I promised in my 2023 end-of-the-year post that I would write more about my recent travels to the MacArthur Park neighborhood in Little Rock, Arkansas. As with my recent post on Van Buren, Arkansas – where a well-worn but well-cared-for downtown exudes a high level of meaning and character – MacArthur Park is another example of where good curatorial management has created more than a good-looking historic district – but a place that has so much to offer those seeking a place of sense as well as a quality living environment. It has an intimate scale, a diversity of historic housing stock, easy access to downtown Little Rock, and a short walking distance to parks and cultural amenities, including the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, sporting a new addition designed by the ever-ascendent Gang Studio, a Chicago-based architecture firm. What more can one ask for in a neighborhood?
For a bit of background, the City of Little Rock designated the MacArthur Park neighborhood a Local Historic District in 1981 following its listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Certainly, the early historic district designation contributed to keeping this neighborhood intact over the decades. The neighborhood encompasses 50 square blocks to the east of downtown Little Rock surrounding its namesake park – MacArthur Park – Little Rock’s oldest park, named after General Douglas MacArthur, who was born at the Little Rock Arsenal in 1880. The park itself has roots going back much further, dating to the Civil War when the U.S. Department of War purchased it for a military base, the Little Rock Arsenal. In 1841, the Tower Building was constructed featuring a distinctive three-story Federal-style octagon tower with two flanking wings and prominent porticoed balconies. The Tower Building is the last remaining structure from the arsenal installation and currently houses the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. I was fortunate enough to meet the Museum’s director during a quick jaunt into the building. The Museum has several illuminating exhibits and photographs on the many ways Arkansans participated in the Civil War. Worth a visit.
Beyond the Tower Building, the neighborhood’s variety of Victorian-era styles define its most significant period of growth right after the Civil War between 1870 and 1890. While Little Rock was somewhat of a backwater frontier town up until and during the Civil War, an influx of formerly enslaved African Americans and war refugees would spur additional growth postwar as did a significant contingent of Union soldiers who decided to stay after more than eighteen months of occupying the town. The coming of the Little Memphis and Little Rock Railroad as well as new bridges over the Arkansas River to the north of a fledgling MacArthur Park would lead to a new generation of buildings and residences built in brick and Victorian era ornamentation.
The late 1800s would be a boom period for MacArthur Park. The neighborhood would see a construction upswing that would result in several impressive Second Empire mansions along with distinguished Queen Anne homes and cottages that remain intact to this day. With this diversity of property types, you immediately get the idea this neighborhood was both for the well-heeled and the everyday family. The Second Empires and the Queen Annes will enamor you, especially the cottage types meant to display an aura of prosperity for the owners even if they lack a sense of awe from their grander Victorian counterparts. But these Victorian cottages have a layer of opulence and majesty in their own right – many have side towers, high-pitched roofs, and spindled porches. They are delightful to look at.
Beyond these resources, the neighborhood also features older duplexes and simple Colonial Revival-style bungalows that make MacArthur Park’s housing again appear more than just modest from what their form dimensions may imply. I admire historic duplex housing – they are rare in my parts of Illinois but quite at home and more numerous in the Texas and Arkansas communities that I have visited and worked in over the years. These duplexes are the “missing middle” housing that planners are so fond of talking about these days. Imagine if we built more of these over time everywhere? We wouldn’t be writing about the “missing middle” today. But it is all right here in MacArthur Park.
In addition to the duplexes, there are well-scaled four flats that fit in nicely in the neighborhood fabric, although they show some wear and tear than other neighborhood housing. As wonderful as these buildings are, their post turn-of-the-century construction makes them non-contributing as they were constructed outside the historic district’s period of significance.
As the National Register nomination states, MacArthur Park benefited in a different way with the residential growth and expansion that occurred to the south and southwest of the neighborhood after 1900. With newer neighborhoods stratifying along class lines, MacArthur Park became home to the poor working class who could not afford to change and tinker with their properties. This is one reason the neighborhood changed little by the time the National Register nomination was prepared in 1976. Good care and stewardship on part of many certainly played a role as well. Walking the neighborhood takes your through an intimate environment comprised of walkable blocks festooned with a mature tree canopy and well-maintained for residential dwellings that evoke their time. It is a neighborhood that planners can only dream about creating.
As wonderful as MacArthur Park is in its architecture, history, and setting, it does have its scars as many other inner-city neighborhoods do. In the early 1960s, the construction of Interstate 30 bisected the easternmost blocks from the rest of the neighborhood. At least the interstate is sunken below grade and could have been a much more destructive visual intrusion. Still, it broke the landscape of what the neighborhood once was. There are also several isolated pockets of vacant homes that attest to the once declining state of the neighborhood and some new infill housing that are contextual and well-scaled as one can hope for in a Victorian-era historic district. The infill is testament to MacArthur Park’s renewal as a choice place to live in Little Rock.
The recent addition in the neighborhood is one worthy of more discussion – Gang Studios recently opened addition to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, which sits in the middle of MacArthur Park itself adjacent to the Tower Building. Built with successive building accretions over the years, the new Studio Gang addition sought to both unify and supplement the interior spaces while extending the Museum’s presence into the neighborhood with dramatic expanses of second story window spaces that appear to thrust themselves into the park. The addition wraps around the east and west portions of the Museum with the design conceptualized as floating flower petals. The east addition was constructed as a second-story “cultural living room” in front of the Museum’s 1937 Art Moderne facade serving now as the Museum’s main entrance.
At a time when museums of all kinds everywhere are searching for ways both architecturally and programmatically to promote accessibility and openness, the Studio Gang addition accomplishes that and much more. It is captivating and inviting all at once and much more. At night, the “cultural living room” that fronts the east addition wing shines an inviting light into the neighborhood – a compelling presence alongside the distinguished Tower Building. Built a century and more apart, the Tower Building and the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts embody the neighborhood’s history from its beginnings to its present. No neighborhood could ask for more when it comes to authenticity, design quality, and curatorial care. No need to make believe in MacArthur Park.
The Places of Sense Chronicles 