Getting to Know Little Rock With a Little Help From Historical Sandwiches

Sandwiching in History at the Lafayette

Yep, I had lunch with a piece of the city — the old and renewed Lafayette Hotel. It's pretty dang cool and a Craftsman-style gem. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program runs the "Sandwiching" events once a month, and Rachel Silva with AHPP was our guide. Oh, by the way, I think I was the only one who brought his lunch. Nobody else was eating. A veteran attendee said brown-bagging often is awkward because folks mostly are standing. I got there early enough that I was able to wolf mine down and not look too newbie. 

Stripped ceiling before restoration (photo courtesy of AHPP)

Silva taught us much and the 50 plus people there were attentive and interested. I won't reproduce her lecture, but here are some of the basic facts:

• Built and opened in 1925, the Lafayette closed in 1933 during the depths of the Depression and did not reopen until 1941.

• Peter Heerwagen, a noted interior designer, created the building inside look, including its lobby.

• John Oehrlie, Heerwagen's foreman, updated the look of the lobby and the rest of the hotel in 1941 for its reopening.

• A restoration team of four women worked on the lobby in 1984 during its rehabilitation. They could not restore its original 1925 look but what's there now is close and impressive.

Restored ceiling, August 2012

That restoration team left some traces: some tiny self portrait in the eyelets of the ceiling design. If you happen to go to the Lafayette for a meeting or event — the current owners rent out the lobby and mezzanine for such — then you can see if you can find them. Downstairs once was the Gaslight Club, a downtown nightclub in the 1960s and early 1970s, but now it's a private gym for the tenants who own the condominiums in the top half of the Lafayette. We Sandwichers were allowed to visit a model condo, which was quite nice.

The Lafayette truly is a great asset to downtown, and some other developers hope to magnify its positive effect. The Democrat Gazette reported this week that a redevelopment group has granted a wish expressed here in another blog; they're giving Main Street a boost by taking on several large buildings there. The Bright Knights will turn the Boyle Building, the M.M. Cohn and a few more addresses from vacant ghosts into venues for a variety retail, residential and office uses. Maybe some equally fun "Sandwiching" tours are in the offing in the future.

Little Rock has an interesting architectural history. Become familiar with its face with a drive through Quapaw Quarter, take a walk and look around downtown, and of course, take advantage of the free Sandwiching in History program for some introductions.

Rating: Sandwiching in History: A.

For more information and a schedule, go to: Sandwiching in History