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Baseball in Arkansas

Thursday, April 5th, 2018

It’s time for another season of Arkansas Traveler baseball. Each year, I’m asked to write an article on baseball in Arkansas for the program that’s sold at Dickey-Stephens Park. Here’s the article I wrote for this season:

In March, several descendants of Babe Ruth were in Hot Springs.

Why Hot Springs?

Because that Arkansas city once was the home of baseball spring training. The Ruth descendants were there for the dedication of the final two markers that make up the Hot Springs Historic Baseball Trail.

For decades, Hot Springs did nothing to celebrate the fact that it was an early spring training location. But in March 2012 the trail was dedicated with markers across the city that commemorate events related to spring training. The plaques unveiled this spring honor the pitchers and catchers who trained in Hot Springs. One plaque features legendary catcher Bill Dickey, one of the namesakes of Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock, the home of the Arkansas Travelers. The other honors pitcher Lefty Grove.

On the morning of Saturday, March 24, there was a ceremony at Whittington Park in Hot Springs that celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ruth’s massive home run that carried more than 500 feet. Combine the baseball history of Hot Springs with the history of the Travelers, and you can see that Arkansas has a strong baseball tradition.

On the front page of the first issue of The Sporting News on March 17, 1886, there was a story noting that the Chicago White Stockings — the forerunner of the Chicago Cubs — would conduct spring training in Hot Springs. A later team named the Chicago White Stockings entered the newly formed American League in 1901, but that team shouldn’t be confused with this National League squad that became the Cubs.

The owner of the National League Chicago White Stockings was A.G. Spalding, and he decided that it would do his players good to train in a warmer climate.

The story quoted Spalding as saying: “I wonder whatever made me think of it?”

The March 17, 1886, Daily Gazette had a story with a Hot Springs dateline that noted: “The Chicago baseball club is in the city and will practice every day as soon as suitable grounds can be made.”

“Spalding and his playing manager, Adrian ‘Cap’ Anson, wanted to send a physically fit team onto the field when the National League opened the season in April,” Hot Springs native Don Duren writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “The main reason Spalding sent his team to Hot Springs for two weeks was for the players to bathe in the hot springs in hopes of clearing their bodies of alcohol, thereby losing weight and enhancing their physical condition. Spalding, in addition, believed that the Southern weather would be more conducive for training than the colder weather in the North. The players could get their legs in shape and build stamina by climbing mountains.

“While in Hot Springs, the National League team played on a field behind what is now the Garland County Courthouse on Ouachita Avenue. The Avenue Hotel on Park Avenue, near the junction of Central and Whittington avenues, accommodated the Chicago visitors. The team featured such notables as Anson, John Clarkson and Mike “King” Kelly, all of whom were later inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as was Spalding. With them was the ‘fastest man in baseball,’ outfielder Billy Sunday, who later became a famed evangelist.”

Duren says that Spalding’s idea was “the signal for other major league teams to head south, many to the Arkansas resort. The floodgates opened wide, and major and minor league teams, as well as individual players, flocked to the Spa City from 1886 to the 1940s. These teams included the Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Browns (later the Perfectos and, after that, the Cardinals), Philadelphia Phillies, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Highlanders (later the Yankees) and many others. Exhibition games, pepper games, infield practices, cut-off plays, sliding practice, calisthenics, mountain climbing and soaking in the tubs took place every spring in Hot Springs.”

Up the road in Little Rock, the Travelers first played in the Southern League in 1895, competing against Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville, Evansville, Montgomery and New Orleans. The club posted a 25-47 record that inaugural season.

After the Southern League folded, professional baseball was absent in Little Rock for five years. The Travelers returned in 1901 with the formation of the Southern Association and finished second, just one game behind Nashville. They finished second again in 1902.

The first championship came in 1920 as the Travelers concluded the season with an 88-59 record. Their final season at Kavanaugh Field (located where Little Rock Central High School’s Quigley-Cox Stadium now stands) was in 1931. The Travelers attracted 113,758 fans that year, their second-highest attendance since the 1920 title.

Land near the Arkansas State Hospital was given to the Travelers by the city of Little Rock in 1932, and Travelers Field became the team’s home. In 1966, the stadium was renamed for Ray Winder, who had started as a ticket taker for the Travelers in 1915 and rose to the rank of general manager. Winder spent more than five decades with the team.

Traveler scouts often were in Hot Springs to sign players during spring practice. Things were much looser in those days. In fact, the Travelers’ first official affiliation with a major league team didn’t come until 1937 when the team affiliated with the Boston Red Sox. The Travelers were affiliated with the Red Sox for three seasons. Later affiliations came with the Chicago White Sox in 1946, the Boston Braves in 1947, the Detroit Tigers from 1948-55, the Kansas City A’s in 1957-58 and the Baltimore Orioles in 1961.

Following a period spent in Triple-A baseball as a Phillies affiliate, Winder moved the Travelers to the Texas League in 1966 as a Cardinals affiliate. The Travelers were a Cardinals affiliate for 35 years, the second-longest active affiliation when it ended. The Arkansas club then spent 16 years as an Angels affiliate before becoming an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners last year.

Back in Hot Springs, visiting players loved to participate in the many activities the city offered. John McGraw, the player-manager of the New York Giants, was arrested for gambling in Hot Springs in 1904. Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates would help officiate high school basketball games. Ruth, meanwhile, was a regular on the golf course at the Hot Springs Country Club and at the horse races at Oaklawn Park.

Boston Red Sox owner John Taylor built a practice field known as Majestic Park for his team in 1909 and agreed a year later to share Majestic with the Cincinnati Reds. Pittsburgh signed a 10-year lease on Whittington Park and agreed to share it with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

By the 1920s, Florida was opening up to visitors and was a more reliable spot for warm weather during spring training. Hot Springs also was hurt by a fire in September 1913 that destroyed 50 city blocks and almost 1,000 buildings. And then there was the nightlife in Hot Springs. A Sporting Life headline told of “red lights and wide-open policies” in the city. Owners and managers decided they would rather have their players in places with fewer distractions.

“In 1910, the Brooklyn Superbas (later the Dodgers) were in town practicing at their location on Whittington Avenue,” Duren writes. “One afternoon, Bill Dahlen, Brooklyn’s manager, gave his team a break from afternoon practice, and the players headed across town to scrutinize the first game between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds at Majestic Park. Most of the Brooklyn players sat on the newly built stands with about 200 other spectators. During the fifth inning, the small structure collapsed. Nobody was hurt, but Tommy McMillan, shortstop for Brooklyn, landed in Cy Young’s lap.”

Baseball historians such as Duren, along with Hot Springs residents Mark Blaeuer and Mike Dugan, have documented hundreds of players, managers, owners and baseball writers who spent time in the city. Steve Arrison, who heads Visit Hot Springs, believes that up to 135 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame were in Hot Springs at one time or another.

Arrison says: “What began as our curiosity about why there are so many photos of Babe Ruth at various locations in Hot Springs wound up unearthing a treasure trove of historic associations between the world’s most famous baseball players and Hot Springs. Things really got rolling in the spring of 2011 when we were able to document that Ruth hit the first 500-foot-plus home run while playing spring baseball at Whittington Park. Bill Jenkinson, one of the preeminent baseball historians in the world, came to Hot Springs and helped us authenticate Babe’s legendary 573-foot shot that zoomed over Whittington Park’s fence, across Whittington Avenue and into the Arkansas Alligator Farm.”

As far back as 1993, Little Rock native Jay Jennings was chronicling the history of baseball in Hot Springs. He wrote an article for Sports Illustrated headlined “When Baseball Sprang from Hot Springs.”

“Hot Springs has drawn media attention as the boyhood home of President Bill Clinton, but few people know that it also played a crucial role in the early years of baseball,” Jennings wrote. “It was the place where spring training came of age. From 1886 to the 1920s, Hot Springs was baseball’s most popular preseason training spot. Though National Association teams began traveling south as early as 1869 when the New York Mutuals visited New Orleans to play exhibition games, manager Cap Anson is widely credited with creating the first organized spring training camp.”

The Sporting News once called Hot Springs “the Mecca of professional baseball players.”

“The choice of site was not so odd as it may seem now,” Jennings wrote. “In the last two decades of the 19th century, Hot Springs was a celebrated spa. Though its population was only about 10,000, there were always thousands of tourists in town. The town’s popularity stemmed, as you might guess, from its water. Hydropathy was in its heyday, and with pure mineral water bubbling up from the earth at 143 degrees and huge bathhouses to serve its visitors, Hot Springs promoted itself as America’s Baden-Baden, after the famous German spa. To help bathers fill leisure time between their therapeutic dips, entrepreneurs built theaters and casinos. And many staged sporting events.”

Arrison says: “We needed to let Americans know about the people, places and events that made Hot Springs a key element in the growth of the nation’s pastime. What we decided to do was gather as many names as could be historically authenticated and try to locate the places where these legends played or relaxed in Hot Springs.”

Combined with a trip along the Hot Springs Historic Baseball Trail, a visit to Dickey-Stephens Park will give you a sense of this state’s rich baseball history. The Travelers are one of the few minor league baseball teams to have their own museum. The club has played on only three fields in more than 120 years, is one of the few teams in professional sports in which fans were able to buy ownership shares and was the first professional team to be named after an entire state. The nickname Travelers is the second-longest-running nickname in minor league baseball.

It’s a franchise that’s unique in the annals of professional sports, located right in the middle of a colorful state that once played an important role in baseball history.

Posted in Baseball, Hot Springs | 1 Comment »

The Spa City

Monday, January 22nd, 2018

SEVENTH IN A SERIES

We cross the bridges over Lake Hamilton as we enter Hot Springs from the south on Arkansas Highway 7.

Following the instructions of Arkansas Power & Light Co. founder Harvey Couch, a former riverboat captain named Flave Carpenter led the site-selection efforts for what would become Carpenter Dam on the Ouachita River. It was 10 miles upstream from Remmel Dam, the first of the two dams that Couch built on the river to generate electricity for his growing company.

Work on Carpenter Dam began in February 1929. Construction was completed in December 1931. The lake created by the dam was named in honor of Little Rock attorney C. Hamilton Moses, who represented all of Couch’s business enterprises.

Guy Lancaster writes for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture that the construction and engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis built a rail spur to the main Missouri Pacific Railroad line so materials for the dam could be transported easily.

“Gravel was mined from the river bank while wood was taken from the future lake bed area,” he writes. “In the end, more than 156,000 cubic yards of concrete were used for a dam that measures 115 feet high and 1,165 feet long. . . . A work camp, at one time housing 1,000 people, was established adjacent to the construction site. Construction was completed in December 1931 at a cost of $6.5 million. Carpenter Dam features two generators, which together produce an output of 56 megawatts. The dam was built to provide electricity to the AP&L system during hours of peak energy consumption; as such, it is credited with helping AP&L survive the Great Depression, the full impact of which Arkansas was experiencing as the dam was being completed.”

In addition to being an electricity producer, Lake Hamilton soon would become one of the most popular recreational sites in the state. It simply added to the allure of Hot Springs, which was booming in the late 1920s under the leadership of dictatorial mayor Leo McLaughlin.

“McLaughlin was elected mayor in 1926 and fulfilled a campaign promise to run Hot Springs as an open town, one where gambling was permitted by local authorities,” Lancaster writes. “Illegal gambling had long been a staple of life in Hot Springs, but the McLaughlin administration carried this to a new level. McLaughlin also oversaw an extensive political machine in Hot Springs that employed rampant voter fraud in order to deliver support to favored candidates.

“During his 20-year reign, the city became a haven for numerous underworld figures, including Owen Vincent ‘Owney’ Madden and Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano. Even Al Capone was a regular visitor to the city. The Southern Club was one of the favored hangouts for many of these gangsters. The relationship local authorities had with these mob figures occasionally put it at odds with the state and federal governments.”

Hot Springs had been an attraction long before the mobsters discovered it. As outlined in the earlier part of this series that described the Hunter-Dunbar Expedition, Native Americans had been using the hot springs for hundreds of years. Early European settlers also visited.

“By the early 1830s, the springs were proving a major attraction,” Lancaster writes. “In 1832, Congress reserved the area now known as Hot Springs National Park for federal use, exempting it from settlement. When the town of Hot Springs incorporated in 1851, it was home to two rows of hotels along with the bathhouses and the usual concomitant businesses. The city attracted not only seekers of leisure but also numerous invalids hoping to find relief in the area’s thermal waters.”

