Ex-Clinton home deemed total loss
Post-fire, museum asked about redo
FAYETTEVILLE — Bill Clinton’s first Fayetteville home is a total loss after a June 8 fire.
“It will have to be torn down,” Stephanie Dzur said Friday. “It is too damaged to fix. The supporting beams are more than 60 percent burnt through.”
The one-bedroom house at 6725 Huntsville Road is owned by Stephanie and Robert Dzur of Albuquerque, N.M. Both are alumni of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
The former president lived in the house from 197375, when he taught law at the university.
More recently, Stephanie Dzur’s father, Joe Brodacz, was living in the house and escaped the fire with his dog.
Robert Dzur said the fire may have begun in Brodacz’s Ford Explorer, which was parked in the carport, but
investigators haven’t determined that yet.
“The strange thing was it was the middle of the night,” Robert Dzur said. “It’s not like the car had just been driven.”
The Dzurs have seen photographs of the damage, but they haven’t seen the house since the fire. They got the damage assessment from their insurance agent.
The house was designed by architect E. Fay Jones of Fayetteville for Adrian and Marie Fletcher. It was built in 1957 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Jones won the American Institute of Architecture’s Gold Medal in 1990. The architecture school at UA is named for him.
Stephanie Dzur asked Walter Jennings, another Fayetteville architect, if Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art would consider rebuilding the house on the museum grounds.
Jennings said he asked Crystal Bridges about that possibility. He said the rocks used for one wall and the large fireplace can be salvaged along with some of the beams and trim from the east side of the house.
“I think they’re evaluating it,” Jennings said. “No decision has been made, but, yes, we’ve talked about it. That might be a possibility.”
Jennings said he provided before-and-after photographs and other materials to the museum. Jennings’ father, Maurice Jennings, was an architect who worked with Jones in Fayetteville for 25 years.
Robert Dzur said he likes the idea of donating the salvageable material to the museum so they can rebuild the house with some of the original stone and wood.
“It would kind of live on and not just in our memory,” he said.
Crystal Bridges has a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the museum grounds. The Bachman-Wilson House was constructed in New Jersey in 1956. It was taken apart, moved to Bentonville and reassembled there in 2015. Wright was Jones’ mentor.
The house that burned is about 7 miles east of downtown Fayetteville on Huntsville Road, which is also Arkansas 16.
Fayetteville has 27 Fay Jones houses left, said Catherine Wallack, architectural records archivist for the Special Collections Department at UA. Wallack said Jones designed 207 buildings that were completed.
The Fletcher residence was featured in the national magazine House Beautiful in March 1960 and won Jones one of his first architectural design awards, a “Homes for Better Living” Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1961, according to the National Register application.
According to Washington County property records, the Dzurs paid $195,000 for the house and 8 acres of land in 2011.
The Fletcher house isn’t “the” Fayetteville house that comes to mind when most people think of Clinton. Clinton bought a one-bedroom house at 930 California Drive in 1975.
Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married in the California Drive house and began their life as a family there.
That building now serves as the Clinton House Museum.
Bill Clinton was living in the Adrian Fletcher house when he ran for Congress in 1974. He lost to John Paul Hammerschmidt, a Republican who held the seat for 26 years.
“The house proved to be a godsend of peace and quiet, especially after I started my first campaign,” Clinton wrote in his autobiography, My Life.
This was the second former Clinton home to burn in the state over the past few years.
On Christmas Day 2015, a fire damaged the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope. It was repaired and reopened in July.