One Place Ever Changing

Argenta City Hall and Fire Station at 506 Main Street was built in 1895 as Hose Cart Company No. 6 of the Little Rock Fire Department. Downtown North Little Rock, known as Argenta, was then a part of Little Rock, having been forcibly annexed in 1890 and designated as the Eighth Ward.

No more than a stable in the 1890s for the horses that firefighters hitched up to wagons, this two-story brick building was expanded and remodeled in 1904 after North Little Rock annexed the Eighth Ward. The building became City Hall, as well as a fire and police station. The second floor was the site of the first City Council meeting of the newly incorporated first-class City of North Little Rock on April 11, 1904.

From 1906 to 1917 the city adopted the name of Argenta, an older identity derived from a silver mine. An 1866 survey and plat established the Argenta town site on land owned by the heirs of Thomas W. Newton.

Serving as City Hall until 1915, the building continued as the city’s main fire station until 1962 when it was sold. A renovation to the front in 1934 enlarged the bay doors to accommodate larger fire trucks.

The old fire station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, but later fell into disrepair. The City of North Little Rock repurchased the site in 1999 and rehabilitated the building in 2003 for use by the city’s History Commission archives and Historic District Commission. Two reconstructed fire poles pay homage to the building’s past as a fire station.

The Argenta Branch of the William F. Laman Library occupied the first floor of the building from 2006 to 2014. Now named the North Little Rock Heritage Center, the first floor is used as an exhibit area dedicated to North Little Rock history.

As Little Rock’s Eighth Ward from 1890 to 1904, Argenta found itself on the wrong side of the river when it came to public improvements.

Argenta’s mule-drawn trolley service left much to be desired, prompting Eighth Ward Alderman William C. Faucette to say the cars and track should just be dumped into the river.

A scarcity of street lights was another issue. One frustrated correspondent, who penned the North Side Gossip column in the Arkansas Gazette, complained on December 15, 1894: “Will some South Side official explain why the North Side is so often left in the darkness, while the South Side streets are well and regularly lighted?”

Also unhappy over the lack of progress in plans for a fire station on the north side, the correspondent sarcastically wrote on January 11, 1895: “Has the fire hall been built and then carried away bodily before anyone had a chance to view the imposing structure? Or what has become of it?”

The north side fire department had a worn-out team of horses and a small stable on East Washington. But things were looking up in early 1895. Work began in mid-January on an honest-to-goodness brick fire station at 506 Newton Avenue (now Main Street) and the horses were replaced that spring with a bigger and stronger team to negotiate Argenta’s treacherous dirt roads that rain turned into mires.

Commercial development had reached a fever pitch, so much so that building materials were in short supply. The Gazette reported on March 15, 1895, that the shortage had delayed 39 construction projects in Argenta, including the fire station. “If work on our fire hall progresses at the rate it has,” the Gazette’s correspondent commented, “it will be completed and ready for occupancy about the year 1904.”

Sarcasm aside, the two-story fire station did open in April 1895. It was one of four large buildings constructed in early 1895 near the intersections of what are today Fifth and Main streets and Sixth and Main streets. The Street building and the Faucette-Cook building on the north end of the 400 block across from the post office have survived, along with the old fire station at 506 Main Street, which now houses the North Little Rock History Commission and Historic District Commission offices. The fourth structure, built on the northwest corner of Sixth and Main by William H. Lamberson
as a lumber and hardware store, was later demolished.

A busy place in its early days, the fire station sheltered the horses and fire apparatus, as well as the firefighters on duty. But that wasn’t all. The Gazette’s correspondent noted on November 20, 1895: “They have a curiosity at the fire house in the person of a monkey, which was brought from Central America by the ‘boys’ who came back. He is very mischievous and annoys the neighbors with his tricks.”

Little Rock turned over Argenta’s fire station to North Little Rock in February 1904, as part of a property settlement after the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld North Little Rock’s annexation of the Eighth Ward. In April 1904, the city completed the expansion of the fire station to the alley in back to make room for city offices and a larger jail.

Argenta’s City Hall remained at 506 Main until the current city administration building opened at 300 Main in 1915. The building at 506 Main Street continued as the city’s main fire station until 1962. It was transferred to private interests, but the city repurchased the building in 1997 and reconstructed it in 2003.

–Cary Bradburn