The first Hot Springs Reservation superintendent was Benjamin Kelley, who was appointed by Congress in 1877. Under his leadership, Hot Springs grew as a resort.

Lancaster writes that Kelley “initiated a number of engineering projects, allowing private owners to convert the previously ramshackle downtown bathhouses into a row of attractive buildings built in the Victorian style. This, combined with the city receiving a rail connection from what would eventually become the Rock Island Railroad in 1875, transformed Hot Springs into a cosmopolitan spa that would attract visitors from across the nation. The luxurious Arlington Hotel was also completed in 1875 and was, at the time of its completion, the largest hotel in the state. It was built by businessman Samuel W. Fordyce and others who invested heavily in Hot Springs.”

Hot Springs also was helped by the fact that it had bathhouses for blacks, who had few other places where they could vacation comfortably in the South in those days.

“Not only did African-Americans have access to employment in Hot Springs, they also had access to the same sort of bathing facilities that attracted wealthy whites to the area,” Lancaster writes. “In 1878, the federal government established a simple frame building over what was popularly known as the mud hole spring in order to service the poor, who could bathe there for free. Initially the site was open to all regardless of gender or race. A new brick building was erected in 1891, but it was remodeled in 1898 to provide for racial and gender segregation, though all still had equal access. Until the bathhouses were desegregated in 1965, a number of bathhouses operated that were devoted to a black clientele.”

In the late 1800s, Hot Springs became the first home of baseball spring training, a fact that the city has only recently begun to celebrate again.

Thoroughbred racing came to the city with Essex Park and Oaklawn Park. These days, Oaklawn is flourishing thanks to the revenue provided by hundreds of electronic games in its large gaming area.

Louis Cella, whose family has been involved with the track for more than a century, was named in December as Oaklawn’s president. He succeeds his father, Charles J. Cella, who died Dec . 6 at age 81.

Charles Cella took over Oaklawn in 1968 following the death of his father, John G. Cella. In 2005, the Cella family and Oaklawn received an Eclipse Award of Merit for their contributions to racing.

Louis Cella had, in essence, been running the track in recent years as his father’s health declined.

Family-owned thoroughbred tracks are rare these days. Conglomerates such as Churchill Downs Inc. and the Stronach Group own multiple tracks. It’s also uncommon in an era of declining interest in thoroughbred racing to find an ownership group that’s raising purses on a regular basis. In that respect, those in Arkansas who love racing are fortunate.

In another respect, the Cella family is fortunate. That’s because Arkansas remains one of the few places in the country where a day at the races is considered a major social event — a reason to get dressed up and invite friends to come along for the day. We’re a throwback.

“Racing has been part of the Cella family DNA for generations, and we’re committed to keeping Oaklawn one of the premier racetracks in the country for generations to come,” Louis Cella said on the day he was named president.

Oaklawn was formed in 1904, but racing ceased in 1907.

Michael Hodge writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas: “Anti-gambling sentiments, driven by former Essex Park owner and former state legislator William McGuigan, rose in the form of a bill titled ‘an act to prevent betting in any manner in this state on any horse race.’ The bill was approved on Feb. 27, 1907, and necessitated the closing of Oaklawn at the end of the 1907 season and for a decade after that. The infield of the track continued to be used for other purposes and was the site of the Arkansas State Fair from 1907-14, including a 1910 fair that was attended by former President Theodore Roosevelt.”

The Legislature passed a bill in 1915 to reopen the track, but that legislation was vetoed by Gov. George Washington Hays.

Large fires in downtown Hot Springs hurt the tourism industry and led business leaders to begin efforts to resume racing, which joined boxing and baseball as the most popular sports in the country.

“In 1916, the Hot Springs Men’s Business League reopened Oaklawn Park by setting a short racing schedule beginning on March 11 under the guise of a nonprofit civic enterprise,” Hodge writes. “Pari-mutuel betting was not allowed, but this did not preclude any unofficial wagering. This 30-day season was a success and led to the reopening of both Oaklawn Park and Essex Park the following year with plans for the two tracks to split a full season. Unfortunately, the newly refurbished Essex Park burned the day after its grand reopening in 1917, thus moving the entire season to Oaklawn and marking the permanent end of racing at Essex.”

Racing would become an on again-off again affair for years in Hot Springs.

Circuit Judge Scott Wood ruled in 1919 that the races were illegal, and the track was closed again. A bill legalizing racing was approved by the Legislature in 1929 and vetoed by Gov. Harvey Parnell.

Mayor McLaughlin helped create the Business Men’s Racing Association in 1934 and announced that there would be races that spring regardless of what anyone said. More than 8,000 people turned out on March 1, 1934.

In 1935, legislation permitting racing with pari-mutuel wagering cleared the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Junius Futrell. The first Arkansas Derby was held in 1936 with a purse of $5,000. By 1961, what had been a 30-day meet was extended to 43 days. By the early 1980s, the track was hosting races for 60 days per year.

“The 1980s were great for Oaklawn,” says Eric Jackson, the track’s former general manager. “At the time, we didn’t fully appreciate just how great they were. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we began to face competition from new tracks in Oklahoma and Texas. We responded by instituting simulcasting, becoming the first track to offer full cards from other tracks. But while we were looking west toward Texas and Oklahoma, the casinos were being built to the east in Mississippi and to the south in Louisiana.”

An initiative that would have allowed several casinos in Arkansas — including one at Oaklawn — was tossed off the ballot by the Arkansas Supreme Court just before the November 1994 election. Oaklawn made another casino run in 1996 that failed 61-39 percent.

“We got sucker punched about a month before the election,” Jackson says. “We had gone into it with the idea that the companies operating casinos in Mississippi would not oppose us. .. Then they came after us. The ads were brutal.”

In 2005, the Legislature passed an act permitting Oaklawn and Southland Park, a greyhound track at West Memphis, to install electronic forms of gaming if approved by the city or county. The result at Oaklawn has been a decade of growing purses.

Thus Hot Springs had thoroughbred racing, the baths, Lake Hamilton, wide-open gambling and even baseball spring training for a time in those first decades of the 1900s. No wonder the gangsters from Chicago loved to vacation there.

The current Arlington Hotel opened in late 1924. The Park Hotel and the Marquette Hotel opened in 1930. The oldest of the eight existing bathhouses, the Hale, was built in 1892-93. The others were added in those boom years of the early 1900s.

The Army and Navy Hospital opened in 1887 as the first combined hospital to serve soldiers from both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. It treated tens of thousands of soldiers before being turned over to the state in 1960. The Levi Hospital, which opened in 1914 to offer mental and physical therapy, continues to operate.

The Arkansas Alligator Farm, founded in 1902, also still operates. Attractions that once were popular but have closed include the IQ Zoo, which opened in 1955, and Thomas Cockburn’s Ostrich Farm, which operated from 1900-53.

The decline of downtown Hot Springs began in 1967, the first year that Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller was in office. Rockefeller was from one of the world’s richest families, of course, and didn’t need the payoffs that had gone to other elected officials for decades.

“So notorious was the city’s reputation that closing down gambling in Hot Springs became a major issue in the 1962 gubernatorial race,” Lancaster writes. “The explosion of a bomb in the Vapors casino in January 1963 made the problem of organized crime in the city a widespread concern. Soon after Rockefeller took office as governor in 1967, he ordered the Arkansas State Police to crack down on gambling in the Spa City. State troopers were able to put an end to illegal gambling in Hot Springs, though it brought them into conflict with local power brokers and even law enforcement officers. The well-known Hot Springs brothel owner Maxine Temple Jones, in prison at the time, disclosed a great deal of information on illegal gambling in return for a full pardon.”

With casino gambling having ended, businesses began to leave downtown. Many relocated south on Highway 7 (which doubles as Central Avenue in the city) toward Lake Hamilton. We pass many of those businesses on our way downtown. Overall, Hot Springs has been largely stagnant for the past 50 years. In the 1970 census, the city had a population of 35,631. Forty years later when the 2010 census was released, the number was almost the same — 35,193 to be exact.

In the past several years, however, an amazing rebirth has begun downtown.

According to the Hot Springs Metro Partnership, 2017 saw:

— A record number of downtown commercial properties sold downtown. There were 30 commercial properties sold for sales of more than $9 million.

— More than $23 million in capital investments that went into downtown properties.

— The Downtown Association grow from 35 to 55 businesses.

The fire that destroyed much of the Majestic Hotel in the winter of 2014 was a wake-up call for Hot Springs. In the four years since the fire, downtown has seen:

— 86 businesses open or expand.

— 84 commercial properties sold at a total value of more than $50 million.

— More than $80 million invested in capital improvements.

As we drive up Central Avenue, the progress downtown is evident.

There’s no time to stop downtown on this day, however. It’s time to continue north through what I consider the most beautiful part of the entire trip, the stretch from Jessieville to Ola through the Ouachita Mountains.

 

 

Posted in Hot Springs, Traveling Arkansas | No Comments »

Maxwell Blade’s Malco

Friday, December 15th, 2017

Maxwell Blade knew he would come back one day.

Blade, who has starred in a magic show in downtown Hot Springs since 1996, called the Malco Theatre home from that first Spa City performance until 2008 when the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival decided to go it alone in the building at 817 Central Ave.

Blade moved north to 121 Central Ave. and leased a former antiques store from the Wheatley family. He then transformed the space into a 100-seat theater. Now he’s back at the Malco following a major renovation.

A recent tour of the theater brought back memories of the time I spent watching movies there when I was a student at Arkadelphia High School and Ouachita Baptist University. One of the best things about getting a driver’s license was being able to visit Hot Springs for movies downtown at the Malco and Central theaters.

Nancy Hendricks writes in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture that the Malco is “on a site that has housed vaudeville shows, silent movies, modern films and specialty productions. … The economy of Hot Springs depended on lodging, dining and entertainment to support its burgeoning tourism industry. In the late 1800s, Hot Springs attracted visitors from across the country to ‘take the waters.’ After their therapeutic bathing, visitors sought amusements and recreation. At first, this was limited to hunting, fishing and horseback riding, activities they usually did closer to home as well. But the demand increased for diversions such as gambling and entertainment. In 1882, the Opera House on Hot Springs’ Central Avenue was opened to present theatrical productions, including hosting traveling companies from New York.

“In the early 1900s, motion pictures became a leading form of entertainment across the country. Frank Head, manager of the Hot Springs Opera House, commissioned the construction of the Princess Theatre in 1910 for viewing silent movies as well as attending vaudeville shows. It was built where Bridge Street connects Broadway to Central Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare. Hot Springs resident Sidney Nutt Sr. bought the Princess Theatre in 1927, converting it to sound in 1929 as talking pictures began to replace silent films.

“Hot Springs’ downtown business district along Central Avenue suffered a number of catastrophic fires in the early 1900s. The Princess Theatre survived until Christmas Eve in 1935 when a blaze destroyed all but its foundation and its masonry entrance on Broadway Street. Those elements would become the cornerstone of the Malco Theatre.”

Nutt worked with the architectural firm Brueggeman & Swaim to utilize the shell of the Princess for a new building that would face Central Avenue. He sold his interest in the Princess to M.A. Lightman, who had founded the Malco Theatre Group and owned theaters across the South. The Great Depression and then World War II delayed the many improvements that Lightman wanted to make.

A November 1939 story in The Sentinel-Record at Hot Springs noted: “Definite announcement that Malco Theatres Inc. will proceed with construction of a modern new theater and music hall on the former site of the Princess, which was destroyed by fire several years ago, was made yesterday by M.S. McCord of North Little Rock, secretary and treasurer of the amusement company, which also operates the Paramount, Central, Spa and Roxy theaters in Hot Springs. Preliminary work on the first three units comprising the project was begun several week ago, but Malco officials made no announcement of their plans at that time. They revealed two years ago that a handsome new theater was planned to replace the Princess, but construction had been delayed pending improved business conditions.

“The new amusement enterprise will be known as the Malco Music Hall. Cost of the project was not announced, but Malco officials have indicated that expenses will not be spared in providing Hot Springs an amusement house with all equipment and accommodations to meet the needs of the city for many years to come. The first unit will be built on the Central Avenue frontage and will be three stories high with a basement. … The front of the building will be of modernistic design. It will be constructed of white marble with panels of black and red terrazzo, glass and stainless steel extending the height of the building. Over the entrance lobby will be a triangular marquee of artistic design. The entire front will be beautifully illuminated.

