LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock is losing two more pieces of Victorian-era history along the high-profile corridor of Cantrell Road in downtown Little Rock.
While the circa 1869 Second Empire-style McDonald-Wait-Newton house at 1406 Cantrell Road has recently been restored in a million dollar renovation and opened as an upscale restaurant, a bleaker fate awaits a pair of two-story homes across the street.
The 1891 Eastlake-style Bruner-Hammond House at 1415 Cantrell Road is on the National Register of Historic Places. Next door, the Queen Anne-style home at 1407Cantrell Road is even more architecturally ornate.
But they both have dates with a bulldozer.
According to Pulaski County real estate records, Irwin Cantrell Properties LLC bought both houses on April 27, 2011, for $500,000 each from the David M. Hammond & Jackie D. Hammond Family Trust.
In 2007, Irwin Cantrell Properties also bought a onestory house at 1401 Cantrell Road for $530,000. The single-story white-frame Carpenter Gothic-style house has since been torn down.
All three properties border the Episcopal Collegiate School campus, which theWarren Stephens family endowed with $30 million in 2004.
Dale Aclin is listed with the secretary of state’s office as the incorporator and organizer of Irwin Cantrell Properties LLC, founded in 2007. Reached at Stephens Inc. on Tuesday, Aclin confirmed the houses are set to be torn down but said there were no plans for the property. Aclin said he didn’t know exactly when the houses were scheduled to be demolished and referred other questions to Frank Thomas, a spokesman for Stephens Inc.
Thomas, who was in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, returned a call and left a message responding to an inquiry about future use of the property and whether it might be used for the school.
“I’ve not heard anything of that nature,” Thomas said, adding: “I’d suggest you call the headmaster at the school.”
A message left for Steve Hickman, head of the school at Episcopal Collegiate School was not immediately returned.
Beginning Monday, the historic interior architectural elements of the homes such as fireplace mantels and trim were being salvaged out of the homes, a rare sight on the now-commercial stretchof road.
Decades ago, it was a grand throughway named Lincoln Avenue, dotted with numerous upper-class homes. The area was nicknamed Robbers’ Row, reportedly because of the numerous Northernerswho settled there during Reconstruction.
“The frame house that was torn down was in pretty bad shape,” said Rhea Roberts, executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association, a private, nonprofit group that works to promote historic preservation. “But these two houses are still in good shape.”
Roberts broke the news via a statement posted on the organization’s website and Facebook page: “It’s a sad week for Little Rock ... we’re losing two significant historic houses on Cantrell Road. They’re both structurally sound and the owners say they don’t have plans for redevelopment. If this is disappointing to you, contact your city leaders about preventing this kind of demolition.”
While the brick Bruner-Hammond House is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, that listing is onlyhonorary and doesn’t protect it from demolition, Roberts said. In Little Rock, the only historic structures protected from demolition are within the MacArthur Park Historic District and the Capitol Zoning District, which encompasses the Governor’s Mansion District and a portion of the Quapaw Quarter, Roberts added.
The ornate Queen Anne next door to the Bruner-Hammond House isn’t listed on the national register because of its nonhistoric vinyl siding, Roberts said.
“We hope the unfortunate loss of these historic houses will spur new dialogue about how we, as a community, can encourage smarter development practices and prevent further loss of our historicfabric,” Roberts said, adding that creating more local historic districts and implementing better preservation policy at the city level would be key for those efforts.
In September 2011 and January 2012, Roberts said she and the Quapaw Quarter Association wrote letters to both Stephens and Hickman, sharing examples of other schools that had incorporated historic structures into their campuses.
“We reached out to the new owners in a number of ways and offered to help find new uses,” Roberts said. There was little or no response in return, she said.
Vanessa McKuin, executive director, Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, issued this statement on the Little Rock Downtown Neighborhood Association’s Yahoo group, lr-dna:
“A good deal of effort was made behind the scenes to engage the owners and encourage preservation. The Quapaw Quarter Association did provide a great deal of information on alternatives to demolition to the owners, even addressing what we believed to be the intended use for the land,” McKuin wrote.
“I believe that the reception of the information was less that enthusiastic. As with other properties that the same owner has demolished, the land is valued by them much more than the buildings.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 02/27/2013