Sense of community

Monday, December 30, 2013

The gradual de-icing of streets on Dec. 10 freed central Arkansans to return to life in the world outside their homes.

Among them was a crowd that packed a rather overheated lecture hall at the Arkansas Arts Center that evening. The members of the crowd weren’t there for Christmas karaoke, or a performance of Handel’s Messiah, or a rescheduled Jimmy Buffett concert.

They braved the cold and intermittent slippery spots on the roads to attend a lecture in the Art of Architecture series that focused on Little Rock’s Hillcrest neighborhood.

It probably helped that admission was free, and the event started with a noisy reception serving wine, beer, pizza from Damgoode and sausage slices from Hillcrest Artisan Meats.The rowdy atmosphere was enhanced by the Arts Center’s willingness to allow snacks and beverages in the lecture hall, so the audience wasn’t cut off from refreshments once the program began.

But the real attraction was (and is) Hillcrest’s sense of community, a somewhat undefined concept aptly put in perspective with three excellent speakers who know their business.

Opening the show was the informed and personable Rachel Silva, outreach coordinator for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, who used slides, maps and quirky stories to describe the history of Hillcrest, considered to be Little Rock’s first suburb.

The area, she explained, was developed in the late 1890s. Located about a mile west of the official Little Rock border, it was touted as a “Home Seekers’ Paradise” in an Arkansas Gazette advertisement that appeared on July 3, 1903. And why not? Sewers!Lighting! Three hundred feet above sea level! (Every foot counts when you’re trying to find relief from an Arkansas summer.)

The kicker was the advertiser’s reason to invest: “Because you are not a chump.” And hey, lots downtown were going for $3,500-$5,000; lots in this outpost, in the process of becoming linked to the city with streetcars, were around $300.

Clean air, clean water, a healthier place were selling points for Hillcrest, according to Jim McKenzie, president of Metroplan. “Upstream, upwind, uphill,” he said, listing the area’s benefits that also included parks, sidewalks and, beginning in the 1980s, a committed neighborhood association, which McKenzie helped found.

Many of the original houses built in Hillcrest are still around, explained restoration architect Tommy Jameson, himself a resident of a snazzy Modern Movement structure near one of the area’s parks. Members of the audience, many of them familiar with Hillcrest homes, recognized a great number of the structures Jameson displayed on the slide screen. Chief among them: a gorgeous yellow and white Queen Anne at 506 N. Elm St., built in 1893 (10 years before the streetcars arrived). Other popular designs that carry on the style of Hillcrest (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) are Colonial Revival, American Foursquare, Spanish Revival, European-influenced English Tudor, and Craftsman.

Silva told the audience, in response to a question, that Hillcrest is on the right track toward future development thanks to the existence of the Little Rock Department of Planning and Development’s Hillcrest Design Overlay District, purposed to “help maintain the built environment in a neighborhood that is rich in history and architectural character … In order to preserve and enhance those qualities, compatible design and scale of buildings, parking areas, signage, landscaping, streetscapes and street furnishings are required such that the friendly pedestrian-oriented smalltown nature of the neighborhood is continued.”

Among other things, the overlay discourages tearing down houses and replacing them with oversized residences that cover nearly every inch of the original house’s property, as is happening in nearby neighborhoods (you know who you are).

The atmosphere in the room was getting heady with neighborhood pride (likely enhanced by the wine). “What’s next?” asked an audience member. McKenzie, a longtime resident of the neighborhood, summed up the presentation nicely: “Hillcrest is best.” The Art of Architecture program was conceived in 2004 by June Freeman, a longtime arts administrator, curator, arts writer and arts advocate, and supported by the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Arkansas Arts Center.

For those who possess a less locavore taste in architecture, the next hour-long program in the series will feature Martha Thorne, executive director of the prestigious international Pritzker Architecture Prize program that honors a living architect whose built work demonstrates talent, vision and commitment. It’s coming Jan. 28. -

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Associate editor Karen Martin is the editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Perspective section.

Editorial, Pages 13 on 12/30/2013