“Construction of the second unit, which will be the auditorium proper, will start immediately after completion of the Central Avenue unit. The auditorium will seat 1,400 people and will have stage facilities for vaudeville or road productions. The stage will be on the south side of the building instead of on the east or Broadway side where the stage of the old Princess was located.”

World War II delayed complete renovation of the building for several more years.

When the fully renovated Malco Music Hall opened in February 1946, it declared itself to be the “Showplace of the South.” It had 1,140 seats and the most advanced projection and sound equipment in the region. There was an entrance on Central Avenue along with two separate entrances on Broadway for blacks and whites. Blacks were relegated to the balcony until the 1960s.

Hendricks writes: “The Broadway entrance allowed African-Americans to enter the building and go directly to their segregated seating area in the balcony. With advances in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, segregation of entrances and seating arrangements ended. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program has stated that the Broadway entrance to the theater may be one of only two such formerly segregated entrances still in existence in the United States. … Management of the building mandated its preservation as a reminder of America’s civil rights victories.”

The theater was remodeled again in 1962 and was divided into twin theaters in the 1980s before finally closing. Downtown Hot Springs declined as development moved south toward Lake Hamilton.

The official 2010 nomination form for the Malco to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places noted: “As the film industry was soundly established, its cultural influence developed a new appearance for the buildings that housed them. The theaters would become larger as bright marquees advertised to the street and enough seating was installed to house thousands of audience members. They would not only entertain audiences but also inform them on current events through newsreels. The theaters became the place to be.

“Sidney Nutt, the owner of the former Princess site, ordered the construction of the Malco Theatre in 1935. Brueggeman & Swaim, the contracted architects, designed the building to utilize the remains of the Princess. The completed structure consisted of a single, large auditorium with a balcony, a lobby and a structure for offices that faced Central Avenue. The front facade was in the spirit of the modern movement with its Art Deco features. Vertical stucco piers framed windows and multicolored tiles, and a bright marquee attracted customers from the street. It had an occupational limit of 1,000 seats, which helped to continue the recreational value of Hot Springs tourism.”

When the current revitalization of downtown Hot Springs began to take off, developer Rick Williams of Summit Properties bought several buildings, including the Malco. Blade shared Williams’ vision for the theater.

Blade and a group of dedicated preservationists spent the next 15 months working on the building. During a recent visit to Hot Springs, he proudly showed me the lobby mural that was painted in the 1940s by John Antonio, who was a Hot Springs High School student at the time. The mural was discovered when wallpaper was removed adjacent to the spiral staircase that leads to the balcony. The mural was sealed to protect it from additional damage.

“We had to install new air conditioning and heating systems, and we put in carpets that I found in Las Vegas,” Blade says. “We would spend 15 hours here some days working on this place. I wanted to make sure that everything from the restrooms to the dressing rooms was perfect. We took the wall out that had divided this into two theaters. Now it looks much like it did in the 1940s.”

Blade’s choice of carpeting, lights and furniture indeed gives the Malco a 1940s feel. He reduced the number of seats downstairs to 310 so there would be more room for people to spread out. A small bar has been added to sell beer and wine. When there are no magic shows scheduled, Blade hopes to offer the Malco for musical performances, comedy shows and the like. Blade often had several shows a day at the smaller theater. Because he now has three times the number of seats, he will perform just one show a day at the Malco.

“The pace of development in downtown Hot Springs right now is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Blade says. “I wanted to be a part of that. I was determined to make the Malco a gem again, and I think I’ve achieved that. I spent more than $100,000 just on the lighting and the sound systems. When this project was finished, I went home and slept for 20 hours straight one Saturday.”

Blade was born in January 1962 at Fort Smith.

“As a child in the 1970s, he became interested in magic after watching magician and comedian Mark Wilson’s ‘Funny Face Magic Show’ and ‘Magic Circus’ on television,” Cody Lynn Berry writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “He began learning and practicing simple magic tricks as a hobby in addition to teaching himself to play drums and piano. When he was eight years old, he began playing music at a local church. He graduated from Greenwood High School in 1980. When he was 21, he auditioned for a rock band called Exit Five, which later changed its name to Shark Avenue. The group recorded an album and toured for several years.

“Blade began a career as a full-time magician in 1991. Drawing inspiration from Mark Wilson, Harry Houdini and David Copperfield, he performed in clubs in northwest Arkansas and as an opening act for local bands under the direction of his manager at the time, Dick Renko. On Aug. 4, 1994, Blade’s first large-scale production debuted at the King Opera House in Van Buren. That show was dedicated to his mother; she died from Lou Gehrig’s disease on Aug. 11. The King Opera House show was followed by a two-year tour.”

“I was a rocker in the 1980s,” Blade says. “I later decided to do magic shows instead.”

In 1995, Blade and his family came to Hot Springs on vacation and fell in love with the place. He decided that people visiting downtown Hot Springs needed additional entertainment options.

“This building was in bad shape, but I decided to clean it up,” Blade says of the Malco. “I did that first show on Aug. 28, 1996. For the longest, it seemed as if I couldn’t sell more than 33 tickets a night. I was a painting contractor during the day to pay the bills. I did whatever I had to do to sustain the show. The show finally became popular, and it remains so.”

In 2015, Blade added the Maxwell Blade Museum of Curiosities.

Berry writes that Blade wanted a place to “house his large collection of magic-related artifacts and medical curiosities. Local antiques dealer Davis Tillman also put artifacts on display there. Among the many items on display was a model ship built by prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars; the ship’s rigging is said to be made completely out of human hair. Other pieces included a mummified cat named Felix, medical tools, a child-sized coffin, an electric chair, wooden dolls, Houdini handcuffs and promotional posters, circus photographs and a re-creation of a mortuary drive-through viewing window.”

Blade plans to move the museum from the 100 block of Central Avenue into a space adjacent to the Malco.

While the current renovation was taking place, Kathryn Phillips Sanders contacted those at the Malco to say she remembered the 1946 opening since her boyfriend, Billy Ray Sanders, was working at the theater. He later became her husband.

“He was about 17, and I think he was the doorman,” Sanders recently told writer Deborah Carroll of Hot Springs. “He had been ushering at various movie theaters since he was about 10. … A little later he got the title of assistant manager, which just meant he had to be there seven days a week from opening to closing.”

Last month, Blade gave Sanders a tour of the theater. It was her first time to be in the theater since 1980.

Eric Manuel of Bryant has produced a 24-minute documentary titled “The Malco, A Personal Journey.” It was screened during the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in October. It’s a fitting tribute to one of the state’s most famous theaters, which has now been fully restored.

The revitalization of downtown Hot Springs rolls on.

Posted in Hot Springs | 1 Comment »

Grady Manning and Southwest Hotels Inc.

Wednesday, July 12th, 2017

Monday’s sale of the Arlington Hotel at Hot Springs marked the end of hotel ownership for Southwest Hotels Inc., which once had a large portfolio of famous hotels in this region of the country.

The company, founded by H. Grady Manning, once owned the Arlington Hotel and the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs; the Marion, Grady Manning, Albert Pike and Lafayette in downtown Little Rock; and hotels in Memphis, Vicksburg and Kansas City.

Grady Manning was born in March 1892 in rural Scott County, attended a business college in Fort Smith and began working in the dining room of a Fort Smith hotel to help pay the cost of his education.

“Discovering he enjoyed working in the hotel business, he moved to Hot Springs, where he took a job at the Eastman Hotel,” Nancy Hendricks writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “With the town’s thermal waters said to offer medical benefits, Hot Springs became known as the Spa City and was one of the premier resort destinations in the country during the early 20th century. Many of its visitors were affluent travelers who had taken the waters at the leading spas of Europe and expected superior service at lodgings in Hot Springs.

“Manning traveled to Niagara Falls, Canada, where he was employed as a clerk at the Queen Royal Hotel, which was said to be one of Canada’s most exclusive. Manning became renowned for his outstanding service and courtesy, a reputation that followed him when he returned to his home state of Arkansas.

“In 1917, he became assistant manager of the Marion Hotel in Little Rock. The hotel was named for the wife of its founder, Herman Kahn, who built the Marion in 1905. At eight stories high, it was the tallest building in Arkansas until 1911. In 1919, Manning became manager of the Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, a popular summer resort. His success there led to his being named manager of the Goldman Hotel in Fort Smith. In the prosperity of the 1920s, Manning formed Southwest Hotels Inc, which then sought ownership of a number of landmark hotels. Manning married Ruth Seaman around this same time.”

Herman Kahn, the Marion Hotel founder, had moved to Little Rock from Frankfurt, Germany, in 1870. Kahn’s great-grandson, Jimmy Moses, has been the driving force behind many of the developments in downtown Little Rock in recent decades. Kahn and his sons, Sidney L. Kahn Sr. and Alfred G Kahn, were heavily involved in banking and real estate development. Sidney Kahn developed the Prospect Terrace neighborhood of Little Rock.

The 500-room Marion Hotel, designed by architect George Mann, had green carpets, bellboys in green uniforms and a marble fish pond in the lobby. The Marion billed itself as the Meeting Place of Arkansas. Indeed many of the state’s top organizations held their conventions at the Marion. Its bar was named the Gar Hole and featured a huge, mounted alligator gar. Well-known visitors to the Marion through the years included Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Helen Keller and Will Rogers. The Marion sometimes was referred to as the real state Capitol since legislators congregated there during legislative sessions, cutting after-hour deals and forging compromises.

Writer Richard Ford, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1996 novel “Independence Day,” once lived in Room 600 of the Marion. Ford was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1944. Beginning in 1952, Ford spent summers in Little Rock with his maternal grandparents. Ford’s grandfather, Ben Shelley, was the hotel manager.

“It created for me a nice sense of comfort because I knew everybody,” Ford said in a 2013 interview with the Arkansas Times. “Everybody was family — all the bellmen, all the telephone operators, all the front-office people, all the cooks, all the waitresses, all the waiters. And yet all around that little island of home-like experience, there were all these people coming and going, day in and day out, people I would never see again. I could lie in my bed, and I could hear the buses coming and going from the Trailways bus station. Down behind the hotel, I could hear the Missouri Pacific switch cars. I could hear voices out on the street. I could hear sirens. I never thought of it as lonely.”

Southwest Hotels owned the Marion in its final decades. The hotel closed in early 1980 and was demolished along with the Grady Manning Hotel (also owned by Southwest Hotels at the time) on Feb. 17, 1980, to make way for the Excelsior Hotel (which later became the Peabody and then the Marriott) and the Statehouse Convention Center. Little Rock television stations provided live coverage of the implosion of the two hotels on a cold Sunday morning.

The Grady Manning Hotel had opened in 1930 as the Ben McGehee Hotel. It was designed by architect Julian Bunn Davidson and originally was owned by Benjamin Collins McGehee.

The Lafayette Hotel in downtown Little Rock opened in 1925 and closed in 1973. Now known as the Lafayette Building, it houses offices and condominiums.

Little Rock was experiencing solid growth during the 1920s, and an entity known as the Little Rock Hotel Co. decided to capitalize on that growth with a new hotel. A.D. Gates of St. Louis was the company president, and John Boyle of Little Rock was the vice president. The 10-story structure, which has a full basement, was designed by St. Louis architect George Barnett.

The Lafayette opened on Sept. 2, 1925, with 300 fireproof guest rooms. The rooms, which featured private baths with running water, rented for $2.5o per night. The building’s exterior featured elements of the Renaissance Revival style of architecture with its decorative terra cotta detailing, arched windows on the top floor and a projecting copper cornice. The interior public spaces were designed by decorator Paul Martin Heerwagen.

The Great Depression hurt the hotel industry, and the Lafayette closed in 1933. The building remained vacant until a housing shortage due to an influx of soldiers at Camp Robinson increased the demand for hotel rooms and apartments. The Lafayette was purchased by Southwest Hotels and reopened on Aug. 23, 1941. Southwest reduced the number of guest rooms from 300 to 260. A coffee bar and lunch counter were added with an entrance off Sixth Street.

An Arkansas Gazette article the day after the opening said: “Guest rooms, suites and efficiency apartments are the newest, freshest and most livable rooms in the city, high above the street, light and airy.” The newspaper described the coffee bar as “truly the most beautifully decorated and artistically designed coffee bar in the state.”

