'Buildings of Arkansas' Book Signing, Reception Planned for Nov. 7

University of Virginia Press

A book signing and reception for 'Buildings of Arkansas' is planned for Nov. 7 at the Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History in downtown Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A book signing and reception for Buildings of Arkansas will be held at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7, at the Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History, 1 E. Center St., in Fayetteville.

This is the latest volume in the Buildings of the United States series, which has documented America's architectural heritage, state by state, for decades. The series is published by the University of Virginia Press, in association with the Society of Architectural Historians.

Buildings of Arkansas is an ambitious project begun by the late Cyrus A. Sutherland, of the University of Arkansas, and completed by a distinguished cast of contributors, including Greg Herman and Jeannie Whayne, both University of Arkansas professors.

Herman is an associate professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, and Whayne is a University Professor in the Department of History in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Herman and Whayne will give a short presentation before signing copies of the book.

This book provides the most comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date guide to the architecture of Arkansas — from Fayetteville, Little Rock and Hot Springs to Jonesboro, El Dorado, Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and scores of places in between. The result of extensive research and fieldwork by Sutherland, an esteemed historian and preservationist, the volume 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 Fay Jones and Edward Durell Stone, both Arkansas natives, to Sam Walton's Five-and-Ten and 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.

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 that include Herman, Whayne, Claudia Shannon of Shannon Design Enterprises Inc. and Jean Sizemore of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, embodies his lifelong knowledge of and devotion to the architectural history of his native state.

Books will be available for purchase at the event from University Bookstore staff.