Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 08/07/24

SUMMARY

The Old Kingsland Post Office, which served as the post office for Kingsland, Cleveland County, Arkansas, from the time of its construction until the dedication of the current post office in 1994, is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A for its associations with the role of government in the history of Kingsland.  From the time of its opening in c.1939 until the new post office was dedicated in 1994, the Old Kingsland Post Office would have served as a center of community life in Kingsland.  As a place where people would pick up their mail or send out mail, the building would have been an important building in the daily life of the community, and the most important government building in town.  Although the activities at the Post Office continued until 1994, those activities after 1974 don’t meet the threshold for exceptional significance.  As a result, the period of significance for the Old Kingsland Post Office begins in c.1939 when the building was built and ends in 1974, fifty years before the present day. 

ELABORATION 

HISTORY OF THE PROPERTY

What is now called Cleveland County was formed on April 17, 1873, by an act of the Arkansas legislature.  Originally, it was called Dorsey County and named after Stephen W. Dorsey, a chairman of the Republican county and state committees and a U.S. Senator.  However, the name of the county was changed to Cleveland County in 1885 in honor of then President Grover Cleveland.  In its early years, much of the land was heavily timbered so there were lumber mills throughout the county and only a small portion of it was under cultivation with cotton and corn being the principal crops.[1]

When the realization came after the Civil War that only railroads could be used to exploit the vast tracts of virgin timber in Arkansas, railroads and the timber industry developed as one.  As a result, railroad lines were constructed further and further into the forests to enable the harvesting of timber, and occasionally the spurs were linked to become new through lines.  The boom in railroad construction also greatly influenced settlement patterns throughout Arkansas.  Some towns that had thrived on river trade and travel disappeared and many new towns sprang to life along the railroad lines.[2]

One of the railroads that helped to exploit the timber lands of Arkansas was what would eventually come to be known as the St. Louis Southwestern Railway or Cotton Belt.  The origins of the Cotton Belt go back to 1871 with the chartering of the Tyler Tap Railroad, a three-foot gauge railroad that opened in 1877 between Tyler, Texas, and the junction with the Texas & Pacific at Big Sandy.[3]  The Cotton Belt was rechartered as the Texas & St. Louis Railway around 1880, and subsequently provided service through the timber, cotton, and rice areas of Arkansas between Texarkana, Clarendon, and Jonesboro.  Trains began running on the line in 1884, but the line was forced into receivership the following year.  It was reorganized as the St. Louis, Arkansas, & Texas in 1885, and became the St. Louis Southwestern in 1891.[4]  Even though the official name of the railroad changed several times, the route had been known as the Cotton Belt since at least 1886.[5]  (The Cotton Belt would remain an autonomous railroad until it was absorbed by the Southern Pacific in the mid-1980s.[6])

The development of the railroad in Cleveland County also brought about the creation of settlements and towns, including Kingsland.  A post office was established at the settlement of Cohasset in 1883 although the name was changed the same year to Kingsland.  (Arkatha was also given as a possible name for the community.)[7]  Kingsland was incorporated the following year and was also a stop on the St. Louis, Arkansas, & Texas Railroad by the late 1880s.  Goodspeed’s history of the area described Kingsland by saying that, “At Kingsland there is a furniture factory, giving employment to quite a number of men, and a wagon shop does considerable local business.  The village contains a number of stores and has a population of about 600.”[8]

By the early 1920s, the highway through Kingsland had been designated Highway B-7, a Secondary Federal Aid Road.  However, by 1926, it had been redesignated Highway 3.  It retained that designation until 1935 when it was redesignated again and became U.S. 79.  Although the main route of U.S. 79 bypasses downtown today, 1^st street in front of the Old Kingsland Post Office was the original route of the highway through town.[9]

The establishment of the first post office in Kingsland happened in the following way, according to Cleveland County Arkansas:  Our History and Heritage:

On 4 Dec. 1882 when the area had a population of 75, A.L. Gresham sent a request for a post office to be named Arkatha, which was rejected as was [the] next request for the name Cohassett.  The third name, Kingsland, was accepted, and it became the name of the post office and town.  Austin L. Gresham became postmaster 26 June 1883.[10]

Although it is not known where the Kingsland Post Office was initially located after it was established, the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for Kingsland give information on the locations of the post office in the early twentieth century.  When the first Sanborn map for Kingsland was issued in 1914, the post office was located in a one-story frame building that also sold dry goods on the south side of 1^st Street (which was Main Street at the time), in between Larch and Doster streets (Larch was 2^nd Street and Doster was likely 3^rd Street although the Sanborn map doesn’t show it).[11]

However, by 1921 the post office had moved to a one-story brick building on the site of the Old Kingsland Post Office.  The building consisted of six storefronts and the post office occupied the easternmost storefront.  The rest of the building was occupied by a confectionary, grocer, general merchandise store, drugstore, and a restaurant.  When the last Sanborn map was completed for Kingsland in 1928, the post office occupied the same space.[12]  By 1930, Jessie Garner was postmistress in Kingsland and Virgil R. Oakley was the “star route mail carrier.”  In addition, Howell J. Cook and Marlon E. Bell were rural mail carriers.[13] 

The late 1930s brought about a significant event in the postal history of Kingsland and led to the construction of the Old Kingsland Post Office.  According to Cleveland County Arkansas:  Our History and Heritage:

At 5 a.m. Wednesday, 15 June a large fire was discovered on Kingsland’s Main Street.  Despite area resident’s efforts, the fire destroyed J.L. Harris and W.O. Love’s general stores, Johnson’s Drug Store, the post office building owned by Mrs. Jessie Garner and the Post Office Café operated by Pearl May of Rison.  …  Northing was saved from the post office except the mail that had been delivered overnight.  The fire’s damage was estimated at $25,000.  The post office was temporarily opened in the Cotton Belt Railroad Station.  Mrs. Jessie Garner, postmistress and daughter of lumberman Henry Newton, built a wood and sheet iron building to replace the post office which was used as a post office until 1994.[14]

The new post office, which was built c.1939, was a small one-story building that was more residential than commercial in its character.  Featuring casement windows, a jerkinhead roof, and knee braces (at the time) on the awning over the front entrance, along with exposed rafter tails, the building had characteristics of the Craftsman style, which was popular during the early twentieth century.

Unlike many other architectural styles that had their roots and inspiration in architecture of other places, specifically Europe, the Craftsman style derived its influences from two architects, Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, who practiced together in Pasadena, California, from 1893 until 1914.  By the early 1900s the Greenes had begun designing simple Bungalows, and by 1910 they had designed several large landmark examples in Southern California, such as the Gamble House (1908) in Pasadena.[15]  Interestingly, rather than taking their inspiration from Europe, as many architectural styles had done up to that time, the Greenes’ inspiration came from Asia.  As noted in Norbert Schoenauer’s book 6,000 Years of Housing:

On the way to visit their parents in Pasadena, the two brothers stopped in Chicago to see the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which brought arts and crafts from remote corners of the world to America.  Of all the buildings of this exhibition the one that most profoundly affected the Greene brothers was the Japanese pavilion.  They were impressed by both the superb craftsmanship and the structural integrity of the building, which embodied the Arts and Crafts principles taught to them in St. Louis by [Calvin Minton] Woodward.[16]

In fact, the word “Bungalow,” which is most often used to refer to Craftsman-style houses, originated in India and was the name given to houses that British colonial officers adapted from the traditional Bengali huts known as bangala.[17]