The interior of the hotel was completely repainted. The lobby ceiling was stenciled and painted by John Oehrlie, a Swiss mural painter. Oehrlie and his crew redecorated the hotel in eight months, spending three months of that period working on the lobby ceiling. Oehrlie had been Heerwagen’s foreman in 1925 so he was familiar with the hotel.

After the renovation by Southwest Hotels, the Optimist Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club and Civitan Club all began having meetings at the hotel. The Missouri Pacific and Rock Island railroads had ticket offices in the lobby. There also was a telephone answering service, a coin shop and a beauty parlor. The Gaslite Club opened in the basement and remained in business until the 1960s.

There was yet another remodeling effort in 1953 as the hotel’s owners tried to keep up with the growing number of motels and tourist courts on the highways leading in and out of Little Rock. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing updates were made. The interior decor was changed to incorporate a red-and-white color scheme. The Lafayette closed as a hotel on Nov. 23, 1973. The Gazette described it as the “victim of more modern competition, one-way streets and no parking facilities.”

The Albert Pike, meanwhile, operated as a hotel from 1929-71 when Little Rock’s Second Baptist Church bought it for $740,000 and transformed it into a residence hotel. The block on which the hotel was built once had been occupied by a house constructed in 1827 for Robert Crittenden, the secretary of the Arkansas Territory. The Crittenden House was among the first brick residences built in Little Rock. Facing financial problems, Crittenden attempted to trade the house for 10 sections of undeveloped land, hoping the brick home would become the site of the territorial capitol. Foreclosure followed Crittenden’s death in 1834, and the house was sold to Judge Benjamin Johnson, whose heirs later sold it to Dr. E.V. Dewell. Dewell, in turn, sold it to Gov. James P. Eagle, and it was the official governor’s residence from 1889-93. The Crittenden House was razed in 1920.

The 175-room Albert Pike was constructed at a cost of almost $1 million. The hotel was built in the Italian-Spanish Revival style, which was popular in California at the time. It featured tiled roofs, exposed beams, decorative inside tile, iron work and stained-glass windows. The hotel is among Little Rock’s last remaining major examples of this type of architecture.

At the time the Farrell Hotel Co. opened it, the Albert Pike was considered to be one of the finest hotels in the South. Architect Eugene John Stern designed two main wings of eight stories each that extended toward Scott Street and were connected across the back by a 10-story section. Above the entries were terra-cotta medallions with heraldic shields and the initials “AP.” The two-story main lobby was overlooked by a mezzanine that featured a custom-made Hazelton Brothers grand piano designed to match the building’s interior features. Officials of the Farrell Hotel Co. decided to name the hotel after Albert Pike, a prominent lawyer who died in 1891. Pike, a central figure in the development of Freemasonry in the state, was a poet, writer and Confederate commander in the Indian Territory during the Civil War.

In Hot Springs, railroad executive Samuel Fordyce joined forces with Samuel Stitt and William Gaines to build the first Arlington Hotel as the area around the springs gained in popularity.

“The original hotel was located across Fountain Street from the current Arlington, a site that’s now a public park,” Michael Hodge writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “The first location was unique in that it was the only hotel property on the original Hot Springs National Reservation land. In 1893, to keep up with other nearby hotels such as the Eastman, Majestic and Park, the Arlington was razed and rebuilt on the same site with a more elegant design, a larger guest capacity and updated amenities.

“On April 5, 1923, an employee of the hotel noticed smoke coming from an electrical panel. Authorities were notified as a fire slowly began to spread. William Pinkerton, the founder of the famous security service and a guest at the hotel at the time, was so certain that the fire would be controlled that he sat on the veranda and smoked a cigar rather than retrieve his belongings, all of which he eventually lost to the fire that leveled the building.

“The owners had been discussing building an addition across Fountain Street. The plans for this now became plans for rebuilding the entire hotel on that site, thus removing it from reservation property. On Nov. 28, 1924, the third and current version of the Arlington Hotel was completed. Designed by George R. Mann, primary architect of the state Capitol, the building’s entrance faces the southeast corner of the intersection of Fountain Street and Central Avenue and includes two massive towers like its predecessor but designed in a Mediterranean rather than Spanish Revival style.”

Southwest Hotels purchased the Arlington in 1954.

What became the Majestic was built in 1882 on the site of the old Hiram Whittington House. It was known as the Avenue Hotel at the time. The name was changed to the Majestic in 1888. A yellow-brick building was added in 1892. The original hotel was razed in 1902 and a brick building with 150 rooms was added. A new restaurant known as The Dutch Treat was also added with a replica of a windmill over the door.

“In the prosperity of the 1920s, greater numbers of average Americans could visit the Majestic Hotel,” Hendricks writes. “In addition, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Red Sox stayed at the hotel for spring training and fitness programs. … During this era, the legendary Babe Ruth frequented the Majestic. The in-house thermal baths at the Majestic also appealed to notorious 1920s underworld figures who did not have to leave the hotel for their spa therapy.

“The year 1926 saw the addition of the eight-story annex (a red-brick building to the west of the yellow-brick building), which later housed the Grady Manning Dining Room. … Southwest Hotels purchased the Majestic in 1929. … In the 1940s, the U.S. Army used the Majestic to house World War II-era soldiers. On Dec. 15, 1945, the hotel reopened to civilians. It attracted celebrities such as actor Alan Ladd, comedian Phyllis Diller and orchestra leader Guy Lombardo.

“After Hawaii became a state in 1959, all things Hawaiian became popular. The Majestic opened the Lanai Tower in 1963. The Lanai suites were said to boast the first modern sliding-glass doors. The suites surrounded a waterfall and tropical-themed pool. With the completion of the Lanai Tower, the Majestic became an eclectic mix of architectural styles — traditional red brick, the yellow-brick building and the tropical-themed Lanai suites. As was the case with most of downtown Hot Springs, business at the Majestic steadily declined through the 1980s due to a combination of highway rerouting, medical advances that made spa bathing outdated and the cessation of illegal gambling in the city.”

Southwest Hotels closed the Majestic in 2006. The yellow-brick building burned in a huge fire in February 2014. The remainder of the hotel, which was boarded up and deteriorating badly, was torn down last year.

H. Grady Manning was only 47 when he died in Hot Springs on Sept. 4, 1939. He reportedly drowned. The Little Rock City Council passed a resolution saying that Manning would “always be remembered as a man of the highest integrity and devotion toward the welfare of his community, the state and the nation.”

His widow continued to operate Southwest Hotels before passing the company on to the couple’s only child, Joy Manning Scott, who died in June 2014. She grew up in her family’s hotels and later married Morin Scott, living in Austin, Texas. The couple was married for 55 years.

Control of the company passed to Monty Scott, the son of Joy and Morin Scott.

Monty Scott, who was born at Austin in 1949, worked for a time at the investment firm Goldman Sachs and in the oil and gas industry before joining Southwest Hotels. He died unexpectedly in January 2016. Soon afterward the Scott family began entertaining offers for the Arlington, the last hotel under the auspices of a company that once had owned 10 hotels.

 

 

Posted in Building Arkansas, Hot Springs, Little Rock | 1 Comment »

The Arlington: Relief and anxiety

Tuesday, July 11th, 2017

My initial reaction, like that of a lot of Arkansans, was relief when I heard Monday that the sale of the Arlington Hotel had been finalized.

The Arlington is the most iconic privately owned structure in our state. For decades, those of us who love this Southern grande dame watched with sadness as she became a shell of her former self.

We dreamed of a day when a new owner would step in and restore her.

We dreamed of a day when those in surrounding states once more would flock to the hotel, knowing that it was THE place to stay in Arkansas.

We dreamed of a day when those of us close enough to make day trips to Hot Springs would go to the Arlington just for the food.

We dreamed of a day when statewide associations again would make it the headquarters hotel for their conventions.

We dreamed of a day when its bathhouse would rival any spa in America.

We dreamed of a day when the place to see and be seen in Arkansas would be the lobby of the renovated Arlington Hotel.

We dreamed of a day when the Arlington veranda would be described as Arkansas’ front porch, a civilized place to sit in a comfortable chair under a spinning ceiling fan while having a well-made drink.

So we cheered when we heard that the last remaining hotel in the once formidable Southwest Hotels portfolio had been sold. Perhaps the day we had dreamed of wasn’t far away.

Soon, however, relief turned to anxiety.

We worried that so little is known about the new owner, Al Rajabi of San Antonio. He recently renovated what had been the Clarion (and the Hilton before that) into the Four Points by Sheraton on South University Avenue in Little Rock. But this isn’t a chain hotel catering to folks with relatives in nearby hospitals. This is the Arlington, a hotel that should be mentioned in the same breath as other old Southern resorts such as the Greenbrier in West Virginia and the Homestead in Virginia.

We worried when we were told that Rajabi had owned 30 hotels through the years. That’s because no list of those hotels was provided.

We worried that an announcement that had been in the works for weeks gave no details whatsoever about renovation plans.

We worried that Rajabi would not answer questions from the media, directing people instead to a news release that contained precious few details.

We worried that the company that bought the hotel, Sky Capital Group LP, was only formed in April.

We worried that the news release said Sky Capital was the owner and operator of the Four Points in Little Rock even though the owner of record is Windsor Capital LLP, of which Rajabi is a partner.

For all we know, these questions will be answered in the days to come.

Please forgive us for having doubts, Mr. Rajabi, but we’ve been fooled so many times through the years in Hot Springs.

Southwest allowed the Majestic Hotel to deteriorate as the Arlington has done. Two subsequent owners made promises but did nothing. That old gal finally burned.

Several  developers promised to redevelop the Velda Rose. It still sits empty today.

South down Central Avenue, we were told that the Royale Vista Inn finally would be redeveloped. Scaffolding went up, but nothing was ever completed.

What has been the trademark of Hot Springs in recent decades? More than hot baths and thoroughbred racing, unfortunately, it has been landlords who have allowed their properties to deteriorate, milking every dime out of them and putting little back in.

You will excuse us, Mr. Rajabi, for being skeptical. You see, we’ve seen too many people fail to deliver on their promises in our beloved Spa City.

Your online biography says you graduated from UCLA in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, so maybe you can understand the anxiety on the part of this societal segment known as Arkansans.

Prove us wrong, Mr. Rajabi.

Please prove us wrong.

Renovate the rooms, reducing the number while increasing the size.

After refreshing the beautiful Venetian Dining Room (so much potential there), bring in a big-name chef who will be an attraction in his/her own right.

Mixology is all the rage these days, so hire some hip, young bartenders who will have millennials driving all the way from Little Rock for a drink.

Transform the bathhouse into a spa that people as far away as Dallas will want to visit.

Fill the veranda with furniture in Dorothy Draper pastels and add an outside bar.

Fill your basement with high-end boutiques.

Transform the neighboring Wade Building into a place for high-dollar suites.

Mr. Rajabi, as I stated at the outset, the Arlington isn’t just another hotel, at least for those of us born and raised in this state. I’ll say it again: It’s the most iconic privately owned building in Arkansas.

With this purchase comes certain obligations to the 3 million people of Arkansas.

We wish you well, Mr. Rajabi.

Please don’t disappoint us.

 

Posted in Building Arkansas, Hot Springs, Traveling Arkansas | 3 Comments »

Portland of the South

Thursday, June 29th, 2017

Though Brooklyn gives it a run for the money these days, you would be on safe ground if you were to describe Portland as the Hipster Capital of America.

The website Thrilllist once wrote of Portland: “Any heir to the city’s handcrafted, free-range throne must have these qualities: A substantial food and drink culture, an emphasis on artisan shops and a considerable number of eccentrics.”

The television sketch comedy series “Portlandia” is filmed on location in Portland and is set in a feminist bookstore. It’s a hipster favorite.

CBS News once said it looks for four attributes that it believes hipster cities have in common. To quote CBS:

“Young people. Hipsters can be any age, of course, but they’re more likely to be between 20-34.

“Education. A high percentage have a bachelor’s degree.

“Cafes. Where else would you debate the best method for brewing pour-over coffee?

“Yoga studios. Because apparently hipsters and yoga are BFFs.”

David Frasher, who has been the Hot Springs city manager since the spring of 2016, came to Arkansas after 11 years in Oregon. Six of those years were spent in the Portland area.

