marching bands in the South. Two Jones High School graduates went on to distinguished music careers. Alvertis Isbell, class of 1958, is better known as Al Bell, a music executive who guided and then owned Stax Records of Memphis. He helped promote the work of the Staples Singers, Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding. Bell, who moved from Brinkley to the Shorter College area at age five, spun records at
sock-hops and got his start as a disc jockey at radio station KOKY while in high school. He was a good student who was state president of the National Honor Society. Ferrell Sanders, a 1959 Jones High graduate, grew up at 523 North Hazel in the Shorter College area. He credits Jones High band director, Jimmy Cannon, with getting him interested in jazz and tenor saxophone. Sanders, known professionally as Pharoah Sanders, first learned clarinet accompanying hymns at church. After high school, he befriended and played with John Coltrane. His experimental style earned him acclaim as part of the “free jazz” movement in the 1960s in the Bay Area of California. In 1966, Sanders released the first of a string of albums. Among these was his most critically acclaimed, Karma (1969), containing his most recognized recording, The Creator Has a Master Plan. Sanders’ interest in different cultures directed his compositions. In the 1990s, he
went to Africa for a cultural exchange program for the U.S. State Department. In 1995, Verve Records released Message from Home, followed by Save Our Children (1998). In 2000, Sanders released Spirits and, in 2003, a live album titled The Creator Has a Master Plan.

Samuel P. Massie Jr., the son of educators Samuel Sr. and Earlee Massie, grew up at Ninth and Cedar streets in the Shorter College area. His father was a principal at the Hickory Street School in the early 1920s. Samuel Massie Jr. wrote an autobiography. A prodigy, the younger Massie started school at age 4 and was far ahead of his class at the Hickory Street School. He graduated high school at age 13 and received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics in 1937 at Arkansas AM&N (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff). With the aid of a federal National Youth Administration scholarship, plus money he made working at Horton’s Grocery Store on Ninth Street, Massie finished a master’s degree in chemistry in 1940 at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. As a doctoral candidate during World War II, Massie worked on the Manhattan Project at Iowa State University in the development of uranium isotopes for the
atomic bomb. In 1966, the United States Naval Academy appointed him as its first Black faculty member. Massie’s research over 50 years led to the development of drugs to treat mental illness, malaria, meningitis, gonorrhea, herpes, and cancer. Chemical and Engineering News in 1998 named him one of the top 75 chemists of all-time.

By the late 1920s, several churches had located in the Shorter College area, including Bethel AME, First Baptist, Eighth Street Baptist, Calvary Temple Church of Christ in God, and Mt. Sinai Christian Church. Among the oldest congregations were Bethel AME in 1873 and First Baptist Church in 1874. Both moved a few times. Bethel acquired a lot in 1884 at Sixth and Locust streets and built a brick church in 1889, across from where Shorter College would build in 1897. Bethel, known as Little Bethel, moved again to 600 Cedar in the late 1950s when Interstate 30 right of way was acquired. First Baptist has been in the neighborhood since about 1915, first at Ninth and Pine streets and then 822 Locust before its current location at 811 S.A. Jones (formerly East Ninth Street). Rev. V.M. Banks, First Baptist pastor from 1956 to 1981, oversaw construction of a new church building at 822 Locust in 1967 on land acquired from the
city’s Urban Renewal Commission. Calvary Temple Church of Christ in God (now New Calvary), led by Rev. Donne L. Lindsey, was located for decades on Hazel Street. Lindsey was consecrated as bishop of the Church of God in Christ in 1975.

Black-owned businesses in the Shorter College area included groceries, barbershops, salons, and restaurants, among others. 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 African American neighborhood. Three of the white-owned groceries were in a six block stretch of Sixth Street that was occupied by white homeowners. One of the white-owned groceries at
823 East Ninth Street was Arlie Horton’s where the young Samuel Massie Jr. worked to earn money for school. 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 at 801 Beech Street. Glenn Nesbitt, Charles M. Morris, and Thomas Mason ran restaurants on East Ninth Street (now S.A. Jones Drive). Among recollections of the night life in the Shorter College area in the 1950s were the Nouvean Drive-in restaurant on Sixth Street, Savoy on East Ninth Street, and the Hawks Club “around the corner.”

