When my grandparents moved to Little Rock in 1972, my parents, moved into the house with my brother, sister, and me. They lived there for 30 years.
about 1975. Polyester double-knit by the fish pond.
1980, me in front of the bow window at the east end of the house
Susan’s room, 1976
Fleabag
Rusty and Fleabag napping in the sun
Page Corman, 1978
Jay, also about 1978
The rose garden over the reflecting pond
Roy Lee Gray, groundskeeper extraordinaire
the living room and Jay, ca. 1982
Master bedroom
Living room fireplace, xmas 1984
Xmas 1984, Someone looks toasty.
Music session in the garden room – Fred & Jay
It sits on an entire city block on Main Street. In addition to the house, there were outbuildings: an old servants’ quarters (a two-room building with a bathroom that was used as an office), the children’s playhouse, a large tool shed, and a small greenhouse, a lath house where camellias were grown year-round. My grandfather and mother worked with prominent landscape architects to cultivate the grounds, and they had a landscape crew working daily. Specimen plantings, intricate brickwork, and careful planning groomed the city block where the house sits.
My mother and grandmother grew flowers and arranged them for the two living rooms, the mantels, the foyer, and the dining table. They rarely bought flowers, and the local florists knew that any they delivered would be rearranged once they crossed the house’s threshold. In early spring, daffodils of every imaginable color and configuration filled the backyard. Ancient oaks towered over the grounds. Crepe myrtles, plum and crabapple trees, quince, figs, apples, and pears grew around the property. The vegetable garden covered nearly an eighth of the property and divided beds with brick walkways. Except in the dead of winter, we had fresh vegetables and fruit from our own yard.
Then, my parents moved from Des Arc to Little Rock ten years ago, and the house was sold to at least two successive owners who lost it in foreclosure. No maintenance was done, and from the looks of things, the place was completely abused and neglected.
The front door. Is that black paint between the top of the portico and the master bedroom window above? The black stuff on top on the lintel looked like mold. I think Stewart Morton told us that the big lantern that used to hang over the door was stolen.
Slime mold and algae growing on the dormers, peeling paint, missing and damaged window screens.
Apparently the screen door never closed properly, because leaves halfway filled the space between the two lower screens. I wasn’t sure how they got there until one of the guys put his entire hand between the top of the two lower screens. The columns are rotting and one appears to have shifted. That handrail is pure art.
The living room window, with all kinds of signs warning people about things.
Kitchen window with a sign warning that “Trespassers Will…” and that vandalism will be prosecuted. As if the worst vandalism wasn’t accomplished by recent legal inhabitants. Not that I’m disgusted, or anything. really.
Algae on a dining room window frame, damaged siding with holes, missing shutter, peeling paint.
This is the ceiling in the kitchen below Jay’s bedroom. There is no water source to explain the ceiling damage. I’m dying to know how the ceiling paint got that rusty hue. I’m sure it’s some kind of artful paint effect.
Someone evidently attempted to caulk the big double-paned picture window in the kitchen. The stuff felt like plaster. Then again, it might be an artful representation of surf. Or something.
Susan’s room, looking toward her dressing room and the central hallway. Green and white are the colors of the Des Arc Eagles. This is perfect redecoration of the bedroom of a former cheerleader, don’t you think?
The little tub in Susan’s bathroom. Later, I’ll dig out and post photos of our boys in this tub when they were little, just to embarrass them.
The big window in the landing of the main staircase. I have a pretty photo of Page Corman Jones that was taken in front of this window when we were in high school – check it out and the one of Jay taken the same day for comparison. There were numbers posted all over the house. They indicated items to be salvaged before the house is torn down.
The doorjamb into the master bedroom apparently was optional. The control for the ceiling fan was ripped out of the wall. All over the house there were holes in the walls and big areas splotched with white paint.
The door to the master bedroom. Apparently someone opened it with a boot instead of twisting the knob. That is not the original brass knob.
This was taken from the big window in the master suite’s sitting room, looking down on the fish ponds and rose garden. The big reflecting pond was covered with plywood planks. The little pond, well, more on that in a moment. The crepe myrtles have grown so tall that they block the views from my bedroom, the upstairs landing, and the master suite areas.
The intercom outside to doorway into the little attic.
Someone etched smiley-faces into the wallpaper in the upstairs hallway. (WTF? Who DOES that?) This is the wallpaper that Darlene so admired. Maybe those faces are a ghostly reflection of happier times this house experienced with family and friends who loved it.