Frasher hails from the Kansas City area. He wanted to be back in this part of the country to be closer to his parents, who are in their 80s. He has a young daughter, and he wants her to spend time with her grandparents.

But more than family considerations brought Frasher to Arkansas. He saw in Hot Springs — especially its historic downtown — tremendous potential; the Portland of the South perhaps. It’s much smaller than Portland, but there’s the chance for that same type of outdoorsy, coffee-fueled, bicycle-friendly, craft brewery-filled buzz that attracts young, talented people.

“I looked at the photos in the job listing,” Frasher says. “There was this downtown tucked in the middle of a national park. It was unique. The descriptions of the place made it sound like Lake Wobegon.”

It’s far from Lake Wobegon.

There’s a contentious brand of politics that finds the city and county governing bodies at each other’s throats on a regular basis.

The mayor at the time of his arrival often was at war with fellow members of the Hot Springs Board of Directors.

The rubble of the burned-out Majestic Hotel was at one end of Central Avenue.

The Arlington Hotel was in a serious state of decline.

Large downtown structures such as the Medical Arts Building had stood empty for years.

Yet where others saw urban decay, Frasher saw potential.

Want to see the future of downtown Hot Springs?

Walk into Kollective Tea+Coffee, a trendy spot at 110 Central Ave. It’s a place that attracts the type of young entrepreneurs who might someday live in buildings such as the Medical Arts or the Velda Rose.

Frasher gets that. He also understands that this particular demographic wants things such as hiking trails and bicycle paths.

“There was a group that demanded those types of amenities when I was in Portland, and the city responded by providing them,” Frasher says. “I saw that the formula works, though you can’t lose your identity in the process. Everything can’t be new or you’re no different than some suburb. There are things you can do to attract people without losing your historic character.”

The Hot Springs Board of Directors recently authorized Frasher and his staff to seek a major grant from the federal Economic Development Administration to add a level to the Exchange Street Parking Plaza along with an entrance to the deck from Central Avenue. Some street parking downtown will go away so what are known as bump-outs can be built in front of Kollective, the Ohio Club, Fat Bottomed Girl’s Cupcake Shoppe, the Craft Beer Cellar and a stretch from the Porterhouse restaurant to a new restaurant known as the Vault. This will allow sidewalk dining at those locations. That should further spur the ongoing revitalization of downtown Hot Springs.

Frasher speaks of cities with a “Disneylike, contrived authenticity” (think Branson and Gatlinburg) and says he will work to make sure that downtown Hot Spring doesn’t turn into that.

He notes that city managers often stay below the radar, doing administrative work in relative obscurity. That hasn’t been the case in Hot Springs. He’s impressed that many people in Hot Springs have given money to build a park honoring David Watkins, his predecessor as city manager. Watkins died on Aug. 17, 2015, following a fall at his home. Watkins, an Alabama native, was a former city manager in Auburn, Ala., and Bryan, Texas, who took Hot Springs by storm after accepting the city manager’s job in 2012. He took on the old power structure of downtown Hot Springs. These men had allowed historic structures they owned to deteriorate. New fire codes were instituted. They required those property owners to make long-overdue improvements to their buildings.

“Adoption of the Thermal Basin Fire District in late 2013 continues to be a catalyst for downtown building safety,” Frasher said in his most recent State of the City address. “To date, 28 occupancies have been properly separated and protected within the 24 multistory downtown structures identified as unsafe. Sprinkler system installation, means of egress improvements, building sales, remodeling, stabilization and demolition have all occurred as a result of enforcement efforts within the district. The Hot Springs Fire Department continues to work with downtown property owners through the district to preserve legacy structures when possible while protecting public health and safety.

“In 2016, $14.8 million in real estate sales generated 25 new downtown businesses with an overall downtown capital investment exceeding $18 million. These numbers reflect a sharp increase compared to $8 million in real estate transactions generating 18 new businesses downtown in 2015. … The jewel of downtown is the newly opened Waters Hotel in the historic Thompson Building. The 62-room boutique hotel is situated in the heart of downtown, directly across from Bathhouse Row. It features The Avenue, a new restaurant with an award-winning young chef.”

Frasher spent much of his first year on the job listening to Hot Springs residents.

In an interview with The Sentinel-Record soon after taking the job, he said: “It’s important for the city manager to be engaged in the community. The first year is about making relationships. You can’t listen too much in that first year. I’m going to try to spend my first six months to a year just getting to know the values of the city. The challenge is to understand the value dynamic and make sure recommendations are consistent with those community values. As soon as you understand the values, you can give much better advice.”

Frasher listened.

Then the city’s often controversial mayor, Ruth Carney, resigned suddenly in March.

Everyone now seems to be pulling in the same direction at City Hall.

Of the current members of the Hot Springs Board of Directors, Frasher says: “They like each other, and they work well together. It’s full steam ahead for the city of Hot Springs. The potential here is incredible.”

In his State of the City address, Frasher noted: “Redevelopment projects continue to be stimulated by the city’s building permit fee holiday extension. … The gateway intersection of Malvern Avenue and Convention Boulevard was transformed after the former Austin Hotel was extensively renovated and renamed the Hotel Hot Springs. Across the street, the new Regions Bank building was dedicated along with a historic water trough fountain in an expansive plaza that punctuates this downtown gateway. The plaza and fountain exemplify the visionary planning and partnership between Regions Bank and the city.

“To further the transformation of this area, the Embassy Suites Hotel completed a major remodel at the other end of the Hot Springs Convention Center. Increased nighttime lighting along with the completion of the Wayfinding Trail linking the Hot Springs Greenway Trail with the National Park Service’s Grand Promenade augment the safety and connectivity of this intersection to the surrounding area.”

Four big things now need to happen for downtown to achieve its full potential:

  1. The new owner of the Arlington Hotel must do a complete renovation, which likely will cost more than $50 million. Any halfway effort is doomed to fail. This is the most iconic privately owned building in Arkansas, and it’s in bad shape. The Arlington should be to Arkansas what the Greenbrier is to West Virginia, the Homestead is to Virginia, etc. — our grand ol’ Southern resort. People will flock there it if includes rooms along the lines of the Capital Hotel in Little Rock, a first-class spa, hip bartenders and a well-known chef working in an updated version of that beautiful dining room known as the Venetian. Room upgrades also are needed at other hotels downtown.
  2. The city must find the best use for the former Majestic site. The spot where Central, Whittington and Park avenues meet is among the most high-profile locations in the state. How the city develops that property will help determine the trajectory of downtown for decades to come. I’m among those who favor a series of outdoor thermal pools to highlight the hot waters. People would be allowed to play in them and take photos with steam rising in the background. Test wells are now being drilled at the site, and a series of public meetings will soon commence so Hot Springs residents can provide input. Frasher says: “This place is named Hot Springs for a reason. You can’t forsake your name. When you do this project, it had better be special. You only get one chance to do it correctly.”
  3. What’s known as the Northwoods Urban Forest must be properly developed. This property of almost 2,000 acres has three lakes that once provided drinking water. The pristine area is within walking distance of downtown hotels and restaurants and eventually will include mountain biking and hiking trails, a bike shop and a watercraft rental facility. It will be a bit of outdoorsy Oregon come to Hot Springs. A November feasibility study by Pros Consulting Inc. noted: “The site, if developed, would contribute significantly to the quality of life and tourism in Hot Springs. The strategic recommendations contained in this document provide a road map for the future of Northwoods, where outdoor adventure recreation opportunities will enhance and promote environmental stewardship and natural resource management. The Northwoods property has enormous potential to be a local, regional and even national leader in outdoor adventure recreation while preserving its beautiful natural setting. The proposed development would provide Hot Springs with a unique site that balances recreation and environmental stewardship and would serve as a valuable asset that attracts users from across the country.” Frasher says there are 44 miles of possible trails. And these days, it’s important to note, Walton family money often follows the development of mountain biking trails.
  4. More downtown residents through the development of apartments and condos in large, empty buildings such as the Velda Rose, the former Howe Hotel and the Medical Arts Building. That will give the neighborhood a 24-hour vibe, making it even more attractive to tourists while drawing additional restaurants and boutiques.

 

 

Posted in Hot Springs | 8 Comments »

The pizza man

Monday, May 8th, 2017

I was visiting with one of the civic leaders in Hot Springs recently when the subject turned to the rebirth of the Spa City’s downtown.

We began talking about a Brooklyn native who showed up in Hot Springs almost four years ago, hit the ground running and hasn’t slowed down since.

My lunch companion stated: “We’re lucky to have gotten that guy.”

“That guy” is Anthony Valinoti of DeLuca’s Pizzeria on Park Avenue.

Food enthusiasts across the state think he turns out the best pizza in Arkansas. Some have even proclaimed DeLuca’s to be among the best pizzerias in the country.

It’s quite a story for a former Wall Street banker who landed in Arkansas in 2013. At the time, he knew nothing about either Hot Springs or making pizzas.

I arrived at DeLuca’s prior to the 4 p.m. opening time on a recent Thursday. I mentioned that I had come from a lunch meeting that day, but the demonstrative Valinoti gave me a hug and still insisted on bringing me a Caesar salad along with several meatballs to snack on while we visited.

“I’m very, very lucky to have chosen this place,” he said in his thick New York accent. “I don’t think I could have made this work anywhere else. The people of Hot Springs simply refused to allow me to fail in those early days when I really didn’t know what I was doing.

“I’m not a chef. I’m a kid from a blue-collar family in Brooklyn. My style is to put my head down and get to work on whatever project I take on. I should have declared this a failed experiment and quit during the first year. But I couldn’t quit because I knew how many people in Hot Springs were pulling for us. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I’m still that way. If someone comes in here to eat, I want to make sure that we don’t let them down. I walk around the room asking them what they think. If they have a suggestion, I take it to heart.”

Valinoti, 54, decided as a child that he would one day work on Wall Street. His father was a truck driver and a policeman. Valinoti indeed worked on Wall Street for 13 years and made good money.

Something was missing, however.

Even though the paychecks were large, the work itself ceased to be rewarding. Valinoti quit his job and moved to Las Vegas. Though Sin City had its charms, Valinoti still wasn’t fulfilled. A friend from California, who developed shopping centers for a living, was visiting Las Vegas and said one day, “If it weren’t for my ex-wife, I would live in Hot Springs.”

The man told Valinoti about an old resort city in rural Arkansas that had, in a sense, been Las Vegas before there was a Las Vegas — casinos, floor shows, the works. He said that the downtown area of Hot Springs was a bit down on its luck but that the place had history, charm and hospitable people.

Valinoti was intrigued.

He booked a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Little Rock the next morning, rented a car upon arrival and drove to Hot Springs. He got a room at the Arlington Hotel, walked down the street to drink at Maxine’s and soaked in the atmosphere.

“I knew immediately that I was home,” Valinoti said. “I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of this place. I was overcome by its charm and felt more relaxed than I had ever felt before. I knew within a few hours that I would move here and start a business.”

In cities across the country, Valinoti had found himself frustrated with the inability to find pizzas like the ones he grew up eating in Brooklyn. He’s quick to admit that he has a short attention span and needed a new project. Valinoti began experimenting with how to make Brooklyn-style pizzas, found space in a building on a stretch of Park Avenue that has seen better days and opened the doors of DeLuca’s with six tables on Nov. 22, 2013.

He admitted to me that he locked himself in the men’s room that first afternoon before the restaurant’s doors opened.

“I was terrified,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that I had the hubris to do this. The idea of feeding other people had sounded good as a general concept, but then I actually had to do it.”

Valinoti eventually unlocked the restroom door, came out and fed several hungry patrons that night. He continued to perfect his methods, especially the way he makes the dough. Within months, foodies across the state were talking about this new spot in Hot Springs.

Here’s how Stephanie Smittle began a wonderfully written feature on Valinoti in the Arkansas Times back in March: “Anthony Valinoti, owner of DeLuca’s Pizzeria at 407 Park Ave. in Hot Springs, thrives on the kind of volatility involved in making pizza, as he says, ‘the hard way.’ DeLuca’s has no freezer. It has no microwave, and it has no stand mixer — all standard equipment for reducing a restaurant’s margin of error and streamlining a production process. It has no dedicated room in which to ‘grow the dough’ (Valinoti’s words), and therefore no consistent way to sequester the fermenting mounds from the litany of things that can affect dough rise — humidity, the temperature outdoors, whether the yeast is feeling feisty that particular afternoon.

