Category Archives: LR Look Back

Little Rock Look Back: Robinson Auditorium officially opens

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auditoriumduskOn February 16, 1940, after three years of planning and construction, the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium officially opened. It was a cold, rainy night, but those in attendance did not care.

Searchlights painting arcs in the sky greeted attendees. They were borrowed from the Arkansas National Guard. Newspaper accounts noted that only a few of the men who attended were in tuxedos, most were simply in suits. The work to get the building opened had been so harried, that it was discovered there was not an Arkansas flag to fly in front of the building. Mayor Satterfield found one at the last minute courtesy of the Arkansas Department of the Spanish War Veterans.

The weather delayed arrivals, so the program started fifteen minutes late. Following a performance of Sibelius’ Finlandia by the fledgling Arkansas State Symphony Orchestra, Mayor J. V. Satterfield, Mrs. Joseph T. Robinson, Mrs. Grady Miller (the Senator’s sister-in-law and a member of the Auditorium Commission) and D. Hodson Lewis of the Chamber of Commerce participated in a brief ribbon cutting ceremony. Mrs Robinson cut the ribbon on her second attempt (once again proving that nothing connected with getting the building open was easy).

The ceremony was originally set to be outside of the building but was moved indoors due to the inclement weather. The ribbon cutting took place on the stage with the ribbon stretched out in front of the curtain. The opening remarks were broadcast on radio station KGHI.

Though he had previously discussed how he had voted against the auditorium in 1937 before entering public life, the mayor’s remarks that evening were appropriately gracious, statesmanlike and a testament to the effort he had invested to get it open upon becoming mayor. “We hope you have a very pleasant evening and hope further that it will be the first in a long series which you will enjoy in this, your auditorium.”

20140215-172047.jpgTickets for the event, advertised as being tax exempt, were at four different pricing levels: $2.50, $2.00, $1.50 and $1.00.

The estimated attendance was 1700. Following the ribbon cutting, the main performance took place. The headliner for the grand opening was the San Francisco Opera Ballet accompanied by the new Arkansas State Symphony Orchestra (not related to the current Arkansas Symphony Orchestra). The featured soloist with the ballet was Zoe Dell Lantis who was billed as “The Most Photographed Miss at the San Francisco World’s Fair.”

At the same time that the gala was going on upstairs in the music hall, a high school basketball double-header was taking place in the downstairs convention hall. North Little Rock lost to Beebe in the first game, while the Little Rock High School Tigers upset Pine Bluff in the marquee game.

Little Rock Look Back: John Wassell the 27th Mayor of Little Rock

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Future Little Rock Mayor John Wassell was born on February 15, 1813 in Kidderminster, England.

In 1829, he came to the United States.  He learned carpentry and construction in Ohio and ended up in Little Rock.  One of his jobs was as the finishing contractor on the State Capitol building, now known as the Old State House.

He later gave up carpentry and became an attorney.  (It is said that he did so after becoming embroiled in a legal dispute arising from one of his construction jobs.) Wassell also served as a judge.

In 1868, he was appointed Mayor of Little Rock by President Andrew Johnson.  He is Little Rock’s only Mayor to have served through a military appointment.  Mayor Wassell died in January 1881 and is buried at Mount Holly Cemetery along with his wife and other family members.  One of his grandsons, Samuel M. Wassell also served as Mayor of Little Rock.

Little Rock Look Back: Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham_Lincoln_November_1863On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.  One hundred and fifty years ago today, he celebrated his last birthday as he would be assassinated a little over two months later.

Lincoln never visited Arkansas. In the 1860 election, he barely registered on the Arkansas election map. Arkansas counties went strongly for Southern Democratic candidate John Breckinridge.  John Bell, the Constitutional Union/Whig candidate ran strongly in Pulaski County and a scattering of other counties.  Neither Lincoln nor Northern Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas carried a county in Arkansas.  In 1864, though Arkansas was officially under control of the Union forces, the state had not been readmitted. Therefore no Arkansans voted for Lincoln that year.

As President, Lincoln did correspond with several Arkansans.  It is said that the polite written exchanges he had with former Mayors C. P. Bertrand and Gordon Peay were helpful in maintaining a fairly peaceful occupation of Little Rock by federal forces.