Mom, standing next to the fireplace in the front living room. She looks like she wants to cry, doesn’t she? She remarked on the stained marble. See the chipped and peeling paint? I think this is the same yellow and white that the room was when our family moved out. Our stockings hung by this fireplace every Christmas. (See the corresponding photos from 1984 in the photos above.) The nails were still there. The floor also surprised me. All the thick wool carpets had been pulled up to expose the hardwood floors, which were in terrible shape.
We kept our games in this cabinet in the library. Life, Clue, Parcheesi, all the rest. The weekend games were so much fun!
I am not sure what that disgusting-looking stuff on the door and cabinet is. The entire library, shelves and all, was encrusted with this nasty grime. This used to be such a peaceful, wonderful, book-filled room.
When they took up the carpet, they apparently didn’t repaint. You can see how thick the pile was. There was always a puzzle in progress, too.
Another view of the library, and the dressing room leading to the bathroom and the big closet. Once when Susan and I had a sleepover in the garden room (on the other side of that closet), Mom and Dad told us a story of a little girl who died and whose body was walled up in that closet when the house was being built. Either Johnny or Flo Prislovsky hid in that closet and thumped on the wall, making all of us little girls scream – terrified that her ghost really did haunt the place! Aren’t parents great? Scaring the shit out of impressionable and delicate little flowers such as we were.
Another view if the library, looking into the dressing room and the long front hallway.
The breakfast room. The metal art deco chandelier was left when Mom and Dad moved, but it’s gone now. And I seem to remember this room being much brighter. How, with that huge window, was this room so dark?
The garden room’s big bow window, all rotted and awful. The flowerbed beneath the window on the brick terrace is overgrown with weeds. Mom used to keep caladiums in that bed, and the view of the yard was unobstructed.
The garden room fireplace. Just like the living room fireplace, the soot stains on the marble surround were awful, and just like in the library, the filthy woodwork is completely mind-boggling. The parquet floor was refinished in the about 10 years before Mom and Dad moved out, but you sure can’t tell it now.
Inside the playhouse. The most amazing thing is that it was still standing! Mom had considered tearing it down years ago.
The playhouse, which was still white when Mom and Dad left Des Arc. The brick patio in front of the playhouse was totally overgrown with weeds. Jay warned the school officials that they were standing on hallowed ground: countless squadrons of plastic army men are entombed next to that patio.
A view of the back yard from the playhouse patio. In the spring, this yard is filled with two giant semi-circles of daffodils. Missing in this photo are the lath house where Mom, and her parents before her, grew camellias year-round, and the sheds. The Des Arc School District has bought the house and will tear the rest of the buildings down. The brick structures in the distance are high school buildings.
Partial view of the back yard looking from the playhouse patio (aka the plastic green army’s sacred burial ground) toward the formal gardens behind the house. The raised brick flowerbeds cap the horseshoe-shaped yard outside the main back door. A single determined rosemary bush was all the remained of what mom planted there. The beds between the sidewalk and the raised beds were overgrown, and the crepe myrtles are so tall that the view from the house is obstructed.
Oak next to the playhouse. Two trees had what looked like the rims of bicycle tires nailed high on the trunks. Seeing them was another WTF moment for us.
Another view of the hoop nailed to the tree beside the playhouse.
This was my favorite spot in the yard when I was a little girl. I creatively christened it “The Place.” There used to be a tree here with a low branch that grew parallel to the ground that made a perfect perch for reading a book. The tree was surrounded by flowering shrubs, all of which are gone. It was a wonderful, peaceful, private place. Privet and overgrown scrub dominate it now, with a lovely patch of dirt.
The other hoop we found nailed to a tree.
Looking toward the playhouse from the back hedge
Looking toward the rear of the house from the back yard.
The plywood-covered large fish pond, the library window (downstairs) and the sitting room window (upstairs). These were beautiful formal gardens with wide brick sidewalks. The sidewalks are hidden by fallen leaves and overgrown weeds. The siding on the wall has been torn off in one spot – possibly to look for termites? The open window looks out of the front living room. The crepe myrtles are twice the size they were ever allowed to grow in my memory. I recall them being cut back to the ground at least twice, and pruned yearly to control the spread of the branches. Note the peeling paint and the algae slime on the exterior walls.
The little fish pond sits across a brick patio at the far end of the big fish pond. My grandparents installed a statue of a boy riding a dolphin, which was destroyed and taken by the people who bought the house from my parents when they left. The brick wall of the pond is seriously damaged, and the pillar that held the fountain lay on its side, broken. There is a formal portrait of Jay, Susan and me when we were about 5, 10, and 11 that was taken in front of the little pond. I don’t recall if it shows the fountain. I’ll try to locate it and post it for comparison. The brick wall behind the fountain becomes a latticed brick wall to the right of the fountain. An entire section of that brick wall was just gone.