Samuel Holloway, a Jones High football and basketball star, recalled that he opened Big 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. His daughter, Charlotte Holloway Thomas was the first African American to work in the mayor’s office. Hired in 1974 by former Mayor Bob Rosamond, she managed the office for more than 50 years and served with seven mayors until retirement.

Another Black-owned company in the Shorter College area belonged to A.C. and Frances Lewis, who opened an Esso station on Locust Street in 1949. They operated the business first at 901 Locust and then at 518 Locust before moving to a prime spot at Broadway and Locust in the early 1970s. In 1972, Arkansas AAA Destination magazine named Lewis’ service station as Garage of the Month for its excellent service record, noting that the station had been a member of AAA since 1966. The A.C. Lewis Service Station remained in business until the early 1990s, but the family business continues to this day as Lewis Towing Service. Also noteworthy was Barnett G. Mays, a Shorter College area businessman. In the late 1940s, Mays opened the Nouvean Drive-in restaurant at 1101 East Sixth Street 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.

The Shorter College area was North Little Rock’s second Urban Renewal project, but opposition surfaced almost as soon as it was proposed. A two-hour public hearing preceded City Council approval of the project in 1962. Of 75 Shorter College area residents at the hearing, most were opposed. One resident, Mary Ray, told the council there were “101 reasons in the minds of people why they didn’t want to be in the project.” The Urban Renewal Agency’s goal centered more on rehabilitation rather than total clearance as in Military Heights. By time the 180-acre project closed out in 1973, expenditures had reached $5.2 million in the Shorter College area.

In 1969, the city had completed construction of the Sherman Park Community Center. Shorter College also had a new library as part of its expanded campus. Jones Junior High School also had a new addition, a field house on land the School District acquired from the city’s Urban Renewal Agency. In the private sector, new houses, new church buildings, and commercial developments improved the area. In 1970, North Little Rock’s Urban Renewal staff assessment
was that the project area had “consisted of slums with narrow, unpaved streets with no drainage facilities. In contrast, the area now has well-paved streets with curbs and gutters, storm sewers and large well-drained lots with modern attractive houses.” Olen Thomas, director of the city’s Urban Renewal Agency, noted in 1972 that the Shorter College area had fewer buildings than it originally had but the same population due to the multi-family developments. In 1973, the Urban
Renewal Agency reported a total of 604 demolitions of substandard buildings in the project area. The agency also reported that 476 families, 139 individuals and 29 businesses had been relocated. Rehabilitation work for residential and commercial buildings totaled $420,000, including $56,000 from 32 federal rehabilitation grants and $84,000 in 15 federal loans.

Among the largest developments in the Shorter College Urban Renewal area were the North Little Rock Housing Authority’s $1,265,000 Campus Towers, a seven-story high-rise with 78 units at Seventh and Hickory streets; the North Little Rock School District’s new $686,000 Lincoln Elementary School on East Seventh Street; and the $2.5 million Shorter College Gardens apartments on 10 acres at East Eighth and Hickory streets, according to Urban Renewal’s annual
reports. Shorter Gardens, a non-profit development, provided rental assistance to low and moderate income residents. The manager of Shorter Gardens was Renewal Development Company, a partnership of Barnett G. Mays Realty and Tom Ferstl, a white mortgage banker in Little Rock. Consisting of 13 two-story buildings, the 196-unit complex was the single largest development in the area and the first of its kind in the state under the federal rent supplement program when it opened in the early 1970s.

