Fires, facades, and a pop quiz
The veneer from the middle of the 20th century came off the building at 609 Main Street in the spring of 2021. Suddenly, instead of a mauve metal slipcover, a 1950s nightmare in the New International Style, we saw a neoclassical dream in pale brick and limestone.
Where the neon sign for RAO video used to hang, we could make out a modest imprint: Fulk. The original facade of 609-611 Main Street is similar to that of its fraternal twin, the Fulk-Arkansas Democrat building adjacent to the south at 613-615 Main St., where Three Fold Noodles and Dumpling Co. is now housed.
Completed in 1921, the northern Fulk building is the youngest on the eastern side of the 600 block of Main. All four were built after 1911, when someone tossed a smoldering cigarette into a pile of rags at the Hollenberg Music Company and the resulting “Million Dollar Fire” took out the entire block.
According to Henry Hollenberg’s charming memoir, his father, F.B.T. Hollenberg (1866-1938), stood watching the blaze when a friend remarked that he had been meaning to buy a piano, but now it was too late, whereupon Hollenberg produced a pen and paper and, using a nearby wall as a writing surface, drew up a contract.
Ten months after the original fire of Jan. 3, 1911, the area burned a second time. The estate of Little Rock Judge Francis Marion Fulk owned the middle section of the east side of the 600 block of Main, and the estate’s managers (Fulk’s widow Florence Parson Fulk and her sons Gus and Guy) left the property empty while they looked for tenants interested in occupying a new building on the site.
Meanwhile in 1911, K. August Engel became business manager of the Arkansas Democrat (founded in 1878). Engel would buy a controlling interest in the Democrat in 1926 and hold it until his death in 1968. The Fulk Estate found interested tenants in the Democrat and the Jackson-Strawn (furniture) Company, and commissioned Charles L. Thompson to design adjacent buildings for them.
The southern Fulk building (1916) held the office of the Arkansas Democrat from 1917 until 1930, when Engel bought the YMCA building at Capitol and Scott and moved the Democrat’s offices and printing press there. That Renaissance revival building, designed by Thompson (it has also been attributed to the firm of Gibb and Sanders), was built in 1904; it still houses the offices of the Democrat-Gazette.
The northern Fulk building was not the only building on Main Street to receive a mid-century cosmetic “improvement.” Its neighbor to the immediate north, the 1912 Galloway building (now the home of the Arkansas Repertory Theater) got covered in faux granite panels while it served as Pfeifer’s Home Center. At the northwest corner of Sixth and Main, the 1899 Arkansas Carpet and Furniture building (later Pfeifer Brothers Department Store) received the same treatment. Those facades were removed in 1988 and 1996 respectively.
A few weeks ago, a more modest structure caught my eye: the one-story building facing Scott Street that serves as a storage warehouse for the offices of the Democrat-Gazette.
Built in 1945, that building contained offices (mostly for doctors and dentists) until the 1980s. It too received a mid-century makeover, and until recently I did not realize that its unremarkable beige facade is an add-on; most of its long brick exterior looks much older (and thus much more interesting) than its front.
For decades, Paul Greenberg stored a mass of books and papers in that building. Much of the mass lay in boxes untouched since 1992, when they were hauled there from Pine Bluff. When I learned of the death of Milan Kundera on July 11, I thought I would head to the storage unit where we moved the books and papers in 2016; I wanted to see what the editorial page of the Pine Bluff Commercial had to say about the Prague Spring.
Alas, I turned up no editorials from 1968 (that will require a trip to the Pine Bluff Public Library) but I did find course materials for Mr. Greenberg’s Survey of United States History to 1877, taught at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in the fall of 1978.
I found a stack of mimeographed papers with the simple label QUIZ. He must have given it after an introductory lecture on the first day of class. Enjoy.
QUIZ (Choose four answers.)
1. The student of history should have a good memory for dates.
2. The student of history should be able to recite lists of names, acts, and events.
3. The student of history should like historical novels.
4. The student of history should have seen lots of movies based on historical themes. 5. The student of history should be able to justify his own politics by his knowledge of history.
6. The student of history should know his own time well.
7. The student of history should have imagination.
8. The student of history should be able to reason well.
9. The student of history should be interested in what did NOT happen in the past.
10. The student of history should like antiques.
Mr. Greenberg did not leave an answer key. I think the correct answers are pretty evident, but I would be happy to hear from readers with any questions. Likewise, I would like to hear from readers who know of old buildings with new facades.