History lurks in old Gazette building
Posted on Sunday, January 27, 2008
Rummaging through the dusky basement of the former Arkansas Gazette building over the past three weeks, Kate Askew busily sorted through the clutter to set aside pieces of Arkansas history from the mundane.
“Every day is Christmas,” Askew said one day of the more interesting items in the building’s basement at Third and Louisiana streets in downtown Little Rock. “We keep finding more stuff.”
There were boxes of negatives that include shots of the 1957 Little Rock school desegregation crisis and of a young Bill Clinton at Boys State in 1963. A handful of the newspaper’s bank account passbooks from the early 1900 s were also found.
Pieces of the newspaper’s old-time pressroom lay about amid such things as bomb-shelter medical supplies, a tapedtogether listing of Gazette Publishing Co. stockholders, plus “tons of useless stuff,” Askew said, like random desk contents and a box of paper fans left over from a promotion at Riverfest.
Askew separated and identified what she found, all since removed to temporary storage off-site.
The inventory and relocation of items was prompted by the renovation of the vacant 1908 building to become home for three state-funded charter schools. The schools, to separately house students of elementary, middle and high school age, are scheduled to open in August.
The schools will be run by e-STEM Public Charter Schools Inc., a nonprofit group. The term “e-STEM” is an acronym for economics of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
The Arkansas Gazette building is owned by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc., a corporate subsidiary of WEHCO Media Inc., whose president and chief executive officer is Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette.
The Gannett Corp. newspaper chain, which purchased the Arkansas Gazette in 1986, shut down the Gazette on Oct. 18, 1991, and sold its assets — including its building and contents — to Little Rock Newspapers, Inc., now Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. The newspaper began publishing as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Oct. 19, 1991. Without use for or room to store the building’s contents, plenty was left behind, including things squirreled away in the basement for decades. The Arkansas Gazette first published in 1819.
Oversight of the building’s latest changeover has fallen to Lynn Hamilton, vice president of operations at the Democrat-Gazette.
“We had to clean that basement out,” Hamilton said of the urgency to prepare the site for the charter schools. “I don’t know how long we might have procrastinated if we didn’t have a deadline.”
Hamilton said the newspaper will be looking for a home for the items of historical value, with the remaining things to be placed into an estatelike sale “fairly soon.” He added that he hoped to make items with significance to Gazette history available for public viewing once archiving is completed, but no time frame is known.
“We will have to determine where all this must go [for permanent housing ] before we have an idea of when that will be displayed for the public,” he said.
When many old books and other items were found inside one of a few hidden-away storage rooms, Hamilton turned to Askew, owner of Arkansas Bookseller, a buyer and seller of antique books, to assess their possible value.
“I’m used to crawling around people’s attics and finding books,” Askew said.
What started with Askew looking at a couple of books stretched to four days, then almost three weeks.
TREASURE TROVE “There is this treasure trove of information,” Hamilton said. “We found old books from back in the 1880 s. I called Kate, and the project grew after she saw what we had. This is what she does.” Books in one of the basement rooms were found wrapped in newspapers from January 1973, the month after Arkansas Gazette editor J. N. Heiskell died at age 100. Heiskell, known for his extensive library, was the Gazette’s president and editor for 70 years, right up to his death. The books piqued Hamilton’s interest because he and his wife reside in Heiskell’s former home on Louisiana Street. In 1984, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock obtained an extensive collection of historical books and documents that had belonged to Heiskell. But the latest discoveries are new. “Some of the more valuable ones [previously ] went to UALR,” Hamilton said. “I spent a few hours [recently ] digging around in what I could find [from what remained in the basement ]. I suppose it was covered in more than 30 years worth of dust.
“ Obviously, someone 30 to 40 years ago thought these items were really valuable, and that’s why they were put down there.”
