2005 Most Endangered
Historic Places List
Riceland Hotel
Ragsdale Farmhouse
African-American Cemeteries
Noel Owen Neal House
Magnolia Manor
Rosenwald Schools
Riceland Hotel
When the Riceland Hotel in Stuttgart was built in 1919 through
1923, it was truly a community effort. The forty original investors
included not only Stuttgart's elite, but, as the nomination states, "the remaining investors were ...average business owner and farmers who
envisioned a successful future for the community." The Riceland Hotel
was the center of community life in Stuttgart, hosting notable guests
such as Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable, and also serving as a social
center for military personnel from the Stuttgart Air Field.
However, in recent decades, the Riceland Hotel has been closed and
vacant. A lack of maintenance threatens the integrity of the building,
and the Stuttgart City Council has declared the building a public
nuisance and hazard. Even so, many of the hotel's original features
and grandeur remain just waiting to be restored.
Today, the Riceland Hotel needs someone to come forward to take on
the challenge of restoring and resurrecting this centerpiece of the
Stuttgart skyline. As the nomination states, "It has been a local
landmark for many generations and should be restored so as to provide
future generations with a link to the history of the Grand Prairie."
Click the image below for
an enlarged view.
Ragsdale Farmhouse
The original two-room house was built by John Robert Ragsdale in
the El Dorado vicinity of Union County in 1898, and was expanded by
his brother, William Franklin Ragsdale, in 1926. The Ragsdale family
grew crops that were typical on an Arkansas farm of the period,
including cotton, corn, and sugar cane. The farm also had a fruit
orchard and vegetable garden, and the Ragsdale family also kept hogs,
cows, and mules. The Ragsdale Farmhouse is representative of a rural
Arkansas farmhouse of the late nineteenth or early twentieth
centuries. Even today, the farmhouse and the original smokehouse
remain in the Ragsdale family.
Although the house has remained in the Ragsdale family since it was
built, maintaining the property has been difficult. The house is
currently in need of extensive repair, and if a solution is not found
soon it, like many other farmhouses of the period, will soon disappear
from the landscape.
The Ragsdale Farmhouse needs an owner who is able to undertake the
repairs that the house needs, and restore it to its original
condition. As the current owner, John G. Ragsdale, wrote in his
nomination, "If repairs could be made soon, the house would provide
an example of the frame house in use on many farms of the period
around 1900."
Click the image below for
an enlarged view.
African-American Cemeteries
Representative of African-American cemeteries across the state, the
Ida Bell Cemetery in Palarm, Faulkner County; Union Cemetery in
Sherwood; Hickman Memorial Cemetery in North Little Rock; and the
Haven of Rest and Union Cemeteries in Little Rock, are facing threats
from a variety of sources.
These cemeteries, which are believed to have been established over a
period of time from the 1860s to the 1930s, represent an important
part in Arkansass African-American history. In addition, Haven of
Rest Cemetery, which is the final resting place of notable
African-Americans such as Lena Jordan, attorney Scipio A. Jones, and
Daisy Bates, has importance beyond Arkansas's borders.
The threats to these cemeteries are quite varied. The Hickman Memorial
Cemetery is threatened by commercial development while the Ida Bell
and the Union Cemetery in Sherwood are both threatened by encroaching
residential development. The Union Cemetery in Little Rock is also
threatened by development, but the nomination states that it was also "in grave danger because the property was being destroyed by three
wheelers, vandals and littering and due to poor drainage." With
respect to Haven of Rest Cemetery, however, the nomination states that "funding through the Arkansas Cemetery Board and the troubled
cemetery fund will be depleted sometime in the year 2005."
Although strides have been made to bring recognition to these
cemeteries through the efforts of the Afro-American Historical &
Genealogical Society and other organizations, there is much to be
done. More work needs to be done to identify and document
African-American cemeteries across the state, and educate the general
public about the need to protect these important resources.
Click the images below for
an enlarged view.
Noel Owen Neal House
Constructed circa 1840, the Noel Owen Neal House dates to the earliest
days of settlement in the Nashville vicinity of Howard County. Neal
had been born in Georgia, and like many early settlers, migrated to
Arkansas after living for a period in Mississippi. Neal and his family
farmed the land and lived a prosperous life until Neal died in 1850.