“‘If you treat it with a lot of respect, it can turn out well,’ Valinoi told me. ‘I’m not a chef. I don’t consider myself a chef. But a chef takes something that’s pretty much dead and reanimates it. Chefs are reanimators. This is what they do.’

“Valinoti is a storyteller and a gesturer. He cupped an imaginary globe of yeasty life in the air with hands covered in smudges of nonimaginary pizza dough, dusting my laptop and the table beneath it with fine flour at each firm conclusion. ‘When you put water, salt, flour and yeast in a bowl, it comes to life. And the idea behind what I’ve learned over the last there years is how do you harness that life?’

“As a kid, Valinoti would visit Di Fara Pizza in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood on Brooklyn’s Avenue J, watching the revered Dom De Marco hunched over the counter, forming discs by hand and snipping basil over the finished pies with a pair of kitchen scissors.”

Valinoti told Smittle: “He has been doing what I guess we all try to emulate at some point. Nobody really understood what it was. It was just really that good.”

When the subject turned to his previous career, he told her: “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to work on Wall Street. There was something prestigious about banking, especially in New York. And that’s what I gravitated towards. … I’m very lucky in that if I lock into something, I can get to be pretty good at it. You know, it may take me a minute, but my attention span is that of a gnat so you’ve got to lock me in, and you’ve got to lock me into a project that is way above my head. That makes me keep going. That makes me keep looking for answers.”

He seems to have found the answer to making great pizzas.

An earlier Arkansas Times review described DeLuca’s pizzas this way: “After making my selection from the menu, and a very short wait, my server placed the pie on my table. This thing was like a work of art. A rainbow of colors — red, orange, white and green. Pepperoni, onions, cherry tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms and fresh basil. I wasn’t sure if I should eat it or frame it.

“The first bite made me realize that this is what real pizza is. For those old enough to remember Pop Rocks candy, the candy that would pop and crack in your mouth, the sensation was the same. Only this time, instead of sweet candy flavor, what popped was the basil, the sauce, the fresh tomatoes and mushrooms, and the spicy pepperoni. The thin crust had a crisp texture to it, but a little chewy at the same time, very enjoyable. Everything has a flavor all its own, but it all comes together to make a flavor unlike any pizza I’ve had. Now you might say that this reaction was due to it being my first visit, but I assure you the reaction is the same on every visit, and there have been many, with many more still to come.”

The huge fire that consumed what remained of the oldest section of the Majestic Hotel just down the street occurred a few months after DeLuca’s opened. The power at the restaurant went out that Thursday night, and the street was blocked by emergency vehicles. But rather than being a setback to the neighborhood, the fire proved to be a wake-up call for Arkansans. People not only in Hot Springs but across the state realized that they had allowed a place that had once been the jewel of the South to deteriorate over a period of decades.

Feb. 27, 2014 — the night of the fire — was the beginning of the ongoing renaissance of downtown Hot Springs.

And DeLuca’s, which now draws customers from across the region, has been a key part of that renaissance.

The restaurant was full by 4:30 p.m. on the day I was there. I talked to a couple in a nearby parking lot who had driven from Little Rock to bring their granddaughter to DeLuca’s for the first time.

“I learn more about this city and love it more with each passing day,” Valinoti told me as I chewed on a meatball. “The Majestic fire was awful, but I saw hope and optimism in the wake of that event. Look at all of the buildings that are being sold downtown. Look at the developments that are now taking place. People said that I shouldn’t open a business on Park Avenue, but sometimes it takes an outsider to see what other people can’t see. Now there are people walking down here at night from the hotels on Central Avenue. They feel safe.

“I’m hoping to see more businesses on this street. I had a guy in here the other day who had ridden his motorcycle 112 miles just to eat here. Those kinds of stories keep me going.”

Like me, Valinoti hopes the city of Hot Springs will develop outdoor thermal pools on the Majestic site, which finally has been cleared of debris. He believes that will bring even more visitors his way.

Summing up the past four years, Valinoti said, “It’s serendipity that I’m in Hot Springs. You know, the fork in the road sometimes takes you to where you’re supposed to be.”

The restaurant is only open four days a week, which Valinoti calls the perfect schedule.

“I don’t think I could enjoy doing this seven days a week,” he said.

Valinoti lives on Lake Hamilton. He told me: “My friends have boats, and they love to take me out of the water. By Monday morning, after four days of this, I just want to be out on the lake. This is so much more satisfying to me than my work on Wall Street. My father wanted to kill me when I told him I was leaving Wall Street, but this was meant to be. There’s something beautiful about feeding people things they enjoy. And there’s still plenty of room for improvement.”

Posted in Hot Springs, Restaurants | 1 Comment »

Spring at Couchwood

Thursday, April 20th, 2017

It’s time for lunch, but Elizabeth Dober is in no hurry to eat.

She’s pointing to framed black-and-white photos on the walls of the main lodge at Couchwood, the retreat built by Arkansas Power & Light Co. founder Harvey Couch on the shores of Lake Catherine.

Dober is particularly fascinated by a photo of Herbert Hoover that was taken in September 1927 when Couchwood was new.

The Great Flood of 1927 was ongoing, and Arkansas was one of the states hit the hardest. Hoover had run unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920. President Warren G. Harding later appointed him commerce secretary, and President Calvin Coolidge asked him to lead the federal response to the 1927 flood.

“In 1927, the Mississippi reclaimed three-quarters of its flood plain, devastating Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana,” writes historian John Barry. “The statistics recounting the damage are staggering. At its widest, the river created a vast inland sea more than 75 miles across. One could travel the normally dry 70 miles from Vicksburg to Monroe, La., by boat. Not counting the flooding of parts of cities as large as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, just along the lower river alone, the homes of more than 920,000 people were damaged. The nation’s population at the time was only 120 million.

“Roughly 1 percent — perhaps more — of the entire population of the country was flooded out of their homes; 330,000 were rescued by boat from rooftops, trees, levee crowns and second stories. Hundreds of thousands of homes and commercial buildings were destroyed. No one knows the death toll — the Red Cross claimed it was only 246 but the Weather Bureau said 500, while a professional disaster expert estimated the dead in Mississippi alone at 1,000.

“But the biggest impact of the flood was less on individual communities that were inundated than on America itself. Far more than any other natural disaster, the 1927 Mississippi River flood altered the course of American history. It did this in four chief ways: It revised environmental management, propelled a dark horse to the presidency, altered the political landscape for African-Americans and expanded the role of government in crises.”

Barry writes that the 1927 flood “made Herbert Hoover president of the United States. An enormously wealthy engineer, Hoover developed and owned mines and oilfields in America, Russia, China, Australia, South America and Africa. But for all his wealth, he had no political base. How could he? Hoover had left the United States after graduating Stanford and did not return until the United States entered World War I. He had not even voted in a presidential election until 1920. Nonetheless he wanted to be president. A logistical genius, he had organized American food production and distribution during World War I and fed much of Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war. John Maynard Keynes said he was ‘the only man who emerged from the ordeal (of the peace conference) with an enhanced reputation.’

“He became known as the Great Humanitarian. Using his own wealth, he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1920. His campaign was mocked, and he received no support. But President Warren G. Harding named him secretary of commerce, and in 1927, President Calvin Coolidge put him in charge of the response to the flood.

“The flood was the biggest story of the year and it lasted for weeks, through several crests, the rescue of populations and recovery planning. Hoover and his staff worked diligently to exploit the coverage; no newspaper was too small. Hoover personally communicated with weekly papers from Arizona and Texas to Washington state, Nebraska and Indiana. In evaluating his strategy, the present-day political commentator James Carville concluded that ‘Hoover had a better press operation than any politician I know today.’ Routinely, the press hailed Hoover as a hero and a savior; a California paper proclaimed, ‘He is the ablest and most efficient American in public life. … In personal fitness for the presidency there is no other American, even remotely, in Mr. Hoover’s class.’

“Coverage like that prompted Hoover to confide to a friend, ‘I shall be the nominee, probably. It is practically inevitable.'”

Hoover indeed captured the presidency in 1928.

Those who are familiar with Arkansas history won’t be surprised to learn that Harvey Couch was among Hoover’s confidants.

Born in 1877 near the Arkansas-Louisiana border in the Columbia County community of Calhoun, Couch took a job at age 21 as a mail clerk for the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway and quickly moved up the ladder.

Writing for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Patricia Laster described Couch as the man who “helped bring Arkansas from an agricultural economy in the early 20th century to more of a balance between agriculture and industry. His persuasiveness with investors from New York and his ingenuity, initiative and energy had a positive effect on Arkansas’ national reputation among businessmen. He ultimately owned several railroad lines and a telephone company and was responsible for what became the state’s largest utility, AP&L.”

Laster wrote that Couch’s first job away from the family farm was “to fire the boiler of a local cotton gin’s gas steam engine and bring it up to the required pressure. He earned 50 cents a day. While waiting to hear about his application to the Railway Mail Service, he became a drugstore clerk. His hard work and honesty prompted his boss to assign him the additional task of collecting overdue accounts.

“At age 21, he was hired as a mail clerk on the St. Louis-Texarkana route of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway and was soon transferred to head clerk on the St. Louis Southwestern Railway. At a water stop, Couch noticed a construction crew raising a pole — not for the telegraph line but as part of a long-distance telephone system. After questioning the linemen, he saw a chance to help bring phone service to places like Magnolia. He paid a colleague $50 to exchange routes so he could clerk the Magnolia-north Louisiana route. Enlisting his brother Pete as crew leader to move and set up poles and a postmaster in Louisiana to become a partner, Couch began the North Louisiana Telephone Co. The line expanded, and Couch bought his partner’s share of the business.

“Couch’s expanding telephone system took him to Athens, La., where he met Jessie Johnson. They married on Oct. 4, 1904. The couple had five children. In 1911, Couch sold NLTC, which had 1,500 miles of line and 50 exchanges in four states, to Southwestern Bell for more than $1 million. Too young to retire, he was determined to build another company. In 1914, at the age of 35, he bought from Jack Wilson the only electric transmission line in the state, which ran 22 miles between Malvern and Arkadelphia. The system ran only at night.

“Sixteen years later, bolstered by hydroelectric dams on the Ouachita River, the company that Couch named Arkansas Power & Light had 3,000 miles of line serving cities and towns in 63 of the state’s 75 counties as well as 3,000 farmers. The company, now called Entergy, serves 2.4 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.”

Couch went on to create Louisiana Power & Light Co. and Mississippi Power & Light Co. He built the country’s first modern gas-fueled power plant near Monroe, La.

On the Ouachita River, he built Remmel and Carpenter dams, forming Lake Hamilton and Lake Catherine (which was named after his only daughter).

His main home and business offices were in Pine Bluff. Laster wrote that the only luxury he allowed himself was Couchwood.

The famous humorist Will Rogers was among those who visited Couchwood. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dropped by in 1936 while he was in Arkansas to help the state celebrate its centennial.

The compound covers 170 acres and remains in the Couch family. Elizabeth Dober is the granddaughter of Harvey Couch. Her father was Harvey Jr., who went by Don. She lives in Little Rock and has helped manage Couchwood for the past couple of decades.

Dober’s mother was from a prominent old south Louisiana sugar-growing family, the Levert family. The Levert Cos., established in 1915, still own a planation mansion near St. Martinville, La., known as the St. John House. The house, constructed of Louisiana cypress and surrounded by giant live oak trees, was built about 1828 by a wealthy planter named Alexandre DeClouet. Jean Batiste Levert and Louis Bush of New Orleans acquired the plantation and the home in July 1885. In February 1887, Bush sold his interest to Levert. The plantation has been owned by the Levert interests since that date.

After graduating from Virginia Military Institute and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Don Couch went to work for a bank in New Orleans and met his wife in the Crescent City.

In a 2014 story in the Levert family newsletter, Dober said: “I sometimes do feel I am married to Couchwood. … I arrange for repairmen such as plumbers and electricians, but a caretaker nearby meets with them. … I pay all the bills, fill out tax forms and get the paperwork ready for the CPA. I really enjoy the work at Couchwood because I feel like I am helping to preserve it.”

When Arkansas Business devoted much of a 2013 issue to Entergy’s 100th birthday, Dober told the publication: “Electric lights, bridges and promoting Arkansas were among grandfather’s favorite things.”

