Terry House Inc., a nonprofit formed earlier this year to protect Little Rock’s Pike-Fletcher-Terry House, has sent a letter to Mayor Frank Scott Jr. and the Little Rock Board of Directors asking them to take “decisive and quick action” to protect the historic Seventh Street mansion.
Background from previous reporting from Max Brantley:
A lawsuit continues over the derelict handling by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the city of Little Rock in maintaining the historic Pike-Fletcher-Terry Mansion at Seventh and Rock.
The museum abandoned the building after using it for a time for a decorative arts space and has washed its hands of it. The private foundation that controls the arts center has refused to account for how it spent the money, more than $1 million, given to an endowment to maintain the structure. The owners gave the house to the city for cultural purposes and it, too, fell down on the job, though it has recently set aside $500,000 toward an estimated $1 million in needed repairs.
Heirs to the property are suing for an accounting and, perhaps, to regain ownership, though not for personal purposes. Instead, they hope to provide a path for the home to be used for public benefit as intended when the property was given to the city in 1964.
The nonprofit group supplies a recent example of the loss of an important historic structure as an example of what inaction could lead to:
Our fear is that without immediate attention the mansion could be destroyed. An example of what can happen is the loss of our state’s most important African American building, Centennial Baptist Church in Helena, Arkansas. It, too, was considered a treasure. It, too, stood abandoned for many years. And no one seemed to be able to make a timely decision on what to do. Eventually, the roof started leaking, mold infested the building, and its structural integrity began to fail. Efforts were finally made to save this historic building, but it was too late. In 2020 a violent storm took most of the structure down. Today, it is a pile of rubble and the state has lost one of its truly iconic structures.
It is easy to think that this will not happen to the Pike-Fletcher-Terry Mansion, just like those who thought nothing like that could happen to Centennial Baptist Church. However, the longer a building stands abandoned and in need of repair, the more likely it is to meet the same fate as Centennial Baptist Church. We think that the risks of delaying action on preserving the mansion far outweigh what it will take to protect it from harm.
The solution to the problem is simple — hire a competent architect with experience in historic preservation, get a cost estimate from that person for protecting the structure, appropriate the money, and hire a general contractor to make the necessary repairs. The longer the city waits to take definitive action, the more the mansion is at risk and
the more it is going to cost to protect it. This decision needs to be made before the Pike-Fletcher-Terry Mansion is forced to face yet another winter.All of us want what is best for this magnificent historic structure, but we need not wait for a lawsuit to be settled or a specific use to be determined before the essential first step of protecting the building is undertaken. Our board members are ready to help in any way we can, but the city needs to firmly commit to moving quickly to protect this
building.
The nonprofit’s members are Susan Terry Borné and Beth Foti, two of the Terry heirs suing the city; Rep. Denise Ennett, Ellen Fennell, Sybil Jordan Hampton, Sloan Powell, Bobby Roberts, Constance Sarto and Scott Trotter.