An effort is underway to preserve a historic neighborhood in Fayetteville. Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis reports neighbors are joining forces with local government to turn the proposed Oak Grove Historic District into reality.
Development is growing in town. Some residents are proponents, while others are annoyed. At Fayetteville’s current stage, this may sound like a familiar story. The difference is a neighborhood near Wilson Park, residents are trying to preserve it and are actually making progress.
John Blakinger lives about two blocks southeast of Wilson Park. He says the pressure of development has ratcheted up.
“New buildings are going up and old buildings are also coming down. And this has happened within walking distance of where we are right now in Wilson Park neighborhoods around Wilson Park, downtown, so I think all of us have felt that having some kind of protections that preserve what’s important to us about the neighborhood we live in. What we like about the neighborhood is really important.”
Much of that area surrounding the park — also known as the Rock House neighborhood — is currently on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district, but that comes with no legal protections.
“It’s great that it’s historical. Obviously that’s what it’s kind of recognizing, but it doesn’t actually protect it and ensure that it exists in the future. So we were kind of seeking what can we do that will actually ensure that these houses, the kind of quality of life here, the atmosphere of the neighborhood is there not just for us, but also in the future.”
So Blakinger gathered a few neighbors and reached out to the Fayetteville Long-Range Planning Department. That’s when long-range and historic-preservation planner Kylie Cole got involved. She says people were concerned about an application in the neighborhood that could have resulted in new construction and wanted more transparency about what could go into — or even prevent — private-property development.
“As a result of that, started the conversation of what options are out there for us to protect our neighborhood like this. This project aside. Moving forward, we want to make sure that we are plugged in to what’s happening, and we want an additional level of transparency and predictability that you don’t get through our normal building permit and planning process. So we explored various options, one of those being a local historic district.”
A local historic district differs from a National Register district because it employs municipal guidelines and a review process for new construction or major alterations. That ensures changes are compatible with the area’s historic character.
“For example, the houses on Mount Nord — those are a National Register district.”
Mount Nord’s a few streets away from the Rock House neighborhood.
“If I wanted to be a jerk, I could buy one of those beautiful houses and tear it down and build something new. And there’s absolutely no process for having that be a public process where people could say, ‘No, this is architecturally really important and we value this as a community.’ And I could build something entirely new. And they would also have no … there would be no rules for what that would have to look like in context of the other houses on Mount Nord.
“So National Register has its place and is important for distinction and for opportunities for property owners to access, like, tax credits, for example, that can help with preservation and restoration. But there's no rules. And with a local historic district, there are and there is a essentially a playbook that lays out, hey, for this specific neighborhood, this is what you need to do to preserve your home and be a steward of it and take care of it so it's going to last for one hundred more years.”
Blakinger and his neighbors began the process toward a local historic district by starting a petition and drawing boundaries. They settled on a roughly four-block area bordered by West Louise Street to the north, Highland Avenue to the east, Maple Street to the south and Park Avenue to the west. They also selected a name: the Oak Grove Historic District. The more than 30 houses within maintain similar architectural qualities.
Many of those homes are the work of University of Arkansas geologist Noah Fields Drake, he built several houses in the area during the early 20th century. His signature “Rock Houses” are in the American Craftsman style with fieldstone exteriors.
“I mean, you can see it in the buildings, certainly. So some of the stone houses, that's one right there across the street. It's next to a kind of similar one. There's more on Park that have this, the fieldstone exteriors. These were all built by Noah Fields Drake. And they're all kind of idiosyncratic and unusual in their own way. They have a kind of charming, cottage-like quality, I think. And some of them were occupied by his children, built for family members, owned by his family. His house was just up the street at Maple and Forest.
“And he first lived here on a house that's on Highland, which is now being restored by someone who lives in the neighborhood. So I think seeing the kind of rootedness of people over time in a place is really interesting. You don't see that too often in Fayetteville. I mean, Fayetteville was very small when these houses were built. It was population of five thousand or whatever. And this is a kind of unique record of that history, of those connections. And there's a number of interesting people who have lived here, Noah Fields Drake being one of them. He was a key figure in building Wilson Park, Drake Field. He also developed orchards that are now part of the AG station.”
Blakinger says they found greater historical significance in the area as they researched their homes' current and previous owners.