The plywood on the big goldfish pond. I think every kid who ever came to our house fell into that pond at least once trying to leap across it. My dachshund, Fritzi, fell into it more than once, paddling frantically and unable to get her stubby little paws high enough to climb back out. A family of wood ducks used this pond as their home for a number of years. Feral cats attacked the ducklings once, and my dad sat on the back stoop with a pellet gun determined to protect the ducklings from the evil predators. And he liked duck. Yum.
Looking through the back window into the formal living room. The amount of algae and mold on the house – and inside it – was horrifying.
The formal lawn and the horseshoe-shaped sidewalk, with the raised beds. Surprise spider lilies can survive neglect quite happily, apparently.
This lawn was once surrounded on all sides by a formal rose garden inside the brick border. Not a single one of the 50+ varieties of roses that Mom and Dad left there survived, and it’s impossible to tell the lawn from the flowerbed.
This lawn was once surrounded on all sides by a formal rose garden inside the brick border. Not a single one of the 50+ varieties of roses that Mom and Dad left there survived, and it’s impossible to tell the lawn from the flowerbed.
The vegetable gardens were where Jay and the guy from the school are standing, and stretched all the way to the edge of the yard. brick walks, a brick-lined drainage ditch, and brick borders outlined the beds. A huge asparagus bed stretched at least five feet wide and twenty feet long – and they were DAMN good eating! We grew tomatoes, peppers, squash of all kinds, okra, beans, Jerusalem artichokes, lettuce, spinach, carrots – if it grew from a seed, its seed was planted in the garden at some point over the years. There were several apple and pear trees, none of which survive. Those apples made the best pies in the world. We even had a grape vine. There was a gigantic fig, but apparently Jesus got mad at it (like he does) and shriveled it up because it sure isn’t there now. The building to the left is the tool shed and small greenhouse that mom built to replace the big one.
A view inside the little greenhouse, which apparently still works fine given the lush grass and vines growing within it.
The back side of the garden room, showing the chimney and the siding window covered with algae and mold. That broad leaf plant in front of the bay window is some kind of mysterious Little Shop of Horrors weed.
A close-up view of the missing siding in back. It looks like termites feasted well. The peeling paint was just amazing.
Another humorous anti-vandalism sign. As if. This was on the bow window in the garden room, I think.
This is what remains of my bathroom. the mirrored doors of the cabinet behind the sink are missing, as is one of the drawers and several of the ceramic knobs which mom installed when we moved into the house in 1972 when my grandparents moved to Little Rock. If I recall correctly, all the tiles were intact in those days.
Another view of my bathroom. The door is damaged, as were lots of damaged doors in the house. I have to wonder what the heck went on there that doors were such victims of violence.
The ceiling fan in my bedroom. I wouldn’t dream of turning that mold-encrusted thing on. Spores would be flung far and wide and attack us for generations.
The current view from one of my bedroom windows onto the croquet lawn – now obscured by gigantic crepe myrtles.
I had to check the secret hiding place in the top of my closet. mom used to stash her jewelry there when she and dad would travel. Good t hing the house never burned down while they were gone. Sadly, there was nothing in there.
A view from the landing, looking out the big window onto the sidewalk (obscured by leaves) and the horseshoe-shaped croquet lawn. See the rot on the windowpane?
Looking directly onto the lawn from the window in the landing. For a few years, Dad decided to become a lawn guru. His goal was to have perfect grass inside that U-shaped area. He bought books, devoured them, applied pesticides and herbicides, and personally plucked offending crabgrass and clover. He eventually did get it perfect. Then he moved on to another project, and things went back to normal.
The fireplace in the master bedroom. I’m guessing that the only reason it isn’t soot-encrusted is that no one ever lit a fire there. Carrying logs upstairs was a pain, and that fireplace never drew smoke properly. The green paint was applied over the wallpaper. In fact, paint was applied over wallpaper everywhere there had been wallpaper, except in the breakfast room and the wet bar. In many places, the wallpaper was peeling away from the walls, taking the paint along with it. I don’t know what the heck that red and green thing is on the wall next to the window.
This photo looks into what was my dad’s closet. Apparently the people who lived there after us used closets rather hard.
Another view inside Dad’s closet. The woodwork is separating from the door frame.
Dad’s closet again. Those big drawers were part of what made this house so perfect for hide-and-seek.
One of Mom’s closets, the “shoe closet.” She kept her Imelda Collection on these shelves, and, yes, we really did call it her “shoe closet.”