Dober refers to her grandfather as Daddy Couch, though she doesn’t remember him. Couch died of heart disease in 1941 — two years before Dober was born — in a house named Little Pine Bluff at Couchwood. Following funeral services in the city of Pine Bluff, a special train took his body to Magnolia to be buried adjacent to his parents. Couch’s private train car — named Magnolia — is now on the Couchwood grounds.

Hoover was meeting with Couch in 1927 because Gov. John Martineau had appointed Couch as the flood relief director for Arkansas. The Great Flood of 1927 was followed by the drought of 1930-31. Couch was appointed state relief chairman for that event and worked in Washington to help Arkansas obtain more than $20 million in federal loans for farmers.

“Hoover appointed Couch to the seven-member board for the president’s newly formed Reconstruction Finance Corp., which operated from 1931-56,” Laster wrote. “The RFC was the president’s way of getting the government involved. The new program’s mission was to strengthen confidence, facilitate exports, protect and aid agriculture, make temporary advances to industries and stimulate employment. Couch was one of seven directors of the RFC, and he moved to Washington, D.C., for three years. He served as supervisor of the public works section, overseeing budgets and encouraging the building of water and sewage systems, bridges and electric lines. He and Jesse Jones were the only Hoover appointees to stay on after Roosevelt was elected.”

“Look at Hoover with that tie on,” Dober says while admiring the 1927 photo. “They say he would go fishing in a coat and tie. Daddy Couch offered to take him fishing when he was here, but it was a Sunday and Hoover said, ‘The Hoovers don’t fish on Sundays.'”

There also are framed photos in the main lodge at Couchwood of well-known figures who have visited the compound in the decades since Couch’s death, including former U.S. Sens. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor.

During the 1930s, Harvey Couch would host what he called the Annual Round-Up, bringing together business and government leaders from across the region. A framed program from the March 1938 event gives these directions: “When you come in the big gate, forget all your troubles. Be sure to sign the register. Couchwood is proud of its guests. Go to bed when you like and arise when you please. At meals, take as many helpings as you desire. If you don’t see what you want, ask for it. Stay as long as you like and return soon. Everything is off the record.”

The main lodge has eight rooms and can sleep more than 20 people. A second house named Calhoun was built soon afterward. Its claim to fame is that visitors can fish off the porch. Little Pine Bluff was the next to be constructed, and Remmelwood (Couch’s only daughter, Catherine, married Pratt Remmel) was built after that.

The other four Couch children were boys — Johnson Olin Couch, Don Couch, Kirke Couch and Bill Couch. Catherine Couch Remmel died in January 2006 at age 87, the last of her generation. A fifth generation of the Couch family now enjoys Couchwood with the largest crowds traditionally turning up for the Fourth of July.

When Harvey Couch was presiding over the compound, rumors would spread about the identities of important figures visiting Couchwood. Time magazine reported one year that two visitors had arrived in a plane that landed on Lake Catherine.

The main lodge was designed by John Parks Almand of Little Rock, who was part of the team that designed Little Rock Central High School. Following the school’s completion in 1927, the American Institute of Architects described it as “the most beautiful high school in America.” Almand also designed the Medical Arts Building in downtown Hot Springs, which was the tallest building in the state for almost 30 years after opening in 1930.

“Almand worked in a variety of architectural styles during his 50-year career, including Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Gothic Revival and California Mission,” the Encyclopedia of Arkansas said of the architect. “A stickler for detail, Almand recommended the finest materials to his clients and required a high level of workmanship from builders. On more than one occasion, he told a contractor to tear out and replace work that he deemed inferior.”

At Couchwood, Almand used red cedar logs shipped in by train from Oregon.

Harvey Couch later hired sculptor Dionicio Rodriguez to design planters, outdoor seating and even a drink cooler disguised as a tree stump. Rodriguez, a Mexican native, is probably best known for his work on the Old Mill in North Little Rock. Developer Justin Matthews brought Rodriguez to Arkansas in 1932 to work in Matthews’ Lakewood housing development.

“Couchwood offers the best collection of his work in the domestic sculpture category,” said the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “Helpers built concrete footings for his sculptures, and the underpinnings were made with reinforcing bars, rods, mesh screen wire and rubble, held together with a rough coat of concrete. Metal materials were bound together with wire, not welded. Working outdoors, the sculptor himself applied the surface coat of smooth concrete or ‘neat’ cement, a term for pure Portland cement. To imitate nature, varied textures were created using his hands, forks, spoons or handmade tools. Secretive about his methodology, the nomadic Rodriguez made no preliminary sketches or drawings and did not record the ingredients of the chemical washes used to tint his sculptures.”

Dober delights in showing off Couchwood and talking about “Daddy Couch.”

On display are Indian artifacts uncovered when Lake Catherine was constructed in the 1920s, a wall devoted to AP&L history and even the plaque presented on Harvey Couch Day in Pine Bluff in 1923.

Massachusetts may have the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod, but Arkansas has Couchwood on Lake Catherine.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Favorite Arkansans, Hot Springs | 3 Comments »

Wide-open days in the Spa City

Thursday, April 6th, 2017

It has been fun writing about the colorful characters who loved to hang out in Hot Springs.

One of the most colorful was Rodney Fertel of New Orleans, who became known as the Gorilla Man after running unsuccessfully for mayor of the Crescent City on the promise that he would buy a pair of gorillas for the Audubon Zoo.

Rodney’s wife from 1947-58 was Ruth Fertel, the founder of the Ruth’s Chris chain of steakhouses.

Their son, Randy Fertel, wrote a book about his parents titled “The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak.” It features a photo of Rodney and Ruth walking down Central Avenue in Hot Springs in 1948.

Here’s part of what Randy Fertel wrote in the book (published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2011), which I would highly recommend you read: “If we could return to the moment captured in a 1948 photo, this couple, Mom and Dad, Ruth and Rodney, might catch our eye as they stride down Central Avenue in Hot Springs. In full sunlight, Ruth holds the crook of Rodney’s right arm and gazes at the camera with self-assurance and an easy smile. While women behind her clutch their bags tight, she carries a handbag by its strap. She wears heels with bows.

“That sunny day in Hot Springs, an unseen ornate gold barrette tooled in her initials — RUF — holds her hair swept back from her high brow. The barrette is a gift from her husband, whose family is in the trade — pawnshops.

“His face in shadow and wearing sunglasses, not unaware of the camera himself, her husband gazes at her with fondness and regard. Rodney sports a tie with bold ovals, and in his right hand he carries a folded paper, probably the Daily Racing Form. He wears his shirtsleeves rolled. His left arm swings forward with a watch on his wrist, the first of many gold Rolexes, and a cigarette in the tips of his fingers — he has yet to give them up. One can almost see the ‘insouciant challenge of his loping walk,’ as Terry Teachout, Louis Armstrong’s recent biographer, paints it. Dad shared with Pops the same neighborhood, New Orleans’ South Rampart Street.

“It is three years since the end of the Second World War in which Rodney Fertel (ne Weinberg) did not serve (4-F for reasons that have always been obscure). It’s two years since Ruth Fertel (nee Udstad) graduated from Louisiana State University with honors in physics and chemistry. She is 21, he is 27. In less than a year, their firstborn son, Jerry, will enter the world. In two years, I will arrive.

“They come from a watery world and they’ve found another here. In the hills to their left and right are Hot Springs Mountain and West Mountain where 47 underground springs spew a million gallons of water a day, no matter the weather. Carbon dating shows that 4,000 years ago the water fell as rain upon the Ouachita forest of central Arkansas. Since then it has seeped slowly down through the earth’s crust until, superheated by the earth’s core, it gushes rapidly to the surface, a constant 143 degrees Fahrenheit. Mountain Valley Water, Rodney’s lifelong favorite brand, was founded nearby. Since the dawn of time, spring floods have coursed south, building with alluvial ooze the deep Mississippi Delta where Ruth was born.”

There’s something about Hot Springs that inspires good writing like this.

In the spring of 1962, Robert H. Boyle would write in Sports Illustrated: “Everything considered, there isn’t anything in the world like Hot Springs — or the people in it. This is not to say the town couldn’t be improved. Part of it could use a couple of coats of paint; there are junky signs and assorted clutter disfiguring some of the land around Lake Hamilton; and a local restaurant may mar a good meal by serving the Chianti ice cold. But perhaps it would be better not to tamper with Hot Springs.”

It once was common for photographers to take photos of those walking up and down Central Avenue and then sell the photos. You’ve probably seen those black-and-white shots of people strolling the avenue. In the background of many of the photographs is the neon sign for a restaurant named Hammons.

Randy Fertel writes: “Hammons, no apostrophe. Sea Food, two words. Inside a sign promises ‘One Day Out of the Ocean,’ meaning one day up from the Louisiana bayous where Ruth was born. Rodney prefers Hammons to the Arlington’s grand dining room with its organ and white-gloved black waiters and where, at age 13, I develop a taste for watercress salad and cornbread sticks slathered in butter and honey.

“Rodney has not yet developed his taste for political clowning. His Gorilla Man campaign for New Orleans mayor, with its catchy slogan — ‘Don’t vote for a monkey. Elect Fertel and get a Gorilla’ — lies 20 years in the future.

“Ruth has not yet read the classified ad that will, in 1965, lead her to borrow $22,000 to purchase a little steakhouse with 17 tables near the Fair Grounds in New Orleans. My parents were married just a few years, from 1947 to 1958. They each had a certain glamour.”

They were in the right place in 1948 for people with glamour. As they like to say in Hot Springs, it was Vegas before there was a Vegas.

When the photo was taken, the 20-year reign of Leo Patrick McLaughlin as Hot Springs’ mayor had just come to an end. Sid McMath was leading the GI revolt against the McLaughlin machine. McMath had been elected prosecuting attorney (and would be elected governor in 1948), and a grand jury began an investigation into the McLaughlin administration in March 1947. McLaughlin announced he would not run again. He was indicted on numerous charges but never convicted.

Wendy Richter, the archivist at Ouachita Baptist University, writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture: “McLaughlin ran for mayor in 1926 on a platform that promised Hot Springs would be an open town. He also pledged to improve city streets. McLaughlin delivered on his campaign promises. He directed work that paved miles of streets and, most notably, he allowed illegal gambling. McLaughlin also orchestrated the Arkansas Legislature’s approval of the reopening of Oaklawn Park in 1934 after a 15-year hiatus.

“During McLaughlin’s two decades as mayor from 1927-47, only one person ran against him. Prior to each election during his administration, city employees would be given a ‘pink slip’ to share with friends and family, naming the candidates favored by the McLaughlin machine. Therefore, candidates appearing on the slip were assured support even though the names of many of the people who voted for them could be found only in cemeteries. McLaughlin’s ability to deliver votes made him a powerhouse in state politics. All he asked was that Hot Springs be left alone to operate as an open town.

“McLaughlin was a showman. He drew attention from tourists and locals alike when he rode daily down Central Avenue in a sulky pulled by his horses, Scotch and Soda, while wearing a riding costume with a red carnation in his lapel. This showmanship surfaced in his political speeches as well; he often shed his coat and rolled up his sleeves as a speech intensified.

“Underworld characters frequented Hot Springs during the McLaughlin administration. Men such as Al Capone, Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Frank Costello visited the spa town with the understanding that they would exhibit only their best behavior. The nation’s gangsters utilized Hot Springs as a sanctuary or retreat; McLaughlin and his associates welcomed them as long as they did not bother the locals and left their criminal activities behind.

“Local businessmen managed the town’s gambling operations under the watchful eyes of McLaughlin and his associates. The owners and managers appeared regularly in municipal court and helped finance city government by paying fines considered to be license fees for their operations. This income spurred the development of Hot Springs, which reached its peak as a health resort during his tenure as mayor. The spa’s bathing industry hit its zenith in the mid-1940s when visitors enjoyed more than a million baths annually.”

Randy Fertel describes the Spa City this way in his book: “In this year, 1948, Hot Springs is a wide-open town, dominated by the Southern Club, a gambling house in operation since 1893. In Las Vegas, Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel is only two years old and the Strip still but a dream. The mineral baths and the gambling tables draw Rodney and Ruth here from their home in New Orleans for long stays. Rodney enjoys independent means inherited from his pawnbroker grandparents; no job pulls him home.