“Doctor Rosen was a specialist in botany, and he terraced the backyard. You can still see this of his house for planting. And he also taught at the university. There's a Rosen Center named after him. So there's kind of interesting stories as you dig into the past. And I think another part of this is that a lot of the residents here, later generations that I've just mentioned, they themselves have lived here for decades, forty, fifty plus years.”
Outside of architecture and history, the area has natural significance as well. Blakinger says the landscape helped inspire the proposed district's name of Oak Grove.
“And it's also in the names of different streets, like Maple, Forest. I think Forest used to be Oak. So that's another feature that people, I think residents here, really want to protect and preserve. It's like living with these trees feels really important.” He says an indirect benefit of the district would be protecting the numerous old trees that grow in the neighborhood. Many are post oaks, but a few black walnut trees inhabit the area, some of which have historical origins with an apparently busy geologist.
“You know, Fields Drake, he was interested in orchards and also interested in the possibilities of cultivating black walnuts. So he planted black walnut trees. So there's one right on the corner of Forest and Maple, and then there's a bunch along the properties on Park that he also built. And this is what I think his orchards were really about, testing how you could cultivate black walnuts, but you can still see them around, which is kind of interesting.”
The petition to create the district required a simple 51 percent majority of signatures from property owners to bring the proposal before the Planning Commission. Cole says they gained 79 percent. And now, with a recommendation for approval, the proposal awaits a meeting with the Historic District Commission next Thursday, Dec. 11. If approved, Cole says Oak Grove would actually be Fayetteville's second local historic district, and the first may subvert your expectations.
“And that's actually the white hangar at Drake Field, which is kind of a fun correlation that you have Drake Field, named after Noah Fields Drake. And now you're potentially having a district that has homes he designed. So that's kind of a fun coincidence.”
Cole says she hopes to see more local historic districts down the line as Fayetteville continues to grow from its humble beginnings.
“I have already gotten calls from several people around the Oak Grove local historic district. We did public notification, and they got these letters in the mail and they're like, well, ‘I'm in an old house. Why am I not included?’ And there is a possibility for people to be added to this district over time. And we can evaluate that on a case by case basis. But I think this is also a really good moment for the community to see how this happens and see, okay, a local historic district doesn't have to be this overly burdensome thing that makes me feel like I'm losing control of my property or my ability to make changes, but it can be a really valuable tool and a really unifying process for neighbors.”
Blakinger and Cole agree that calling the Long Range Planning Office is a good way to kick start the process.
“Just to reach out to me. So I'm the historic preservation planner for the city. I staff the Historic District Commission, so I'm a good person, my email is online. You can get ahold of me, give me a call, and let's just talk through it and have a look, because just because houses are old and buildings are old, and I say this all the time, doesn't mean they're historic. Sometimes things are just old, and that's okay, too. But part of identifying what is historic is, is it architecturally important? Is it unique? Is it associated with someone or an event or a theme from our history that helps tell the story of Fayetteville and how we got to where we are today? And I can help people figure that out.
“But I hope people reach out and I hope we can start identifying more of these. We kind of joke, if we could just get three houses in a similar area, we could call it a historic district. We can also have historic districts that aren't contiguous, that they're kind of detached from each other. So it doesn't have to be one giant piece of land. And I think there are a lot of other spots in our city, particularly areas that are already within national historic districts, that would be very good candidates for a local historic district if the neighbors were interested.”
At the core of this whole endeavor are people, specifically neighbors, who wish to maintain a shared vision of what their homes will become for future generations. Cole says that element continuously came through as she helped Blakinger and other organizers through the process. She says it was fun.
“They were doing all the work, and I just had to help them through the city process and the process that the state tells us that we have to go through. And it was just refreshing to have a particularly historic preservation project that was positive that people supported and now that other people are interested in and they're asking questions about. So it's been different. And it's also exciting and fun that this is in itself a historic moment because as far as we know, one, this petition led effort to create a historic district has never been done in Fayetteville. And from what our colleagues at the state are telling us, they don't think it's ever been done in Arkansas. So this is really cool, and I hope that the neighbors know that what they're doing is historic in itself and that they are changing the trajectory for historic preservation in Fayetteville.”
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