Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 08/02/17
Summary:
- The Ame can Legion/TAC House building was constructed c. 1949 in the newly established Bodenhamer Park, north of downtown El Dorado. The rectangular-shaped building is two-and-one-half stories with flat roof and constructed of architectural concrete. El Dorado architect John Abbott designed the building and it was one of four buildings in El Dorado he designed for the use of architectural concrete. The American Legion/TAC House building is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion C as a good example of a mid-twentieth century building using architectural concrete.
Narrative
El Dorado serves as the county seat for Union County. The first county seat was Ecore Fabre a French trading post at the site of the present-day city of Camden in Ouachita County on the eastern shore of the Ouachita River. The county seat was moved in 1837 to Scarborough's Landing, downriver and on the west bank of the Ouachita River.[1] The relocation was in response to the pending proposal to establish a new county that would become Ouachita County with land taken from the northeastern part of Union County.
Silas Scarborough, along with William Young and John Lawrence, were some of the earliest settlers and leaders in Union County. They lived and farmed along the western bank of the Ouachita River before and during the 1830s.[2] For his neighbors and his own use, Scarborough developed one of the best landing sites on the Ouachita River between Camden, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
One of the first merchants to settle in Union County was entrepreneur Matthew E. Rainey. While crossing the county in search of business opportunities, his wagon broke down on a ridge less than twelve miles southeast of Scarborough's Landing. Rainey opened a temporary store, selling his goods from the back of the disabled wagon. He quickly realized that the scattered farmers and trappers in the area were eager to purchase his stock of supplies. He filed a claim on the surrounding one-hundred and sixty acres, and ordered more goods.[3]
A small community gathered around Matthew Rainey's store, relying on supplies transported up the Ouachita River to Scarborough's Landing then hauled in wagons over a rough frontier trail. Scarborough's Landing was renamed Champagnolle.[4] It was still the county seat for Union County, but it never had a post office or much infrastructure because of the uninhabitable conditions created by constant flooding and mosquitoes. However, the well-positioned river port became a primary point-of-entry for early settlers venturing into Union County during the 1830s and 40s.
In August 1843, a county commission was selected to recommend a site for a more centrally located county seat, out of the Ouachita River floodplain. They chose the highest point in Union County, which lay within Matthew Rainey's original 160-acre land claim.[5] Rainey seized the opportunity. He donated his land claim, for the financing, development, and construction of a new city, but kept a well-positioned four-acre tract for himself. El Dorado was named, established, and platted by late 1843, with forty-nine lots laid out in a grid pattern around a commercial core town square. The Union County seat was officially moved from Scarborough's Landing to El Dorado where the county’s first courthouse was built in 1844 at a cost of two-hundred dollars.[6]
A progressive city from the beginning, within two years El Dorado allocated $1,200.00 for the construction of a new courthouse. Two churches and a private school were established and a federal post office opened. The newspaper, The Union, began publishing in 1849.[7] The new town was in an ideal location for trade and commerce. It was close to the Ouachita River, a halfway point on the east-west trail from Arkansas Post on the Mississippi River to Texarkana and on the new stagecoach line operating between Little Rock and Monroe, Louisiana. El Dorado continued to grow into the early 1860s.
