Return from NYC stirred rehabilitation

Vanessa McKuin’s residency in the Central High School Neighborhood Historic District began with her move back to Little Rock about 10 years ago after living in New York. She took a job as executive director of the organization now known as Preserve Arkansas.

She and her then-fiance were looking in the Governor’s Mansion District for a house to rehabilitate. It was important to them to be able to make a difference in a neighborhood, McKuin says. During a tour of the Central High District, she saw a house “and just fell in love with it.” The couple eventually bought it, worked on it about three and a half years, and moved into the house in 2014.

Now, McKuin is serving as one of three co-chairmen of the Quapaw Quarter Association’s 54th Spring Tour of Homes, along with Whitney Patterson, who also lives in the district; and Central High graduate Denise Ennett. “As a resident, I’m thrilled to have the tour here and be able to bring some attention to a very very special place,” McKuin says.

“I feel like Central High is such a beautiful neighborhood … such an important neighborhood” when it comes to the development of the city, she adds. There’s “really fascinating history” in the area, she adds.

The historic district includes two neighborhoods — the Central High neighborhood north and the Wright Avenue neighborhood south. The tour includes three houses in both of these neighborhoods. During the tour, a trolley will run the length of the district.

The tour will show “some wonderfully rehabbed houses and houses that have been cared for for a long time,” McKuin says.

She is among those who hopes the tour will help fuel additional neighborhood revitalization.

“There’s definitely still a need and there’s such wonderful fabric in the neighborhood,” McKuin says. “We hope people will see the need to rehabilitate these gems.” Part of the association’s purpose is to show that historic houses “don’t have to be museums — they’re lived in and people live their daily lives in them. And they want to show what wonderful places they are.”

— Helaine R. Williams