In the listing of Presidential Streets of Little Rock, Lincoln is omitted.  On first blush, this might seem to be intentional to skip the name of the President who oversaw the “occupation.”  However, if that were the case, then surely Johnson would have been left out as well since he was President during the final years of the federal military occupation.  In fact, there once was a Lincoln Street. A portion of what is now Cantrell/Highway 10 was named for Lincoln. It predated the other Presidential streets.  At the time the other streets were laid out, Lincoln was skipped because a street already bore the name.

Over time, Highway 10 had been given multiple names for various sections: Lincoln, Q, and Cantrell. In the 1930s, these names were consolidated into Cantrell which was the longest section. The name Lincoln was dropped. There were very few addresses on Lincoln, most of it was railroad property.  The viaduct connecting Highway 10 with LaHarpe still bears the name of Lincoln Avenue.

 

A Lincoln Viaduct Portrait

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Photo courtesy of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program

Photo courtesy of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program

Since today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it is a good day to pay tribute to the Lincoln Avenue Viaduct.  This arched bridge is traversed by thousands of cars each day, with most having no idea the name of the structure.  The Lincoln Avenue Viaduct is the arched bridge connecting LaHarpe with Cantrell Road which (literally) bridges downtown with the west along Highway 10.

The Lincoln Avenue Viaduct is a reinforced concrete rainbow arch bridge. It was opened at 2:05 p.m. on Friday, December 28, 1928, and, despite later alterations, it remains particularly well-preserved. The Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, considered the most important railroad company in the state, constructed the bridge amid a series of improvements in Little Rock made necessary by the damage wrought by the infamous spring floods of 1927.

Though the bride was constructed by the railroad, the City had to give authorization to do so, this was accomplished by the passing of Ordinance 4,335, at the May 28, 1928, City Council meeting.

Lincoln Avenue was one of several names for stretches of Highway 10 in Little Rock. By the 1960s, the areas west of the Lincoln Avenue viaduct were all renamed Cantrell in honor of the man who had developed much of the area west of the Heights. The longest stretch of the road already carried that name. There had been an effort to rename Highway 10 (including sections named Lincoln, Q, and Cantrell) in Little Rock for Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson in 1930. He declined the offer because he did not want to diminish the contributions of Mr. Cantrell.  Over time the entire stretch bore the name Cantrell.

The stretches east of the viaduct which involved a couple of names were renamed La Harpe Boulevard in honor of the French explorer who first saw the Little Rock.

Though the street has been renamed, the bridge still carries the name of the 16th President of the United States.

Little Rock Look Back: President William Henry Harrison

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A campaign ribbon from an 1840 Harrison and Tyler rally in Little Rock.

A campaign ribbon from an 1840 Harrison and Tyler rally in Little Rock.

On February 9, 1773, future US President William Henry Harrison was born in Virginia. Though he would later be viewed as a frontiersman (which he was), his early years were spent on a family estate as part of one of the FFV’s (First Families of Virginia).

At the age of 18, he was commissioned in the US Army and began an illustrious military career which spanned the Northwest Indian War and the War of 1812. This career took him into the wilderness areas of the US, which at the time were Indiana and Ohio.

Harrison launched his political career in 1798 when he was appointed treasurer of the Northwest Territory. The next year, he was elected to represent the territory in Congress. In 1801, he was named Governor of the Indiana Territory.  In 1811, while still Governor of Indiana, he led troops to defend against a Shawnee attack in the Battle of Tippecanoe.  The following year, with the outbreak of the War of 1812, he continued to command armies in the northwest areas of the US.  In 1813, he scored a major victory at the Battle of the Thames in Canada.  This solidified him as a war hero with the public.

In 1814, he was appointed by President Monroe to oversee negotiations with Indians. In 1816, he was elected to Congress from Ohio and served until 1819. In 1824, he was elected as a US Senator from Ohio and served until 1828. He was sent as minister to Columbia in 1828 and served until the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in 1829.

220px-William_Henry_Harrison_daguerreotype_editReturning to private life, he ran for President as a Whig in 1836. At the time, the Whigs ran several candidates hoping to split the vote and send the election to Congress. Harrison narrowly lost Pennsylvania and its 30 electoral votes. (Though since the Democrats retained Congress in the election, it was expected that Van Buren still would have won.)  Four years later the Whigs coalesced behind Harrison.

Though his opponents tried to paint him as old, out of touch, and backwoods, he and running mate John Tyler (also a landed gentry from Virginia) embraced the depiction. They felt it helped them relate to the average voters and, in turn, painted Van Buren as out of touch and elitist.  Though Arkansas’ electoral votes went to Van Buren, Harrison ran fairly strong in the state. He narrowly captured Pulaski County and ran strong in the southeast portion of the state.