No Civil War battles were fought in Union County, yet El Dorado was slow to recover from the effects of the conflict on its economy.[8] After the war, the county began to export more of its agricultural products, including corn, peas, beans, sweet potatoes and its rich lumber resources of yellow pine and other hardwoods. Products and commodities flowed into El Dorado then out to the Ouachita River over the same road that had once carried supplies into the growing town.[9]
- The Texas and St. Louis Railroad reached El Dorado from the south in 1891.[10] The rail company continued laying tracks north, across the Ouachita River, the Arkansas River and onto Paragould, Arkansas, where it intersected with two other established railroads with lines to St. Louis. The route was designed primarily to access and transport cotton to St. Louis from the cotton-belt regions of Arkansas and Texas. For Union County, the railroad meant new easily accessible markets for its vast timber resources and for El Dorado, the railroad brought two decades of steady business expansion and dramatic growth. The town’s population doubled then quadrupled by 1910. As the timber resources were slowly depleted, El Dorado’s growth reversed, losing residents by 1920. [11]
- One year later, El Dorado and most of southeast Arkansas began a dramatic and rapid building and population boom. On January 10, 1921, two miles northeast of El Dorado, oil and gas burst out the top of Bussey Well Number One. The first of many wells to come had tapped into a vast reservoir of oil and natural gas that lay in pockets 2,200 feet underground.[12] News of the oil gusher quickly rippled across the country. Within just a few months two-hundred and seventy-five producing wells surrounded El Dorado. Its population mushroomed, reaching an estimated high of 30,000.[13]
The once small, but successful timber/railroad town within two years added fifty-nine oil companies, twenty-two oil production companies, and thirteen oil distributers and refiners.[14] By 1922, El Dorado had twenty-two trains arriving and departing daily.[15] City leaders scrambled to deal with the onslaught of new businesses and residents, trying to meet their needs and demands. Utilizing the sudden influx of oil-related tax revenues, the city developed water, sewer, electrical grid, paved streets as more of Matthew Rainey's original one-hundred and sixty acres was sub-divided and developed.
The prosperity and wealth from the boom of the 1920s continued into the 1930s while the population stabilized. El Dorado fared better than most Arkansas cities during the Great Depression. Commercial construction declined but the construction of homes in more affluent neighborhoods continued through the decade.
The United States War Department announced on October 9, 1941, a partnership between the Army Corps of Engineers and Lion Oil Company of El Dorado for the construction and operation of a plant to produce ammonium nitrate.[16] Construction of the Ozark Ordnance Works plant ushered in another growth period for El Dorado. The plant opened in 1943. In 1948, Lion Oil purchased the entire operation and continued the production.
Throughout El Dorado’s history, its civic leaders have taken a progressive approach to municipal facilities and infrastructure that continues to serve its businesses and citizens well. Bodenhamer Park, an area owned by the Roy V. Kinard American Legion Post, bounded by Fifth Street, North West Avenue, Eighth Street and Jefferson Street was the site of construction of three major public facilities in the 1940s and 50s.[17] Memorial Stadium was constructed in the park in 1946, the American Legion/Teen Age Club House in 1949 and the Boy’s Club building in 1952.
The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic, war-time veterans’ organization. Arkansas was represented from the start in the formation of the American Legion, with representatives attending the caucus in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 10, 1919. Arkansas was the first in the United States to be incorporated. American Legion records show that a petition filed in Pulaski Circuit Court on May 12, 1919, incorporated “The American Legion.”
The Roy V. Kinard post of the American Legion raised funds for the construction of a building for public use and their own needs. The building was designed to provide space on the lower floor for American Legion offices, recreation rooms, and other group activities. The upper floor was originally intended to be used by the general public designed for larger activities such as dances, large meetings, and various types of shows and exhibits.
The American Legion Building was constructed in Bodenhamer Park, an area of land bounded by Fifth Street, North West Avenue, Eighth Street and Jefferson Street that had been purchased by the Roy V. Kinard American Legion Post. The park was named in honor of El Dorado’s O.L. Bodenhamer, National Commander of the American Legion. All of the park land was later given to the City of El Dorado.
Shortly after construction, the American Legion determined the building did not suit their needs and built another building on the edge of town on the Junction City Highway. The American Legion donated the title of the building to the City of El Dorado for recreational and educational purposes.
A group known as the TAC (Teen Age Club), an organization of parents assisted by the local school system leased the building for their operations. The building has been the site of dances, piano recitals, and athletic programs since its construction. For a time, a portion of the building was used by the El Dorado Police Department as a driver license testing facility. The TAC House continues to be used for various recreation programs and other civic events.
John B. Abbott, born in El Dorado in 1912, was selected to design the American Legion Building. His family moved to Camden and eventually to Little Rock where Mr. Abbott was in the first graduating class of Little Rock High School (Central High School) in 1927. Abbott studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana before returning to El Dorado in 1936 to start his own architectural firm. Abbott designed many churches and schools across South Arkansas as well as the American Legion/TAC House building and the Memorial Stadium in El Dorado. In his later career in the 1970s Abbott worked on the restoration of the historic John Newton House in El Dorado. Over fifty buildings in El Dorado were designed by John B. Abbott.
