NARY A STRANGER

Guests at festive mansion celebrate in historic style

The low roar of conversation at Jay Barth and Chuck Cliett's annual holiday get-together was likely heard at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, just three doors away. The Dec. 22 fete in the 1700 block of Center Street -- in the Governor's Mansion Historic District -- drew some 300 of the couple's friends, colleagues, fellow churchgoers and others, all of whom seemed to know one another or had bobbed in and out of each other's social circles. Introductions were light.

Barth said the couple had been hosting the party since 2002 with only two years off -- once for a flood in their basement and the other for a family emergency. The couple live in the three-story Turner-Mann House, built by Sue Turner in 1906. It was once inhabited and eventually owned by George Mann, the architect for the state Capitol.

At other times in the history of the Prairie-style mansion, it had housed priests serving Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, as well as Arkansas Gov. Junius Marion Futrell, Barth said. The place was also once part of a complex that was a Catholic school and later a boarding school. Chuck Heinbockel and Jeanette Krohn remodeled the house in 1989 before Barth and Client bought it in 2006. Before that, the party was held in Barth's condo.

Every room in the house was decorated for the party with themes of all kinds. A dessert nook held a Christmas tree full of frog ornaments. Guests crowded around the pair's dining room table for edibles prepared by Barth's mother, Lyn Barth. His grandmother, Faye McNew, pitched in on the decorating. Bars on the front porch and on the second floor helped with the flow of guests.

High Profile on 01/01/2017

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