FAYETTEVILLE : UA house set for elegance, utility
Posted on Sunday, December 9, 2007
FAYETTEVILLE — The brick and white-columned exterior of the University of Arkansas’ new chancellor’s house is nearly complete on a hill overlooking Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium and the towers of Old Main.
The two-story, $ 2. 77 million house is nine months into construction. Chancellor John A. White and his wife, Mary Lib White, are expected to move in next April.
Flintco Inc. workers were busy this week installing wall board and wood paneling inside the house. The walls and ceiling remain largely bare but hint at the future grandeur of the 11, 500-square-foot house.
“It’s certainly a home for our first family,” said Robert Beeler, director of design and construction services for UA facilities management. “It’s a home, it’s a house, but it’s built like a university building.”
The Wallace and Jama Fowler Chancellor’s House is being built and furnished with private donations. The Fowlers gave $ 1. 75 million at the close of the university’s $ 1. 046 billion fundraising campaign in 2005.
University officials hope the house will serve as a chancellor’s residence and entertainment venue for important guests for a century or more, said G. David Gearhart, vice chancellor for university advancement.
Chancellors will host various events there — receptions, ceremonies and dinners for alumni, donors, politicians, foreign dignitaries, corporate executives, faculty, staff and students.
The house will replace the current chancellor’s residence at 611 N. Razorback Road, which the university purchased soon after White was hired in 1997.
“We’re excited about it,” Gearhart said. “We think it’s going to be really grand.”
AN EARLY TOUR The house, on a 3. 1-acre site at Razorback Road and Maple Street, is done in classic Georgian-style architecture with white columns on the front veranda and covered terraces at the east and west ends of the house. The main entry leads to a rotunda that stands about 30 feet. Sunlight flows from windows at its cap, which are surrounded with a ceiling painted robin’s-egg blue with white wood trim. The room will have recessed maple wood paneling, marbleand-granite floors and a curved grand staircase sweeping down from the second floor. A donated baby grand piano will sit near the stairwell, said interior designer Christy Kelly. A massive iron chandelier decorated with crystal hangs in the center of the rotunda and can be lowered for cleaning and maintenance.
“The whole house is designed around this rotunda,” she said.
Judy Snowden of Wonderful Things in Little Rock is assisting with the interior design.
Archways around the rotunda’s periphery lead to a dining room to the left and a living room to the right, next to a screened porch. A den, two offices and oak-paneled library also branch off from the central room.
A breakfast room and butler’s pantry are off the dining room. The adjoining kitchen will include a gas range, two dishwashers, two refrigerators, a central island and floor-to-ceiling wood cabinets, said John Dupree with Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects Ltd. of Little Rock. A small elevator connects to the second floor.
Tommy Polk, principal architect with the firm, said the house is designed to accommodate social functions while also serving as a private residence.
“We wanted a gracious space to receive people and a way for them to flow through the space from the rotunda to the dining room, living room or terrace for more private conversation,” Polk said.
A central hallway adjacent to the front door leads to a caterer’s kitchen, back stairway and three-car garage.
The back stairs lead to the private guest suite with a sitting room, bedroom and full bath. Two additional guest rooms also include full baths. The master suite runs along the front of the house with a sitting room, balcony, bedroom, and a large bathroom with a hot tub, standing shower and his-and-her toilet closets. The suite also has two walk-in closets and an exercise room.
Altogether there will be three wood-burning fireplaces, five full bathrooms and three half-baths, and 11-foot ceilings through most of the house.
“It’s a grand place,” Beeler said. “We call it a building for the ages.”
A LONG-SERVING PURPOSE
Gearhart said UA’s advancement office has raised $ 547, 000 on top of the Fowler gift. The construction budget also includes a projected $ 550, 000 from the sale of the current chancellor’s house.
When the construction contract was signed last year, the budget was $ 2. 44 million. Additional amenities such as a $ 6, 631 fire protection and sprinkler system, and $ 97, 266 for construction of the guest suite were added after additional money was raised, Gearhart said.
Donors can have parts of the house named in their honor, to be marked with plaques. The university has received nonmonetary gifts as well, including the piano and furniture.
“We’re really trying to build this facility not like a usual home, but more like an institutional building that might last 100 years,” Gearhart said. “I think it really resonated with a lot of our benefactors the significance of it.”
Only the Fowlers have granted permission for their names to be released, Gearhart said.
The house is being designed to accommodate generations of chancellors, and serve as a backdrop for university functions, Kelly said.
“There will be many people to come through,” Kelly said. “It’s got to have some flexibility built into it and be fairly neutral.”
Architect Rodney Parham said the house includes energy-efficient features including thicker walls for better insulation, and energy-saving windows and lighting. Crawl spaces will allow updates to utilities in years to come.
UA has provided a home for its leaders in the past. A president’s house on campus was torn down in the 1950 s. In the 1960 s, the university owned a house on Mount Sequoyah designed in 1950 by architect Edward Durell Stone for Willis Noll, a wholesale grocer in Fayetteville. The university sold the house in 1991.
White’s predecessor, Dan Ferritor, received a $ 7, 800 annual housing allowance.
UA officials talked about building a chancellor’s residence for more than a decade. UA System trustees approved the purchase of the existing UA chancellor’s house for $ 387, 500 on June 30, 1997. University officials have said the 3, 868-squarefoot house was always considered a temporary solution until a new chancellor’s residence could be built.
The current house isn’t adequate for major university functions, Gearhart said.
“Most institutions have chancellor’s residences,” he said. “They have them for dignitaries, student programs, faculty receptions and accommodations for special guests that might come on campus.”
The Whites also own a house in Rogers they purchased in 1997 for $ 435, 000. Gearhart, the chancellor’s neighbor on Razorback Road, said the Rogers house serves as a more private weekend home for the Whites.
Three other universities in the UA System — the Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Monticello campuses — have chancellor’s residences.
UA System President B. Alan Sugg lives in a house owned by the system in the Little Rock suburb of Cammack Village.
The system paid $ 987, 000 for that 5, 100-square-foot house in 1995, said spokesman Ben Beaumont.
The University of Central Arkansas in Conway requires its president to live in a house owned by the university, said spokesman Warwick Sabin.
That house was built in 1936 as part of a $ 445, 000 Public Works Administration project. The administration put up four buildings on campus and renovated a fifth. The 5, 666-square-foot house was last renovated in 1996 at a cost of about $ 400, 000.
The University of Georgia in Athens provides its president with a university-owned house purchased in 1949 and a $ 19, 400 annual housing allowance to operate it, said Tom Jackson, the university’s vice president for public affairs.
The University of Missouri-Columbia completed major renovations to its 1867 chancellor’s house in spring 2006, said Mary Jo Banken, director of the university’s news bureau. The $ 1. 2 million project was funded entirely by private gifts.
Being invited to a chancellor’s residence is a “prestigious occasion,” Gearhart said.
UA now hosts social functions at University House, 1002 W. Maple St., and the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House across from the new chancellor’s house site. Both are heavily used, Gearhart said.
“Both of those facilities are somewhat institutional,” he said. “It’s not the same as being invited to a person’s home.”
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
