The National Park Service has announced the addition of five more properties to the National Register of Historic Properties. The five — three homes, a cemetery and a 1915 building in Elaine — are in addition to five announced earlier in February.

Two houses in Fayetteville were named to the register: The Joe Marsh and Maxine Clark House (built 1959-61), designed by E. Fay Jones and the John G. Williams House No. 2 (1969-70), designed by Williams. A house in Brinkley, the Ellis and Charlotte Williamson House (1966-67), designed by Frank L. Doughty, was also added.

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The Lee Grocery Store in Elaine and the Mountain Home Cemetery in Baxter County are the other two new additions. More information about the properties, provided by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, follows:

Joe Marsh and Maxine Clark House: This residence was designed and built by Arkansas architect E. Fay Jones between 1959 and 1961 for Joe Marsh and Maxine Clark, a couple who had retired to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The design of the house reflects the philosophy and principles of organic design that characterized Fay Jones’s architectural career. The design also reflects his focus on details that fit within the overall design aesthetic of each project and the beauty of native natural materials nestled within the Arkansas landscape, a consideration especially important for the Clarks, who were passionate about understanding and preserving the right natural heritage of the Ozarks.

 

John G. Williams House No. 2: The house was constructed between 1969 and 1970, and was designed by John G. Williams, founder of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. It was designed in the Organic Style of Mid-Century Modern architecture, following ideas created by Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

Ellis and Charlotte Williamson House: The setting around the house is generally sloping, which was atypical for the predominantly flat area. The house was constructed in 1966-1967 and was designed by architect Frank L. Doughty. The house’s architecture reflects a local interpretation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Organic Architecture in the mid-century period.

 

Lee Grocery Store: The Lee Grocery Store Building was likely constructed circa 1915 as it appears in the background of photographs taken during the 1919 race massacre. This standard commercial twentieth-century-style building has a simple one-story plan and small stores such as the Lee Grocery Store were essential to the residents of small towns across the state. The Lee Grocery Store is significant in the commercial history of Elaine, but it is also important for its associations with the Chinese history of the community. During the first part of the twentieth century, Phillips, Chicot, Jefferson and Crittenden counties contained almost 75% of the state’s Chinese population. W. J. Lee initially came to the United States, eventually buying the building in the 1950s, and his son Seat N. Lee, came to the United States in 1959. The fact that the family ran the Lee Grocery Store for over 50 years also illustrates the significance of the family’s role in the commercial history of Elaine.

 

Mountain Home Cemetery: The cemetery is located five blocks south of the Baxter County Courthouse at the intersection of Baker Street and 11th Street. The entrance is marked by a sculpted metal sign designed by a local architect in the industrial mid-century modern-style. The cemetery is significant for the outstanding examples of funerary art from the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Mountain Home. In addition, the monuments in the cemetery, besides displaying popular funerary art of the period, also illustrate the work of some of the region’s monument makers, such as Rosebrough of St. Louis and G. Moody of Appleton, Missouri.

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