Barnett G. Mays undertook several developments in the Shorter College area during the 1960s and 1970s. A plan to move his Sixth Street Liquor Store to Eighth and Beech streets in 1967 encountered opposition from Eighth Street Baptist Church and the North Little Rock School District. But Mays had already obtained a liquor license from the state. His old Sixth Street Liquor Store moved to 712 Beech Street and was renamed Beech Street Bottle Mart. By 1970, Mays Realty at 723 Beech Street was managing rentals at Shorter College and St. John Housing projects. Richard L. Mays, a lawyer and son of Barnett G. Mays, announced in early 1970 that he had formed the first racially integrated partnership with Michael Z. Long to buy Minute Man No. 15 at East Fourth and Locust streets. Long was already operating the restaurant, which had an integrated staff. “It’s a business venture and nothing more,” they said when asked about the possibility of racial prejudice. Richard Mays of Little Rock became a principal partner with Phillip E. Kaplan and John Walker in the Walker Kaplan Mays law firm that specialized in civil rights and school desegregation. In 1972, Mays was elected to the state House of Representatives and was among the first four African Americans elected that year to the Arkansas Legislature since 1893. In 1979, Governor Bill Clinton appointed Mays as the second African American to the Arkansas Supreme Court. In 1980, Mays stepped down from the court and formed the Mays Crutcher Brown law firm with Zimmery Crutcher and Darrell F. Brown.

The Shorter College area became known as Sherman Park, which also included the East End south of East Fourth Street and east to Buckeye Street. Separated from downtown by Interstate 30, Sherman Park continued as a mix of residential, commercial and industrial uses. East Broadway was no longer the primary highway into the city. Used car dealerships, auto repair facilities, fast food restaurants and other heavy commercial businesses gave the strip a disheveled
appearance. East Broadway was widened to five lanes with a center turn lane in 2005. Sherman Park residents formed the Sherman Park Community Development Corporation in the 1990s to buy dilapidated structures for resale. The CDC also led neighborhood forums on community issues. In 1998, the Sherman Park CDC began leasing the renovated Rock Island depot on East Fourth Street from the city of North Little Rock to provide space for after-school programs. The Sherman Park Community Center as well as churches continued to serve as points of recreation, entertainment and education in the neighborhood. It has been the site of black history programs and other events to foster pride and awareness in the community. Midnight Basketball at the
Sherman Park Community Center was set up in 1992 to offer educational programs and motivational speakers as well as basketball. Arkansas Lt. Governor Jim Guy Tucker and Mayor Patrick Hays attended the opening night. “This is an opportunity to give these kids some hope for the future,” Tucker said.iii The Shorter College Bulldogs basketball team became a junior college power house under Coach Charles Baker in the mid-to-late1990s. Shorter College won Arkansas
State Junior College basketball championships and advanced in the Region II National Junior College Tournament under Coach Charles Baker.

Tracy Steele, who grew up in the Shorter Gardens public housing project in Sherman Park, won terms in the 1990s and 2000s to the Arkansas State House and State Senate. As the second black person to run for mayor in North Little Rock in 2012, Steele led the general election ticket, but lost in a close runoff to Mayor Joe Smith. (Robin McFadden, the first African American candidate for North Little Rock mayor in 1979, finished third in a five-person race.) Steele
played basketball for North Little Rock Ole Main High School and earned a scholarship to Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he played basketball and graduated. He returned to Arkansas to work in Gov. Bill Clinton’s administration and then served for several years as executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission. He founded the STAND mentoring program and is currently a member of the North Little Rock School Board. Dwayne Dobbins of the Shorter College area was elected to the North Little Rock City Council in 1998 and then to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2002. He served until resigning in 2005 and was replaced by his wife Sharon Dobbins, who was elected in a special election in 2005 and then re-elected in 2006. In 1999, Mickey V. Ross, a 1973 graduate of North Little Rock Ole Main High School, became the first black Arkansan promoted to the rank of captain in the U.S.
Navy. His parents, Junius and Minnie Ross, lived in the Shorter College area, where they operated the Community Shoe and Beauty Shop at 708 Walnut Street in the 1950s and 1960s. The Southern Mediator Journal recognized the Rosses as “Family of the Year” in 1969.iv Minnie Ross, who worked for the Internal Revenue Service, ran second in a five-person race for the North Little Rock School Board in 1973. Another son, Larry Ross, was an executive for Southwest Bell Telephone Company. He ran for North Little Rock School Board in 1971 and served on the North Little Rock Library Board in the 1980s. Ross was 16 when he began playing drums with the John Puckett Trio. He has played in the local music scene with the Henry Shead Trio and the Art Porter Trio. In 1969, Ross performed in Europe with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff’s New Directions Quintet. His talent has also earned gigs with performers such as
Pharoah Sanders, Pearl Bailey, Placide Adams and the New Orleans Dixieland Band, TeRoy Betton, Betty Fowler, and Amina Claudine Myers.