The other side of the shoe closet, with a dormer to the right. Another great hide-and-seek place.
My bedroom, looking from the hall door toward the bathroom. When Mom and Dad moved out, the walls were painted a soft peach and there was carpet on the floor. The pinkish patch on the wall is wallpaper, but none that was ever on the walls when anyone in my family ever lived there. Maybe it was there when my grandparents lived there. I don’t know.
Susan’s room, looking from the front hallway to the back hallway. Clearly, a fan of the Des Arc Eagles (go, team!) occupied this space. When it was Susan’s room, there was pretty wallpaper with birds on it. When it was my mother’s room as a girl, it was pretty, too. It was not splatter-painted with anything, and there were no stripes. The photo of her room in the earlier collection above was taken from the same spot.
Susan’s room again, this time from the back hallway looking toward the front hall and her dressing room and bathroom. Come to think of it, these Green and White colors of Des Arc High are absolutely perfect for the bedroom of a former cheerleader.
The laundry chute in the closet in the back hallway. Best. Hiding. Place. EVER. Hide and seek was really fun in this house. Before we were teenagers, we were small enough to fit inside the laundry chute, and hiders could climb unseen from the second floor down to the first to evade the seekers. There were two doors in the chute on the first floor level, and by balancing one’s feet just right on the ledge that marked the top door, a hider couldn’t be seen when the seeker looked either up or down the chute. Of course, SOME kids cheated and used flashlights to spot the laundry chute hiders.
The laundry chute again. I don’t know why I took two photos of the top and none of the bottom. I was in shock, I guess.
The toy closet in Jay’s room. The door to this closet is hobbit-sized, and adults cannot stand up inside. Evidently that did not deter a modern-day Michelangelo, who painted these shelves a shocking tu-tone blue.
Jay’s room, looking at the toy closet door. The toy closet was built under the slope of the roof next to a dormer. Jay’s room was also painted in multiple hues.
The cabinet leading to the secret room off Jay’s bathroom.
I remembered the secret room being bigger than this. Maybe I was just smaller. We left some posters in there when Mom and Dad moved. They had been removed. My recollection is that they were posters of Donny Osmond, David and Shaun Cassidy, and Styx, and one black-light poster of a mushroom. Really.
The artistic endeavors in Jay’s room. Green and white, handprints, and – how the heck did they do those FOOTPRINTS? They are about three feet from the floor.
Jay’s room, from the hall door. There are these great patches of white paint everywhere. Do those patches cover graffiti or something? I didn’t ask.
The ceiling in the second floor hallway between the doors to my room and Susan’s room. No one dared go into the attic, so I have no idea where the moisture came from that did this damage – if it was caused by moisture.
Looking from the formal living room down the long front hallway into the garden room. I was amazed that the brass art deco light fixture was still there, although the globe was long gone.
These are the doors halfway down the long hallway between the living room and the garden room. The door to the library is to the left. Every Christmas these doors were gift-wrapped closed so no naughty kids could peek before Santa had a chance to leave. On Christmas morning, we were allowed to retrieve our stocking from the living room, but only Dad could break the ribbon on the gift-wrapped doors. He would then go into the garden room, shout at the fat intruder he found there, chase him up the chimney, and come back to declare the house safe once again. Oh, and presents.
The bar. Possibly the most highly trafficked three square feet in the entire house. The rule was that Mom or Dad would fix the first drink offered to any guest, but after that they were on their own. For some reason, there was a lock on the cabinet that held the booze. When we were teenagers it was kept locked. I don’t know why. We were happy to find the key, though. My mother wants everyone to know that that is not the original wallpaper.
The bar. The upper cabinet was kept locked during the 1970’s. I don’t know why. Really.
The living room ceiling, beneath the doorway into the master bedroom. This photo is yet another example of mysterious apparent water damage where no water should ever have been.
I’m shocked by how quickly the house deteriorated due to termites, moisture damage, and neglect. I’m even more shocked that this former showplace of a home now shows how it was abused after my family left.
Significant pieces of the landscape are already gone. The formal English rose garden is forlorn, almost bereft of roses. The reflecting pond and raised goldfish pond sit damaged and dirty. The vegetable garden is denuded of fruit trees and flowers. The privet hedge surrounding the property, which kept it private despite its main street address, is overgrown in spots and spotty in others. The camellias that filled the hothouse are mostly dead. This is what the death of a lovingly maintained property looks like, and it didn’t take long.
The public high school is next door, and the school district recently bought the property for $45,000 at auction. The school will tear down all the buildings. The plants aren’t far behind.
It was a gorgeous house with beautiful gardens. Its loss is a travesty.
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