The residences that the Greenes designed, along with similar houses by other architects of the period, were published extensively in contemporary magazines, including House Beautiful, Good Housekeeping, Architectural Record, and Ladies’ Home Journal.  As a result, many average Americans were exposed to the style, and it became “the most popular and fashionable smaller house in the country.”[18]  The popularity of the style was also helped by the appearance of Craftsman-style homes in many pattern books and also through the offering of kit homes by companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Company, which offered several Craftsman-style homes.  In fact, “Sears’s bungalow designs proved to be particularly enduring.  With their spacious front porches, leaded glass sash, oak staircases and Craftsman detailing, they were popular in all parts of the country served by the Modern Homes Department.  Bungalows were available in a full range of sizes, finishes and styles and dominated the catalogs in the 1920s.”[19]

The Old Kingsland Post Office figured prominently in a May 1959 photograph of Johnny Cash and Johnny Horton who were visiting Kingsland.  The photograph shows the two musicians sitting on the steps in front of the building, and the photograph also shows the original design of the building.  However, sometime after 1959 the building was altered to its current appearance.  The original wood siding was covered with a brick veneer on the bottom third of most of the walls and the rest of the walls were sided in metal siding.  In addition, the awning over the front entrance was altered from a two-tier awning with a lower gable and upper jerkinhead roof to the current front-facing gable configuration.  However, it is not known when the alterations were carried out.

The Old Kingsland Post Office remained in service until the current post office at 80 1^st Street was dedicated in 1994.  Since then, a new metal roof was put on the building in early 2016, but the building otherwise remains as it did when it closed in 1994.  Today, the building is vacant although there is hope to renovate the building for a new use in the future.  However, the building remains an important part of Kingsland’s postal history.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPERTY

Since the post office was established in Kingsland in 1883, it has been an important part of the governmental operations in the town.  Once the current building was built after the previous building burned, it became the center of postal operations in Kingsland.  The Old Kingsland Post Office would quickly have become a community center in Kingsland for people receiving or sending mail.  From the time of its construction c.1939 until the current post office was dedicated in 1994, the Old Kingsland Post Office played a significant part in the government of Kingsland.  Due to this fact, it’s being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A.  Although the activities at the Post Office continued until 1994, those activities after 1974 don’t meet the threshold for exceptional significance.  As a result, the period of significance for the Old Kingsland Post Office begins in c.1939 when the building was built and ends in 1974, fifty years before the present day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arkansas State Highway Maps.  1924-1935.  In the files of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

Baker, Russell Pierce.  From Memdag to Norsk:  A Historical Directory of Arkansas Post Offices, 1832-1971.  Hot Springs, AR:  Arkansas Genealogical Society, 2006, pp. 41 and 105.

Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas.  Chicago:  The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1890.

Cleveland County Historical Society.  Cleveland County Arkansas:  Our History and Heritage.  Volume 1.  Marceline, MO:  Walsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 2006.

Drury, George H.  The Historical Guide to North American Railroads.  Milwaukee, WI:  Kalmbach Books, 1985.

Historic aerial photographs of Kingsland, Arkansas.  Found at:  https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer.

McAlester, Virginia & Lee McAlester.  A Field Guide to American Houses.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Map of the Cotton Belt Route, St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co., St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. of Texas, Tyler Southwestern Railway Co., and Connections.  Map.  Unknown Publisher, 1886.

Price, David.  Telephone conversation with the author.  30 December 2002.

“Pulling Into the Station:  Arkansas Railroad Depots on the National Register of Historic Places – A Scenic Tour Map of Arkansas.”  Little Rock:  Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, 2000.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Kingsland, Arkansas, 1914, 1921, and 1928.

Schoenauer, Norbert.  6,000 Years of Housing.  New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

Stevenson, Katherine Cole, and H. Ward Jandl.  Houses By Mail:  A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company.  Washington, DC:  The Preservation Press, 1986.

Teske, Steven.  “Kingsland (Cleveland County).”  The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.  Found at:  https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/kingsland-cleveland-county-6142/.

West, Elliot.  The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas.  Lawrence, KS:  University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941 publication.