Shorter College President Jerome Green led the school from 2012 until his death in 2024. The school’s enrollment grew during that period. In 2023, Green announced plans for a $1.8 million technology hub at the historic Rock Island Argenta Depot at East Fourth and Hazel.

In 2026, the North Little Rock City Council approved Shorter College’s plan to construct six renovated shipping containers on two lots at 715 N. Pine St. for student housing.

–Cary Bradburn

The area bounded by Locust Street on the west, Smothers Street on the east, Fourth Street on the north and the Arkansas River on the south is one of the oldest sections of the city. Platted in the late 1870s and 1880s, the area includes the East Argenta Addition, Taylor Addition, Riverside Addition, and parts of the East Argenta Annex and Loomis Addition. Locust Street (first named Woodruff Street) was also the eastern boundary of the original
townsite of Argenta in 1866.

Although rich in fertile soil, game and timber, the north side of the river was slower to develop than the south side because of swampy terrain and frequent flooding. An attempt to start a town known as DeCantillon in 1838 failed after the townsite was washed away in the 1840 flood. The platting of Argenta in 1866, however, coincided fortuitously with the building of railroad facilities in the state. Between 1870 and 1900, the Memphis and Little Rock Railway (later merged with the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific), the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railway (later Missouri Pacific), and the Cairo and Fulton Railway (acquired by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern, and later Missouri Pacific) built machine shops, rail yards, depots and bridges on the north side, transforming Argenta into a major railroad terminal and industrial center. Union Pacific acquired all the railroad facilities in North Little Rock in 1982.

The railroads actively recruited immigrants from other states and Europe to help fill the ranks of a growing labor force. Cotton oil mills, cotton compresses, chemical factories, livestock yards, lumber mills, and other industries associated with the railroads also created a strong demand for workers. In addition, the steady population growth provided opportunities for small business owners in the service sector. Argenta expanded beyond
its original boundary. According to the U.S. census, Argenta’s population increased from 2,637 in 1890 to 4,751 in 1900 and then to 11,138 in 1910.

From the earliest development in the late 19th century, most of the area now called Sherman Park was residential and rural in nature. East Third (now Broadway) and East Washington were predominantly commercial. According to the city directory for 1906, more than 300 structures had been built in the area. The individual listings indicated that about 40 percent of the population there was African American, who mostly lived east of Pine Street.

By 1913, according to the Sanborn fire insurance map, the total number of structures was up to 535, suggesting quite a bit of growth since 1906. On the eight blocks of East Washington between Locust and Smothers, the 1914 city directory listed 11 grocers, three restaurants, a large general store (at 601-603 where the building still stands), a dry goods store, a saloon, barber shop, shoemaker, drug store, tailor, and upholstery shop, among others. East Second Street had at least three grocery stores at the time. Although the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway tracks ran down the center of Arkansas Avenue, it was residential, as were most of the other streets in the area. The railroad, which served the Cotton Belt Route, built and extensive yard and shops, south of EastWashington near the Loomis Addition. A couple of the city’s oldest church congregations, Leach Chapel CME and Shiloh Baptist, were on East Brosdway.

