Buildings of Arkansas - (Buildings of the United States) by Cyrus Sutherland (Hardcover)

About the Book

Along the way, it offers compelling accounts of sites from the well to the lesser known--the magnificent Toltec Mounds near Scott, the New Deal-era Dyess Colony, Tyronza's Southern Tenant Farmers Museum, the Rohwer Relocation Center and McGehee Japanese American Internment Museum, Central High School in Little Rock--and considers modern buildings that herald a renaissance in the state's cultural, economic, and political history.

Book Synopsis

From Fayetteville, Little Rock, and Hot Springs to Jonesboro, El Dorado, Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and scores of places in between, the latest volume in the Buildings of the United States series provides the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date guide to the architecture of Arkansas. The result of a lifetime's research and fieldwork by the esteemed historian and preservationist Cyrus A. Sutherland, this book captures the range and richness of the state's buildings and landscapes, whose stories can prove as fascinating and gripping as a novel's plotline.

Nearly 500 building entries, accompanied by 250 illustrations and 24 maps, encompass the state's major regions--the Ozark Plateau, the Arkansas River Valley, the Ouachita Mountains, the West Gulf Coastal Plain, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (commonly known as the Delta). The places canvassed include everything from works by Arkansas natives E. Fay Jones and Edward Durell Stone to Sam Walton's Five-and-Ten and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to Bill Clinton's birthplace and presidential library. The volume highlights the role and resilience of mountain, valley, and Mississippi River communities; surveys significant state and national parks; and traces the lively history of such resorts as Hot Springs and Eureka Springs. Along the way, it offers compelling accounts of sites from the well to the lesser known--the magnificent Toltec Mounds near Scott, the New Deal-era Dyess Colony, Tyronza's Southern Tenant Farmers Museum, the Rohwer Relocation Center and McGehee Japanese American Internment Museum, Central High School in Little Rock--and considers modern buildings that herald a renaissance in the state's cultural, economic, and political history.

Review Quotes

Complete with a hardcover, it makes a good side table book.... The book makes me want to return, with an eye on modern and historical buildings in the area.

-- "SeriouslyArchitecture.com"

The long-anticipated Buildings of Arkansas is the twenty-third volume in the Buildings of the United States series...[T]he Arkansas book...represents the culmination of a thiry-year effort to document, research, and systematize the architectural history of the Natural State....Each section begins with a short history and map of that region, followed by property listings and photographs for most counties.... Buildings of Arkansas features things new and old, high-style and vernacular. A wide variety of property types are covered, providing readers with an overview of the state's architectural diversity.... Buildings of Arkansas will likely become a popular reference book for those interested in Arkansas's built environment. It is an important work for architects, historians, preservationists, and others interested in the humanities because it summarizes each region of Arkansas, integrating historical narratives and architectural descriptions in an encylopedic format.

-- "Arkansas Historical Quarterly"

About the Author

Cyrus A. Sutherland was Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, a leader in the movement to preserve the state's historic buildings, and the coproducer (with H. Gordon Brooks) of the three-part film series Arkansas: Its Architectural Heritage. This volume, edited and updated by his colleagues Gregory Herman (University of Arkansas), Claudia Shannon (Shannon Design Enterprises, Inc.), Jean Sizemore (University of Arkansas at Little Rock), and Jeannie M. Whayne (University of Arkansas), embodies his lifelong knowledge of and devotion to the architectural history of his native state.