Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fay Jones house in Fayetteville burns
Former President Clinton lived at residence during the 1970s
FAYETTEVILLE — Fire extensively damaged a historic Fay Jones house where Bill Clinton lived in the 1970s.
The fire appeared to have started in the carport and is under investigation, said Dale Riggins, administrative assistant at the Fayetteville Fire Department.
The Adrian Fletcher Residence at 6725 E. Huntsville Road was built in 1957 and is an early example of Fay Jones’ work. The first owners of the house were Adrian and Marie Fletcher. Former President Clinton rented the home from 1973 to 1975 when he taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law.
The first firefighters arrived not long after midnight Wednesday and saw the single-story masonry and wood frame home heavily involved in fire, according to Battalion Chief Travis Boudrey’s report.
“At least two-thirds of the house was damaged by the fire and I’m sure the smoke and water damage took care
of the rest of it,” Riggins wrote in an email.
The owners are university alumni Robert and Stephanie Dzur who live in Albuquerque, N.M. Her father, Joe Brodacz, lives in the house.
“He was awakened by the fire … and got out of the house with his dog with the shirt on his back,” Robert Dzur said. “We are so happy that they made it out together. Smoke detectors really do save lives.”
Brodacz and his dog Daisy weren’t injured, according to the fire report. He was badly shaken up, Dzur said, and they are trying to find him a place to stay.
The house is on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The Dzurs helped to get it listed in 2013, Robert Dzur said.
The family made sure to keep the integrity of the Fay Jones home intact with only a few hardware changes, according to the historic places registration form.
“We purchased the house in order to have a place to stay in town when we would come to visit Joe, and we did that often for many years,” Dzur said. “Even before we owned the home, for me, the house always was a special landmark building that just seemed to welcome us back home to town whenever we drove back into Fayetteville on the Pig Trail.”
The house sits on 8 acres across from Lake Sequoyah west of Elkins.
Clinton mentioned the Huntsville Road house in his autobiography My Life: “The house proved to be a godsend of peace and quiet, especially after I started my first campaign.” Clinton lost to popular Republican incumbent John Paul Hammerschmidt.
Clinton rented the house for $150 a month before buying a house at 930 W. Clinton Drive, which is now the Clinton House Museum, according to documents at the museum.
David Wright, guest services coordinator at the museum, said, “We do mention it on the tour. We have a picture of the [Fay Jones] house that we display here at the museum.”
Clinton lived at the house, but his future wife, Hillary Rodham, lived in the neighborhood west of the UA campus. “People mistakenly think they lived there together. They did not.”
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.
If the house is destroyed, that means Fayetteville has 27 Fay Jones houses left, said Catherine Wallack, architectural records archivist for the Special Collections Department at the UA library.
“It’s very significant,” Wallack said of possibly losing a house by the noted architect. “The craftspeople who worked on them are retiring, so it’s nearly impossible to recreate these. It takes a great deal of work.”
Jones went on to win the American Institute of Architecture’s Gold Medal in 1990. The architecture school at the UA is named for him.
The Dzurs haven’t seen their house, but received photos from a friend Friday.
“It looks pretty devastating,” Robert Dzur said. “We have been in touch with our insurance. It looks bad. We want to restore if we can but we will have to see. The jury is out on what we can do.”
According to Washington County property records, the Dzurs paid $195,000 for the property in 2011.
The fire was reported at 12:09 a.m. Firefighters from Fayetteville, Round Mountain and Elkins departments fought the fire. No injuries to civilians or firefighters were reported. A hot spot rekindled about 5:30 p.m. Thursday and firefighters returned to put it out.
Another Clinton landmark caught fire in 2015. On Christmas Day, a fire damaged the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope. It was repaired and opened in July.
“That was an arson attack,” said Aaron Charles, an interpretive guide at the house in Hope. “They never found out who actually did it.”