Hanger Hill House Part 2: Arkansas Studies Institute

Isn't it nice? This is the new Arkansas Studies Institute, built just in time for a little summer sleuthing. It sits across from the Main Library in what used to be an old warehouse down by the river market.

I dropped by a few days ago to see what could be found out about a fascinating old house on East 9th St. I have taken to calling it Hanger Hill House, A. because that section of town is called Hanger Hill and B. because the house is the grandest thing going in that area. There has to a be a history there.

Hence the Arkansas Studies Institute.


The City Directory only goes back to 1871 but here we have...


... a "Woodruff, W E, sr., res bt Eighth and Ninth" in a part of town called the "Woodruff Addition."

The name "Woodruff" is a gold mine. He founded the Arkansas Gazette in 1819, and while his children and grandchildren survived the paper published articles of personal recollection and family history, though by the 1960s this largely dries up. The paper itself foundered in 1991.

The house apparently was built in 1853. In 1908 his daughter Mrs. Frances Woodruff Martin reminisced, "The last Thursday in March, 1853, we moved out into the country (for it was all thick, beautiful woods), to run wild and grow up with the trees. There, as when we were 'little tots,' out father was our willing companion in the garden, on horseback or roaming in the woods, and always the same kind, thoughtful, cheerful, devoted father."

During the Civil War the home quartered Union officers and later, according to a granddaughter, served as a Federal hospital. Both sons served in the Confederacy. Mr. Woodruff was exiled south of the Federal lines. Two rooms were reserved for the use of his remaining wife and daughters.

I haven't yet read through all the accounts, but instead printed copies of the microfilm, some of which is very damaged and will have to be transcribed to be fully legible. I am told that the neither the library nor the Democrat-Gazette (which bought the old Gazette) have hard copy archives of Gazette editions.

More Pie

Ultimate Frisbee

Lunch in Fine Weather

They are reparing the island of the I-30 on ramp too. Everything looks so sunny and hopeful. A man in a suit just walked by with his son by the hand. Did he get to go to the office too or is it just lunch with Dad? Another Dad and son sit in the shade outside the police substation across the street. These boys are 6 or 7. A car goes by slowly and a black dog has his head out the window enjoying the breeze.

Fresh

Back Porch

I'm furloughed from work today. One Friday every pay period. This morning Sarah and I went to the zoo. The air was so muggy and close we were both dripping with sweat minutes into the park. The animals lay sleeping in shade or had disappeared entirely into their cages. The heat was so thick and close you knew it would storm later. Now we are home and showered and changed. I'm sitting on the back porch watching torrential rain from a black sky. The peals of thunder are very close. The lightening is shock flashes that illuminates everything at no greater distance than the yard. The air is so cool Sarah made us coffee. I'll sit here, just at the edge of the mist on the wind, and drink coffee and read. But not before reminding myself that this porch is my favorite place in the world.

Hanger Hill House

I have written before about Hanger Hill. At the time of the visit to Sandy's I saw this house from the back and was curious about it. So earlier this week when the weather was nice I went back. There is something suggestive in a house this grand on a lot this big and both of them derelict. Especially when the neighborhood is Hanger Hill and of no interest even to the urban pioneers looking for fixer-upers. It makes you want to know what happened. Or who lived there before. Notice the gallery of windows along the top. Odd.


I made the block and here is the front.

I've had this fantasy of owning a bookstore and when I talk about it with my mother it also morphs into a tea room (although in my imagination I keep the chintz minimal). This fantasy would allow me to work really hard and then fail and then write a novel out of the pain. Last summer I poked around Little Rock imagining possible locations. Hanger Hill presents a few drawbacks for the bookstore/tea room idea, like ability to park one's car safely. However the biggest drawback is that this fantasy is squarely in the summer of 2008. I've ceased to have the bookstore fantasy about real estate. Recent events have taken the glow off loans. Circling the block I couldn't even pretend very long that my interest in the house had much to do with a bookstore. Instead it feels sad in a "passed by" way, like Gordon Brown. (You could write a very long essay on all the ways Southern houses are like British parliamentarians but I will save that for later.) Did it, like Brown, debut to applause and then find itself severed from support for reasons outside its control? Someone built this grand house for the reasons people build grand houses and had the misfortune to do it at about the moment the city decided to expand nary another block eastward. Then the neighborhood got severed from the city by I-30 (the freeways in Little Rock are the railroad tracks of all "wrong side" metaphors). Plus the grandest thing going in its meager radius is the Confederate cemetery. Hanger Hill is a repository of the defeated, the no longer useful, the disregarded. It is also where scrap metal and tires go to die.

Still I think the house is lovely. It has what looks like a door opening right out on the porch roof. There is a massive old tree in the front yard. Not to mention the gallery of windows along the back, suggesting some grand room or a really weird tack-on. I am going to look into the history of this house, just for fun.

If only...

-- Post From My iPhone

Local Inspiration

Every soldier needs to hold on to something worth fighting for.

Jim Lileks would be proud.

Batesville's Sears Roebuck Houses

Bought from a Sears Roebuck catalog stick for stick and built by two brothers. Or so I'm told.

Sears Roebuck sold houses? Yep, under the "mail order Modern Homes program."

What is Ikea waiting for? Oh wait...

Another Kind of Silence

At work

Sunday Silence

Also on the Start the Week round table mentioned below was the author Susan Hill. She was discussing her recent essay "Silence, Please." We need more silence, she says, for reasons both reflective and sensory. Silence can make thought richer and it can separate out sound into distinct events that we actually hear.

There is a day that I could set aside for some silence if I wanted to. Sunday is, technically, a day of rest. Or at least that was its origin in Western society. But even believers in Sunday's divine mandate check that box by going to church and relaxing with friends or family or whatever hobbies or pleasures there wasn't time for during the week. What if I made a point of resting from pleasures as well as pains? Church is a kind of rest for the soul. But what if I treated other even good things as something to be rested from on occasion?

What if next Sunday I don't go into work early to tinker with video installations (not entirely under my control), don't listen to Start the Week podcasts while driving to work, don't spend the afternoon reading around the internet, don't work through exhibition designs, and don't schedule a movie marathon with friends for the evening. What if next Sunday I rest with silence?

But for now, I'm back off to work...

What I Listened to Yesterday

Pres. Reagan's 1984 D-Day Commemoration speech

and

Historian Antony Beevor on the BBC's wonderful round table Start the Week discussing D-Day

Ratatouille a la Smitten Kitchen

It was delicious so I'm sharing

Update: photos of the whole delectable process here

Work and Breakfast by the River

There was a breeze. It was great.


And to our left, the attempt to expose the original "little rock" of Little Rock. This is easier if you don't build bridges on top of it.