Bush House added to historic register
The 1950s-era Bush House in Hot Springs was one of four properties listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places when the state review board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program met Wednesday in Little Rock.
Located at 111 Daley Terrace, off Whittington Avenue, the residence is a circa 1957 Mid-Century Modern building that was excluded from consideration for the National Register of Historic Places due to some modern alterations made since its construction, a news release said.
“The Evans M. ‘Mac’ and Alice Bush House was designed in what is called the Populist Modern style, which was essentially vernacular Modernism,” according to the National Register nomination.
“It is generally defined as a form of Mid-Century Modern architecture that took inspiration from the work of multiple early Modernist architects, such as Gropius, Saarinen, Neutra, Wright, or Mies van der Rohe, and combined and reinterpreted them to create a style which exhibits a great deal of variation,” it said.
The house was either the second or third house built along Daley Terrace before the development collapsed or at least failed
to materialize to the full extent of the original platting of Western Hills.
“General development of the eastern areas of Western Hills was generally sparse and remains sparsely developed thanks in part to heavily forested lots that helped play in to the designs created by I. Granger McDaniel for the homes being constructed in the development throughout the 1950s,” the nomination said.
Evans Bush’s job as a construction contractor and great friend of McDaniel, helped play in to the platting and development of the Bush House and lot, it said. The McDaniel and Bush families were close friends during this time period as “Mac” Bush is the godfather to McDaniel’s daughter, Diana.
A native of Waco, Texas, Evans Bush received his undergraduate degree from Texas A& M University in industrial education. After graduation, Bush immediately went into World War II as part of the U.S. Army’s 126th Calvary. After passing through Camp Hood, he was commissioned as a 1st lieutenant and unit commander within the 602nd Tank Destroyer Battalion, which was assigned to Gen. George Patton’s command as part of his 3rd Army. Bush took part in campaigns across France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, including the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, according to the history section of the nomination form.
Following the Allied victory in the war, Bush returned home to Texas to begin work as a construction estimator for Robert E. McKee Construction in Dallas before moving to Midland, Texas, to manage projects in 1947. During this time he married his wife of 25 years, Alice Johnson. The family later moved to Little Rock for a year or two before eventually moving to Hot Springs in 1951. It was during this period that Bush struck up a friendship with McDaniel.
McDaniel had also served during World War II in the Royal Air Force, entering battle before the United States entered the war. The nomination notes it’s possible his transition to International Style designs was the result of his return from the war and going to work with his father, Irven Donald McDaniel, an architect of some renown in Memphis, Tenn., who had moved to Hot Springs in 1930.
“Granger McDaniel had worked in his father’s office in Hot Springs when he was young and showed great promise as an architect. When McDaniel returned from the war his father was anxious to put him to work at his firm again. The knowledge of Modernism that he had gained through the years of study would soon pay off,” it said.
“He joined his father’s firm in 1946 … and in 1950 the father-son team decided to move from the home office at 704 Whittington Ave. to a new building of their own design at 800 Whittington Ave. so the firm would have room to expand.”
At the same time the McDaniel architectural firm was planning the new building, it began to set aside land for a new development to the north of the building. The new development would be platted as the Western Hills Subdivision, with early construction largely concentrated close to Whittington Avenue, before stretching up Daley Terrace.
The Bush house was nominated to the state register under “Criterion C with Local Significance” as an excellent example of Mid-Century Modern architecture in Hot Springs, the form said.
The board also listed the Linwood Cemetery at Paragould and the YWCA Building and American Legion Building-TAC House at El Dorado on the state’s historical register, which recognizes significant properties that do not meet National Register requirements.