A large tourist court (or motel) was located at Broadway and Pine. Southern Hospital for African Americans was at 1311 East Broadway and later became the Oasis Hotel. Beginning in the late 1950s, the area experienced economic decline, hastened by suburban development to the north. Construction of Interstate 30 in the early 1960s cut off the area east of Locust from downtown North Little Rock and has remained a barrier during the revitalization of Argenta in the 1990s up to today. Consultants to the city, however, have targeted East Second Street to the river as ripe for development, given its proximity to the Clinton Presidential Library across the river. The old Rock Island Bridge was converted to a pedestrian bridge and renamed the President Clinton Presidential Park Bridge.

–Cary Bradburn

The neighborhoods north of 20th Street between Pike Avenue and Division Street up to Pershing Boulevard include the north half of the Missouri Pacific Addition, the Coors Addition, and Union Heights Addition. Developers platted the area in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It became a part of North Little Rock by annexation in May 1904. Although several blocks north of the historic town known as Baring Cross (1896-1905), the area today, west of Pike Avenue from the river up to Pershing Avenue, is often called Baring Cross or Upper Baring Cross.

Lying just below the foothills of Big Rock Mountain and along a spur of the old Fort Smith military road established in the 1820s, the area relied on agriculture and timber harvests in the 19th century. After being subdivided and brought into the city limits, the area began to see some residential and commercial development. But it proceeded slowly in the early 1900s. According to the 1914 Polk’s City Directory, 30 structures had been built. Most of the development was along Pike, Moss and Parker. (NOTE: Changes in street names causes confusion. For example, the 1913 Blaisdell map and the 1914 directory reflect that Parker was called Fern Street, and Franklin was Francis.)

As the case was with the historic area of Baring Cross south of 15th Street, the population included numerous railroad workers with the Missouri Pacific Railway. The Cairo and Fulton Railway established the first shops and a depot (near the river) in the early 1870s. This spurred economic development and a growing population in the largely residential community west of Pike. The Cairo and Fulton merged with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway in 1874. The Iron Mountain became part of the Missouri Pacific system in the early 1880s, though its name didn’t change until 1917. During the 1900s and up into the teens, many of the blue collar workers in the area worked in the Iron Mountain shops.

By the mid-1920s, according to city directories, the number of structures in the area, both residential and commercial, had increased to 110. Home owners predominated, but many took in boarders to help meet financial obligations. The greater part of the development was along Pike as well as 23rd and 24th streets. However, the Great Depression deepened in the 1930s and slowed development. The Sanborn Fire Insurance map of 1939 indicates that the number of structures in the area remained about the same as that of the mid-1920s.

Construction picked up quite a bit in the late 1940s after World War II. The housing shortage was so great in the post war years that the city cracked down on excessive rents. By 1951, when the baby boom was well underway, the number of structures in the area increased threefold.

The 1950s and 1960s were good economically and the neighborhood of mostly homeowners thrived. Pike Plaza at 27th (now Pershing) and Pike opened in 1959 and the Pike Lanes bowling alley opened in 1961. The North Little Rock Housing Authority constructed Heritage House, a high-rise for elderly people in 1967. According to the 1968 directory, the area had about 350 structures with a predominance of home and business ownership.

Economic prosperity began slipping, however, in the 1970s and the trend has continued. An important indicator is the decline in home ownership and the upkeep of property. The decline of the 1970s also occurred in other older neighborhoods of North Little Rock. The construction of the interstate system in the early 1960s had the effect of dividing the city and this became even more pronounced as the older neighborhoods went down. Subdivisions and shopping centers north of Interstate 40 grew as more people moved out to newer neighborhoods.

–Cary Bradburn