Abbott designed four buildings of structural concrete in Union County that were constructed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In addition to the American Legion/TAC House building, Abbott’s design and use of structural concrete is seen on the Administration Building at Goodwin Field, Memorial Stadium, and the Royal Crown Cola Bottling Plant.
Statement of Significance
The American Legion/TAC House building in El Dorado is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion C as an excellent example of architect John Abbott’s use of architectural concrete. Although windows have been changed, the overall appearance of the building with its concrete panels remains intact.
Bibliography
Abbott, John B. “A Historical Survey of Architecture in Union County From the Beginning of WWII to 2008.” South Arkansas Historical Journal, El Dorado, Arkansas: South Arkansas Historical Society, Volume 8, Fall 2008.
Bridges, Kenneth. “El Dorado, (Union County),” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=999
“Charles Benjamin Rumph,” Arkansas and Its People: A History 1541-1930, Volume 3, American Historical Society, Inc. New York, 1930.
City Directories for El Dorado, AR 1924-1973.
Cordell, Anna H. “Champagnolle: A Pioneer River Town.” Union County Genealogical Society: Tracks and Traces 4, June 1982.
Deane, Ernie. “El Dorado Builds Back to Size of Boom Days,” Arkansas Gazette, Sunday, Oct. 12, 1958.
Franks, Kenny A. and Paul F. Lambert. Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil, A Photographic History 1901-1946. College Station, Texas: Texas A& M University Press, 1982.
Johnson, Ben. “Union County,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812.
Johnson, Ben. “The History of El Dorado,” Southern Arkansas University.
Kent, Carolyn Yancey. “World War II Ordnance Plants,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=373&media=print.
“Library Celebrates Golden Anniversary 50 Years,” Tracks and Traces, Union County Historical society, Volume 30 #2, Fall 2008.
McAlester, Virginia & Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1984.
Mason, Richard H. “The Boom! An Interpretive Essay,” South Arkansas Historical Journal, El Dorado, Arkansas: South Arkansas Historical Society, Volume 7, Fall 2007.
Polston, Mike. “Champagnolle (Union County),” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=6891&media=print.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for El Dorado, Arkansas: 1901, 1907, 1912, 1921, 1924, 1929, 1953.
West, Elliott, Introduction. The WPA guide to 1930s Arkansas. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941publication.
[1] Johnson, Ben. “Union County,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812.
[2] Polston, Mike. “Champagnolle (Union County),” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=6891&media=print. p. 1.
[3] West, Elliott, Introduction. The WPA guide to 1930s Arkansas. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941publication. p. 137.
[4] Polston, Mike. “Champagnolle (Union County),” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=6891&media=print. p. 1.
[5] Johnson, Ben. “Union County,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812. p. 3
[6] Johnson, Ben. “The History of El Dorado,” Southern Arkansas University. p. 1.
[7] West, Elliott, Introduction. The WPA guide to 1930s Arkansas. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941publication. p. 138.
[8] Johnson, Ben. “Union County,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812. p. 4.
[9] Johnson, Ben. “The History of El Dorado,” Southern Arkansas University. p. 1.
[10] Ibid. p. 2.
[11] Johnson, Ben. “Union County”, The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812. p. 1.
[12] Franks, Kenny A. and Paul F. Lambert. Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil, A Photographic History 1901-1946. College Station, Texas: Texas A& M University Press, 1982. p. 108.
[13] Deane, Ernie. “El Dorado Builds Back to Size of Boom Days,” Arkansas Gazette, Sunday, Oct. 12, 1958. p. 1A.
[14] Johnson, Ben. “Union County,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=812. p. 2.
[15] Mason, Richard H. “The Boom! An Interpretive Essay,” South Arkansas Historical Journal, El Dorado, Arkansas: South Arkansas Historical Society, Volume 7, Fall 2007. p. 26.
[16] Kent, Carolyn Yancey. “World War II Ordnance Plants,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online article at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=373&media=print. pp. 3-4.
[17] Abbott, John B. “A Historical Survey of Architecture in Union County From the Beginning of WWII to 2008.” South Arkansas Historical Journal, El Dorado, Arkansas: South Arkansas Historical Society, Volume 8, Fall 2008. pp. 3-6.