Askew enlisted her daughter Mary Read Askew, a junior at Little Rock Central High, and Jack DeLoach, a Central senior, to assist her. They are two of six Book Scouts in Training who go with Askew on book calls. They were the ones who found photo negatives dated 1956-64 in storage boxes. The negatives are in paper sleeves labeled with dates and only the briefest of subject descriptions to identify them. THOUSANDS OF NEGATIVES
Among the negatives were ones taken during the desegregation crisis at Central in 1957, plus others from the much lesser-covered attempt to integrate North Little Rock High School the same month.
“There’s great stuff from the ’ 57 crisis,” Askew said. “And there are really good images from the North Little Rock integration crisis. There’s one of where someone’s opened up the trunk of a car and the photo is of rifles.”
There’s also a sleeve labeled “Boys State Delegates to Boys Nation” dated June 7, 1963, that contained five frames of a young Bill Clinton after his election to represent Arkansas at Boys Nation — at which Clinton would be famously photographed shaking hands with President Kennedy.
Files containing thousands of similarly filed negatives, some dating to 1942, were previously placed in storage elsewhere after being removed from the Gazette building sometime after October 1991. How or why the remaining negatives were left or overlooked isn’t known.
Among other files recovered from the building is a folder marked “Congratulations !” containing press clippings and about 100 congratulatory letters and telegrams from across the country noting the Arkansas Gazette’s two Pulitzer Prizes for its Central High desegregation coverage. The Gazette was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for meritorious service in 1958 and Executive Editor Harry S. Ashmore received a Pulitzer for editorial writing.
One letter is from U. S. Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., with a handwritten “Very good going” at the bottom. A faded and undated but noteworthy Western Union telegram to Heiskell is the one-sentence announcement from Columbia University President Grayson Kirk of the Pulitzer award to the Gazette “for public service.” ANTIQUES AND ‘WEIRD STUFF’
There were also items such as an antique book press used to straighten warped books; a composing table on wheels known as a “turtle”; original blueprints of the building; a Civil Defense box of a medical supply kit issued for bomb shelters to supply 300-325 people; photos of Gazette employees; newspaper financial records and certificates; and a typewritten list within a black binder of Gazette employees dating to 1934.
“There was a lot of weird stuff, too, left in here,” Askew said. “Christmas ornaments from like the ’ 40 s. Contents of people’s desks. Tons of useless stuff. Interesting items that have no historic value, like tables and motors that ran the presses. There’s a room where computers went to die.”
Another of Askew’s favorite discoveries came not in the basement but above the ceiling of the 100-year-old building’s first floor. Alongside air-conditioning ductwork was a walledoff, dark “lost room” with decorative stenciling on the ceiling and a wall.
Such drawings were common at the time of the building’s construction, said Becky Witsell, who documents and re-creates such works and was called in by Askew to analyze the find.
Witsell described the drawings as “geometric roses” and “art nouveau in style, which would fit into construction of the period.”
“It was quite elaborate,” she said. “House painters did [that type of work ]. And by that time they used the term ‘decorators,’ which is not how a decorator is meant today, but was meant as a man who applies decoration. It would have been a painter who was skilled in that area.
“ It’s in this funny little chamber room. Luckily it got saved because they built walls around it and put boxes of stuff inside. It was a lucky find.” FROM THE BASEMENT A few of Kate Askew’s finds from the former Arkansas Gazette building, among items having been stored for decades within the building’s basement: Photo negatives from the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock Central High School, in boxes with thousands of other negatives from 1956-64. Photographs of various Gazette employees, 1908-50, that had been framed and hung in the newspaper’s pressroom. A 1908 stenciling done during the building’s construction on the wall and ceiling of a “lost room” above the first floor. A safe containing 18 vertical drawers filled with Gazette documents, 1889-1975. A large plaque denoting the home of William E. Woodruff, the Gazette’s founder. A scholarly collection of books wrapped in copies of the Gazette dated from January 1973, one month after editor J. N. Heiskell died at age 100. A composing table on wheels used to set a page worth of metal type, with oil cans still sitting on it. Brass railing used to climb up to presses.
— Jake Sandlin
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