Nominations are now open and will be accepted through August 31 for the 2024 Arkansas Preservation Awards, the state’s largest celebration of preservation efforts in Arkansas.

The Arkansas Preservation Awards have been given since 1981 to recognize the important work being done to preserve and protect places of historic and cultural importance. Any individual, organization, business, or public agency is eligible for nomination.

For complete nomination instructions, to view the award categories, and to submit a nomination, please visit our website.

We kicked off Heritage Month with our biggest-ever Preservation Crustaceans crawfish boil! Mid-day thunderstorms didn’t deter our record-breaking crowd, who enjoyed more than 500 pounds of crawfish, shrimp, sausage, and all the fixings to a backdrop of classic tunes by DJ Loren Hinton of UA Cossatot.

Before the sun began to set, Executive Director Rachel Patton and Preserve Arkansas Board members announced our 2024 Most Endangered Places list to an enthusiastic crowd that included nominators and supporters of nominated properties. Read on below to learn more.

>> Check out some photo highlights here!

In May and June, Little Rock preservationist and longtime Preserve Arkansas member Paul Dodds led a series of Saturday tours in the Central High School Neighborhood Historic District called “Ruins of Central High.” The tour highlighted approximately a dozen buildings — most of them vacant and deteriorating at the hands of absentee owners — and illuminated the history of each.

Dodds is a resident of the neighborhood who has restored numerous properties in the area, and he has extensive knowledge of the challenges one can face when seeking to acquire and restore a historic structure. Tour participants (among them, Preserve Arkansas staff) benefited from insightful discussion of the policies that help or hinder preservation efforts.

>> View photos from the tour here!

The 59^th Annual Quapaw Quarter Association Tour of Homes took place in the Governor's Mansion and Dunbar neighborhoods of Little Rock over Mother’s Day weekend. Among the featured properties were the Chester Nests, a series of five single and duplex residences flanking the corner of Chester St. and Charles Bussey Ave.

We caught up with owners and developers Angela Mathews and her mother, Lynn Boyd — who, along with Angela’s husband, Bobby Mathews, were awarded a 2023 Arkansas Preservation Award for the project. In this feature story, we discuss their inspiration and how they utilized state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits to restore these properties and breathe new vitality into an important Little Rock neighborhood.

>> Read on for the full scoop! 

A successful campaign to generate nominations to the 2024 Most Endangered Places list brought in a strong crop of potential listings, of which five were chosen, including a historic hotel at Helena-West Helena, a Little Rock home with great significance to African American history, a church at Arkansas City with a unique addition, a Little Rock building important for its military history, and the centerpiece of the Pickens community.

The official list was announced at Preservation Crustaceans in early May in celebration of National Historic Preservation Month and Arkansas Heritage Month.

>> Click here for the full details on each of these locations important to Arkansas’s history and culture.

Thanks to a successful effort from Executive Director Rachel Patton and Board member Bart Stafford at the County Judges’ Association of Arkansas spring meeting — along with follow up from Board member Lori Filbeck — all eligible county judges signed Preserve Arkansas’s letter to the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council requesting increased funding to the Division of Arkansas Heritage for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s County Courthouse Restoration Subgrants. These grants have thus far been used to restore 79 courthouses and courthouse annexes in 64 of Arkansas’s 75 counties, but each year, restoration subgrant requests far exceed available funding, and this support from our county judges is immeasurable.

Our outreach paid off: AHPP will award more than $4 million in County Courthouse Restoration Grants for FY25 — another record amount of funding for this program!

At the Preservation of African American Cemeteries 15^th annual “Memorial in May” Cemetery Preservation Conference, held this year in Marianna (Lee County), Executive Director Rachel Patton was a featured presenter who gave a talk titled, “Advocating for Cemetery Preservation: Using Historic Designation to Leverage Grants and Community Support.”

The presentation covered topics such as the process for listing a cemetery in the National or Arkansas Register of Historic Places; using Preserve Arkansas’s Most Endangered Places List to raise awareness; grant resources; and engaging the community. 

The latest issue of Block, Street & Building, a special publication of The Arkansas Times in partnership with the Arkansas Municipal League, features multiple articles related to historic preservation, including one by Executive Director Rachel Patton about using historic tax credits to transform historic buildings into community assets at Calico Rock and Pocahontas as well as a feature on Little Rock architect and Parker Westbrook Award winner Tommy Jameson. 

>> Click here to read Block, Street & Building.

Our monthly Women in Preservation webinar series continued this month with a two-fer: Kelly Wilson, AIA, MBA, LEED AP, Vice President at Beshears Construction in Fort Smith, and Mila Masur, Executive Director of The Clayton House, also in Forth Smith.

>> If you missed their talk, watch the recording here!

Join us on Tuesday, July 23 at 3:30 PM for a talk by Amanda Edwards, lead architectural conservator and associate principal at MTFA Design + Preservation in Arlington, Virginia.

>> Click here to register!

>> Visit our website to see our full speaker lineup!

At the UA Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design 2024 Honors Recognition Reception and Ceremony in April, Olivia Everett received the Cyrus Sutherland Scholarship for students who have demonstrated interest in historic preservation. The Sutherland Scholarship is supported with funds from Preserve Arkansas's Cyrus Sutherland Endowment.

We were also thrilled to witness Preserve Arkansas Board member and Master of Design Studies student Lori Filbeck, AIA, being awarded a scholarship from the W. L. Cook, II Historic Preservation Fund.

Congratulations to both!