Tonight (January 17), at the Preserve Arkansas annual awards dinner, attorney John P. Gill will be recognized with the Parker Westbrook Award.

Little Rock attorney and historian John Gill has long had a keen interest in the preservation of Arkansas’s history and architecture. Throughout his career, Gill has demonstrated a passion for preservation through his service on the boards of the Little Rock Visitor Information Center Foundation that restored Curran Hall and Preserve Arkansas, where he was board president in 2010 and spearheaded a large fundraising campaign for the organization’s 30^th anniversary.

He has authored books about Arkansas’s historic county courthouses, Depression-era post office art, and the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion. Gill has been a strong preservation advocate, working on behalf of the Friends of the Historic White River Bridge at Clarendon in an effort to save and repurpose the bridge. For his efforts to research, document, and preserve the historic fabric of Arkansas,

The award is named in memory of Parker Westbrook, the father of historic preservation in Arkansas.  Previous recipients include Anthony Taylor, AIA, and Bob Kempkes, AIA; Tommy Jameson, AIA; Ruth Hawkins; Cheryl Griffith Nichols; Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, and Bill Worthen.