Harrison served in office only one month.  While at the time it was believed to be related to the weather at his inaugural (and his record-long inaugural address), subsequent analysis has shown it to be due to entric fever, the result of a bacterial infection.

Harrison Street in Little Rock is named for him. His grandson, Benjamin, the only grandson of a President to serve also serve as President, is skipped in the row of Presidential streets.

Little Rock Look Back: President Ronald W. Reagan

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RWR 40On February 6, 1911, future U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan was born. His life took him from small town Illinois, to Hollywood in the last days of the Golden Age of the studio system, to politics, to the California State House, to the White House.

On November 3, 1984, he became the first sitting U.S. President to spend a night in Little Rock. He stayed at the Excelsior Hotel (now Marriott Downtown) before making a campaign speech on November 4.  His only special requests for the room were jelly beans and ginger ale.  His speech was in the Statehouse Convention Center, which had opened less than two years earlier.

In 1980, Reagan had become only the third Republican to win Arkansas’ electoral votes (after Grant in 1868 and 1872 and Nixon in 1972). He was expected to easily win them again in 1984.  The main purpose of his speech on the Saturday before election Day was to drum up support for other GOP candidates in the state.  While he carried the state and the electoral votes, none of his preferred candidates won their races in 1984.

Four years later, on October 27, 1988, he flew in to Little Rock to make remarks at Central Flying Service. The purpose this time was to campaign on behalf of GOP nominee George H. W. Bush. As Reagan had done in 1980 and 1984, Bush carried the state and won the Presidency.

In 1992, after native son Bill Clinton defeated Bush in his bid for re-election, Reagan welcomed Clinton to his office in Los Angeles.  Having served as Governor of California, he was able to relate to Clinton’s impending transition from Governor to President.

In 2004, months before the Clinton Library opened, Reagan succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s Disease.  He had publicly disclosed he had the illness in 1994 during the second year of Clinton’s first term.  Though the Clinton Library was not open yet, the Clinton Foundation set up a memorial book at Curran Hall for people to stop by and sign. The book was then sent to the Reagan Presidential Library.

Little Rock Look Back: Jesse Belvin in concert at Robinson Auditorium

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Ark Gazette 60.02.05 (Fri)The name Jesse Belvin is largely forgotten. As a songwriter in the 1950’s he wrote “Earth Angel.” He also had an R&B hit with “Goodnight My Love.”  If he is recalled for anything today, it is tragically for being part of the mythical “27” club of musicians who died at the age 27.

On February 5, 1960, he appeared in a concert at Robinson Auditorium for what was billed as the “First Rock & Roll Concert of 1960.”  The headliner for the concert was Jackie Wilson.  The next morning, Belvin died at age 27 in a car accident outside of Hope on his way to his next concert in Texas.  Also killed in the wreck were Belvin’s wife, the man driving the car, and a couple in another car which Belvin’s car struck.

Many urban legends have sprung up about the concert at Robinson. Some, no doubt, fueled by Little Rock’s racially divided then-recent past in September 1957.  Most of these purport that the concert in which he appeared was the first integrated concert in Little Rock. Most rumors also state that Belvin had received threats leading up to the concert, that a riot took place at the concert or at least was stopped several times by disruptions caused by white agitators, that Belvin and others were run out of town, and that the accident was caused by damage inflicted to his tires before leaving Little Rock.  There are several variations of these purported facts.

While it is true Belvin performed at Robinson Auditorium the night before he died, it was not before a racially mixed audience.  It was not until August 1961 that the first concert took place in Robinson that did not have segregated seating, and that was a one-time only event.  It would not be standard practice at Robinson Auditorium until the 1965 passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Rebecca Miller, in her blog https://jackiewilsonlover.wordpress.com/, goes into great detail debunking many of the supposed “facts” about the February 5, 1960, concert at Robinson.  While the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat at the time did not shy away from covering racial issues (each with their own slant), neither paper mentions anything about the discord at the concert.  They do discuss Belvin’s subsequent accident near Hope.  It was apparently caused when the driver of the car containing Belvin and his wife fell asleep at the wheel.

In this day of the internet where it is easy for myths to fester into fact, it is hard to dispel rumors.  What is true is that a life was tragically cut short, and that Jesse Belvin’s last concert was on the stage of Robinson Auditorium.