Arkansas Listings in the National Register of Historic Places: Arkansas's Historic HotelsAuthor(s): Franklin Allen LatimerSource: The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 3, The Louisiana Purchase and thePeoples of Arkansas (Autumn, 2003), pp. 322-326Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024269 .

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Arkansas Listings in the National

Register of Historic Places

Franklin Allen Latimer

Arkansas s Historic Hotels

Hotels serve a variety of functions. They are commercial buildings but also private residences, albeit only temporarily for most patrons. Ho- tels are frequently used to host public and private gatherings and meetings. They often become central fixtures in their communities, with many area residents considering them local landmarks.

The Mayfair Hotel, located at Searcy in White County, was built in 1924, replacing the Gill House, an earlier hotel that had occupied the same site. May Dale Smith purchased the Gill House, which had stood since 1 882, and demolished it to make room for her new structure. In addition to the rooms for rent, Miss Smith's enterprise included a restaurant which re- ceived favorable reviews from travel industry critics.

The Mayfair Hotel was built in the Spanish Mission style of architec- ture. This style was popular in California starting around 1900. Its influ- ences moved eastward and by the mid- 1920s had reached Arkansas. Another style that was gaining in popularity in the 1920s was the Crafts- man design, and, like many buildings from this period, the Mayfair exhib- its a Craftsman influence in its overall plan. The hotel originally featured fifty rooms and must have done well, for in 1 929 a twenty-one-room annex was added. The next major renovation came in 1950, when each room was equipped with its own bathroom.

Except for a few windows being filled in, the Mayfair Hotel maintains its architectural integrity and looks much as it did when it provided weary travelers a place to get a good meal and a room for the night. The Mayfair is now used as a multi-unit residence. Because of its associations with the

THE ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY VOL. LXII, NO. 3, AUTUMN 2003

Franklin Allen Latimer is preservation outreach coordinator for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

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NATIONAL REGISTER 323

The Hotel Seville in Harrison, Boone County. Courtesy Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

social and economic development of the city of Searcy and White County, the May fair Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September5, 1991.

The Hotel Seville at Harrison in Boone County is a three-story, wood- framed structure designed in the Spanish Revival style. Spanish Revival is an outgrowth of the Mission style, but with more lavish and extravagant details. The Hotel Seville's spiral-painted columns lend a distinctly Moor- ish flavor to the exterior, which has a veneer of brick and terra cotta. The opulence of the hotel's exterior is exceeded by the interior decoration, which includes terra cotta, wrought-iron balustrades, and classically in- spired columns ringing the central lobby. The Hotel Seville was built in 1929 as luxury accommodations as well as a civic and social center for Harrison during boom years when the city served as an agricultural, indus- trial, and shipping hub.

The Hotel Seville was in operation for over forty years before closing its doors. The structure has since been used for other purposes. Being among the finest surviving examples of Spanish Revival architecture in Arkansas, the Hotel Seville was listed on the National Register on May 19, 1994.

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324 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The Bacon Hotel in Whitehall, Poinsett County. Courtesy Arkansas His- toric Preservation Program.

The Bacon Hotel in Whitehall served railroad travelers and business- men who came to Poinsett County during the heyday of the timber industry in Northeast Arkansas. In 1912, James William Bacon, a carpenter, pur- chased a lot for the sum of $100, and he and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Patterson Bacon, arranged for a one-year mortgage of $750 to finance the construction of a hotel. Bacon built the structure himself.

At least one entrepreneur used the rather remote location of the hotel to conduct some rather shady real estate deals. He would bring prospective buyers to the Bacon Hotel during the dry season to sell them land that might be under water when the river flooded later in the year. By housing prospective buyers in the Bacon Hotel, he kept them away from local peo- ple and prevented his marks from learning the truth about the land they were acquiring.

Business at the Bacon Hotel fell off as timber was depleted. Barely a year after building it, Bacon sold the hotel. It went through a number of

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NATIONAL REGISTER 325

owners before it was purchased in 1919 by a family running a large agri- cultural operation in the area. The family used the hotel as housing for farm employees until the 1950s. In recent years, the building has been used for storage.

The Bacon Hotel, with its distinctive "sunburst" gable, remains as a re- minder of the "boom and bust" economy of early twentieth-century Arkan- sas. Because of its historic significance it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 13, 1995.

The Riceland Hotel in Stuttgart, Arkansas County. Courtesy Arkansas His- toric Preservation Program.

The history of the Riceland Hotel at Stuttgart in Arkansas County re- flects the booms and busts of Arkansas agriculture. Stuttgart had been founded in 1878 by German immigrants, and its economy was initially based on cattle and hay production, with some manufacturing enterprises moving into the area after the arrival of the railroad. But in 1904, the first commercially produced rice crop was harvested, and the town had a new source of prosperity. Construction of the Riceland Hotel, designed by George R. Mann, one of the state's most noted architects, commenced in 1919, when rice was selling for $3.50 per bushel. By the next year, the mar- ket price for a bushel of rice had plunged to $0.25, and the economic ca-

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326 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

lamity brought construction on the new hotel to a halt. For two years, the skeletal framework of the building stood as a symbol of the rice market's decline.

In 1922, the Exchange Bank assumed ownership of the property and work resumed. The bank occupied most of the lower floor on the five-story building, with the hotel taking up the top three floors. Other businesses, such as a pharmacy and a barber shop, also operated in the building. In 1926, the Exchange Bank went bust, and in 1929 the Southern Hotel Com- pany acquired the Riceland Hotel building and operated the hotel until 1957, when the property was sold once more. The Arkansas Historical As- sociation had its annual meeting there in 1955, but the hotel closed for good in 1970. The building was converted for use by retail establishments.

The Riceland Hotel has undergone numerous renovations over the years, and unfortunately most of the Neoclassical details that were a part of Mann's original design have been altered or covered by additions. But the building serves as a tribute to the development of agriculture and trans- portation in Arkansas County, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 21, 1986.

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