After his death, Neal's wife, Hesky, continued to manage the farm.
The house that Neal and his family built after their arrival in
Arkansas was a log house with a central dogtrot. Many pioneer settlers
in Arkansas built dogtrot homes, with the dogtrot acting as a
breezeway, providing shade and cooling breezes for the occupants.
Although many of them have been demolished or altered over the years,
the Neal House remains a remarkable intact example of this pioneer
house form.
Today, the house is threatened with a lack of maintenance and
deterioration. Although it has remained in the same family since 1892,
the nomination states that "The family does not have the funds to
restore the log house." It is hoped that a way can be found to
preserve the Noel Owen Neal House, and restore it properly to showcase
the lives of Arkansas's earliest settlers.
Click the image below for
an enlarged view.
Magnolia Manor
Sitting on twelve acres of land with a caretaker's cottage barn,
Magnolia Manor is a remarkably preserved example of a
nineteenth-century rural residence. Completed in 1857 for John B.
McDaniel, many of the materials used to construct the house were found
or made right on the property, including the bricks, nails, and oak,
pine, and walnut wood. The house was built in a mixture of the Greek
Revival and Italianate styles, both which were popular in the period
around the Civil War, and it was named for the Magnolia trees that
McDaniel planted on the property.
Magnolia Manor became the property of Henderson State University in
1999, and they had planned to turn the house into a conference center.
However, the estimated cost to complete the project caused the
University to cancel its plans. Earlier this year, the property was
sold to Park Hill Baptist Church, located just to the east of the
property.
The future of Magnolia Manor is uncertain. A recent newspaper
article about the property and its sale to the church, stated that the "church needed the property for parking." However, the church has also
indicated that it is still unknown what will become of the house
itself. It is hoped that a solution can be found to accommodate the
church's needs while preserving the house, which is one of the great
architectural landmarks of Clark County.
Click the image below for
an enlarged view.
Rosenwald Schools
During the early twentieth century, educational opportunities for
African-Americans were very limited. Julius Rosenwald, who was the
president and later chairman of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, and a
friend of Booker T. Washington's, was bothered by this fact. As a
result, he established the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1917 with the idea
of creating more equitable opportunities for African-Americans. The
biggest legacy of the fund was the rural school building program,
which helped to build over 5,000 schools across the South.
In Arkansas, 389 school buildings, which included schools, shops, and
teachers' homes, were built between 1917 and 1932, mainly in the
state's southern and eastern counties. The new schools brought
opportunities never seen before to the state's African-American
students, and allowed them to learn more than they ever would have
thought possible.
However, as integration occurred across Arkansas, many of the schools
fell into disuse in the 1950s through the 1970s, and many were
demolished, even though they were well built and used the latest
innovations in school design for the period. As a result, of the
original 389 buildings built across the state, less than 20 survive
today, and the surviving buildings are severely threatened. As the
nomination states, "Unfortunately, those buildings that do survive are
either not utilized or are underutilized. Although the buildings would
be excellent candidates for reuse, the rural locations of the
buildings, often in economically-depressed parts of the state, make
coming up with affordable and viable uses extremely difficult."
Although there has been an increased awareness in recent years of the
importance of Rosenwald Schools, there is still a great need to spread
the news of their importance and to find uses for them so that they
can again become useful parts of their communities.
Rosenwald Schools:
Bigelow Rosenwald School, Toad Suck
Chicot County Training School, Dermott
Kiblah School,, Doddridge, AR vicinity
Lafayette County Training School, Stamps
Mt. Olive Rosenwald School, Mt. Olive
Oak Grove Rosenwald School, Oak Grove
Peake High School & Shop Bldg., Arkadelphia
Tollette Shop Building, Tollette
Dallas County Training School High School Building, Fordyce
Marion Colored High School, Sunset
Malvern Rosenwald School, Malvern
St. Luke School (also known as Big Creek Colored School), Turkey
Scratch
Lafayette Shop Building, Camden vicinity
Friendship School, Sharman vicinity
Rosenwald School, Delight vicinity
Selma Rosenwald School, Selma
Free Hope School, Magnolia vicinity
Click the images below for
an enlarged view.
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