“The horses bring them, too. In 1948, the Fair Grounds in New Orleans celebrates its Diamond Jubilee, 75 years of continuous thoroughbred racing. Hot Springs’ Oaklawn Park is almost as old. This very summer, Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, Huey’s brother and an inveterate gambler, comes to Hot Springs ‘for his arthritis.’ Gov. Long begins his day with the Daily Racing Form and the tout sheets. He helped the mob install slots throughout Louisiana; they let him know when the fix is in. Ruth and Rodney Fertel share Gov. Long’s taste for racehorses. In a few years, Ruth will earn her thoroughbred trainer’s license.”

Randy Fertel writes about Owney Madden, a man he describes as “a gangster from Liverpool by way of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. Owney Madden, or ‘Owney the Killer’ as he was called, had turned the Cotton Club in Harlem into a success before going upriver to spend seven years in Sing Sing — which didn’t prevent owning a casino in unregulated Hot Springs. To Mae West, fellow denizen of Hell’s Kitchen whose career he bankrolled and whom he dated, Madden was ‘sweet but oh so vicious.'”

Fertel writes that Hot Springs was “favored by gangsters both Jewish and Italian: Louis Lepke, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joy Adonis, Frank Costello. Luciano fled the Waldorf-Astoria for Hot Springs in 1936 when Tom Dewey, district attorney of New York City and future governor of New York, indicted him for prostitution. It took 20 Arkansas Rangers to surround and take Luciano. … Still in the honeymoon glow, Rodney this time splurges on a room at the Arlington Hotel, looming beyond the camera’s sight at the head of Central Avenue. Al Capone at one time kept a fourth-floor corner suite overlooking the Southern Club, his favorite, just across the street. He played at a raised poker table in order to command a clear view of the entire room. When Capone strode down Bathhouse Row, his goons surrounded him, two in front, two behind, and one on either side.”

Rodney’s grandparents in New Orleans purchased a vacation home at 359 Whittington Avenue in Hot Springs, and Rodney later would live here. Old-timers at the Hot Springs Country Club still tell stories about the Gorilla Man.

Randy Fertel writes of that house on Whittington: “There, I will first hear a woodpecker and there, 30 years later, Telemachus-like but only half-wanting reconciliation, I will seek my father and find the door ajar, the house empty, filled only with the rainwater that falls through the hole in the roof and the floor beneath it.”

Casino gambling was still going strong in Hot Springs in March 1964 when The New York Times published a story by Wallace Turner headlined “Hot Springs: Gamblers’ Haven.”

Turner wrote: “The gamblers of Hot Springs are locked in a struggle with the federal government to maintain their control of the biggest illegal gambling operation in the United States. The enterprises flourish with the support of the 30,000 residents of Hot Springs. Gambling has been a major feature of life here since Civil War times. The gambling places are wide open. They are on the pattern developed in the legal casinos operated in Nevada. The conduct of gambling is defined by Arkansas statute as a felony, punishable by up to three years in the state penitentiary. But no gambling.

“The state liquor laws also are ignored in Hot Springs. Last month the investigations by federal agents were stepped up, and top officials of the Department of Justice have announced that they intend to push still harder. … Local officials and the gamblers themselves in Hot Springs insist that there is no connection with national underworld syndicates.”

John Ermey, the Hot Springs police chief, told the newspaper: “The day anybody brings me any reliable information that the Mafia or any out-of-state people are involved in Hot Springs is the day I’ll get on the radio and television and in the press and take the battle to the public to attempt to bring about a complete reform. If there ever was any, I don’t know of it. The fellows who run the two big clubs were born and raised here.”

The Times reported: “There are two main gambling combines. The names of members of each group are well known to the officials who have control of law enforcement here. By Nevada standards, the operation is small. One Las Vegas Strip casino will win several times as much in a year as the total winnings of the three major casinos operated here. Estimates of winnings here are difficult to get. But they must be sizable. One place pays up to $10,000 a week for the supper club entertainment that it furnishes in a frank imitation of the Nevada casinos. Last week, Mickey Rooney was a main attraction. Gambling provides about 500 jobs in Hot Springs.”

It was noted in the story that Ermey, a Hot Springs native, lived next to Madden for years. Madden was 72 at the time the story was published.

“Madden for many years provided an argument for observers that gambling activities here had roots in other states,” Turner wrote. “Madden came here on his release from Sing Sing in 1933, married an Arkansas girl, had an interest in all bookmaking carried on here, then control of a race-wire service, visited with his friends when they came through either for the baths or to hide out and owned part of one of the casinos. Now he lives more or less in retirement, visiting almost daily with friends in the Southern Club.”

Turner reported that federal agents had tried 18 months earlier to shut down the Southern Club, but a federal grand jury refused to indict the owners.

“Since then the gambling operators have tried to stay out of interstate commerce,” Turner wrote. “They are at ease with local and state law enforcement. But they are frightened of the federal authorities. Their advertising never mentions gambling, although they buy radio spots to promote their supper club shows. The greater part of their business comes from outside Arkansas. The business people here are convinced that if the gamblers were put out of business, the community would suffer. They believe that Hot Springs’ economic health is dependent on the continuance of gambling. … The bathhouse business has declined because of changes in medical practice. This slack has been taken up by persons who come here to gamble. They also come here to drink for Arkansas has a liquor law that forbids the sale of mixed drinks. No one pays any attention to it in Hot Springs.”

The story pointed out that the city had a tax on gambling and liquor operations even though they were technically illegal.

“Places that serve mixed drinks pay $100 a month license fees to the city,” Turner wrote. “This goes up to $150 next year. Some other current fees include slot machines, $10 a month each; bingo, $100 a month; bookmakers, $200 a month; businesses that specialize in distributing results of races and sports events, $50 a month. The ordinance describes ‘places where craps, blackjack, roulette, chuck-a-luck, poker, rummy or other games of chance’ are played. This year places with more than five tables are taxed $500 a month and smaller places $300.”

The Times described downtown this way: “The venerable Arlington Hotel, an underworld meeting spot for many years, sits at the end of Bathhouse Row. Across the street is the Southern Club. A great building activity goes on here. About 1,000 new motel and hotel rooms are just finished, under construction or planned. Up the street, The Vapors draws the nightly gambling crowd, and first-class rooms are hard to get now that the racing season is open. Many of the 2 million visitors attracted to Hot Springs each year come during the seven weeks of racing. … The leading gambler in Hot Springs is Dane Harris, a tall and husky man of 46 years who exudes confidence and competence.”

Harris told the newspaper: “Public opinion in Hot Springs is for this. This business of gambling in Hot Springs is so old and so ingrained in the public’s mind that it isn’t looked on as a degrading business. … As far as the local people are concerned, someone is going to run the gambling, and it can be us as long as we run it right. If we don’t, we’re going out.”

Turner concluded his story this way: “So the gamblers have the public officials at bay, except those from the federal government. The gamblers calculate that they can beat federal intervention by staying out of interstate commerce.”

That all changed in November 1966 when Arkansas voters made Winthrop Rockefeller the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Already one of the country’s richest men, Rockefeller didn’t need payoffs from the gambling interests in Hot Springs. He began shutting down gambling soon after taking office in 1967. It was the end of an era for Hot Springs.

Posted in Hot Springs, Thoroughbred racing, Traveling Arkansas | 1 Comment »

The hottest spring

Monday, April 3rd, 2017

A friend who was well aware of my love of Hot Springs and the characters who have called it home through the years sent me a copy of an article that ran in the March 19, 1962, issue of Sports Illustrated.

The story was written by Robert H. Boyle, who lived on the banks of the Hudson River in New York and often wrote about fishing.

Sports Illustrated had published its first issue in August 1954 and become known for quality writing. The cover of the 1962 issue containing the Hot Springs story featured the UCLA basketball team, and the cover price was 25 cents.

The headline read: “The hottest spring in Hot Springs: That’s the forecast for this jumping Arkansas town where gambling is wide open, the track is fast and the fishing is fine.”

Spring remains prime time for tourism in the Spa City — Oaklawn Park is holding its annual Racing Festival of the South next week — but in 1962 the gambling machines were spread across the city rather than being confined to Oaklawn as is now the case.

Boyle wrote of men with nicknames such as Bones Martin, The Dreamer and Amarillo Slim.

“Atlantic City Red, the pool hustler, was there, though he kept denying his identity,” Boyle wrote. “‘You’re the 20th guy who’s confused me with him,’ he said, feigning innocence. His confrere, Daddy Warbucks, was expected there any minute. Tiny, the ‘heavyman,’ or bouncer, at The Vapors, was there, and the Round Man was out shooting at the golf course. Tommy Freeman, ex-welterweight champion of the world, was there, and so was a little geezer of 94, Cap’n Joe Piggott, who said he had been Teddy Roosevelt’s bodyguard. Col. Reed Landis, son of the late Judge Landis, the baseball commissioner, was there, and so was Lon Warneke, who won 192 games for the Cardinals and Cubs. Texas millionaires were there, along with some moonshiners from the Possum Kingdom in the hills nearby. Chicago cloak-and-suiters were there, to say nothing of arthritics from St. Joe, Mo.

“These and many more piled into the little city of 36,000 that snuggles in a valley of the Ouachita Mountains. The most unusual spa in the United States, Hot Springs is also, pound for pound, the greatest sporting town anywhere. Last week marked the middle of the town’s traditional spring season, and by all odds this one shapes up as the hottest in history — unless the FBI interferes. The FBI, you see, was also there. The only people who were leaving were the carnival folk who winter in town; they were outward bound for the Seattle World’s Fair and other midways near and far.

“Hot Springs, sometimes celebrated as the Paris of the Bible Belt, attracts characters and crowds galore because it has something for almost everyone. ‘Free Beer Tomorrow’ flashes a neon sign over one saloon. At times it seems as though the town was dreamed up in a collaboration of W.C. Fields and the Mayo brothers. Besides legal betting on the horses at Oaklawn Park, there’s illegal gambling — craps, roulette, chuck-a-luck, bingo, blackjack, slots, you name it — at the lavish casinos. There’s bathing in the radioactive waters from the hot springs at the Quapaw and other bathhouses along the Row on Central Avenue, bow-and-arrow shooting at Crystal Springs, where the National Archery Association holds its annual championship, superb fishing in the nearby countryside, sailing and skin-diving at lakes Hamilton, Catherine and Ouachita, championship cock fighting not too far away, coon hunting in the mountains and good jazz in the Skyline Lounge, where John Puckett plays the piano, and the Black Orchid, where Charles Porter, piano, and Reggie Cravens, bass, hold forth until 5 a.m.”

Puckett played the piano for diners in the Venetian Room of the Arlington Hotel until shortly before his death in January.

The Reggie Cravens Combo played in the Arlington lobby on a regular basis in later years.

“Hot Springs has lured people since time began,” Boyle wrote in 1962. “Warring Indian tribes used to gather there in holy truce to partake of the waters bubbling from the earth. Legend has it that Ponce de Leon was really looking for these springs when he was chasing after the Fountain of Youth. In 1832, the U.S. Congress recognized the therapeutic value of the water by setting aside four square miles with the 47 springs as a federal preserve. As far as anyone knows, the water has always flowed steadily from its unknown underground source at a rate of almost a million gallons a day, with an average temperature of 143 degrees.

“‘An unutterable, unspeakable, awesome miracle,’ intones Nate Schoenfeld, a local lawyer and bath booster, braced at attention, hat over heart.

“A National Park Service plant cools the water to body temperature and pipes it into the bathhouses, where private concessionaires, operating under strict lease from the government, serve it up to customers by the tubful. The water not only has a favorable effect on arthritis, bursitis and rheumatism, but it’s also most relaxing for the visitor un-afflicted with anything save a hangover or the tensions of modern life. The peak of bliss comes when the attendant pulls the plug after your daily 15-minute soaking. As the water surges down the drain, you are plastered to the sides of the tub like a wet leaf on a curbstone.

“The reputation of the spa built the town of Hot Springs. It was one of the first spring training sites for baseball teams. As early as 1886, the Chicago White Stockings repaired there to ‘boil out the alcoholic microbes’ picked up from winter ‘lushing.’ Boxers came down by droves, from John L. Sullivan and Battling Nelson to Harry Greb and Jersey Joe Walcott.

“In the 1930s and ’40s, Hot Springs was notorious as a sanctuary for gangsters on the lam. Pretty Boy Floyd stayed a spell, and so did the Alvin Karpis gang. They had the freedom of the city; indeed, a phone call from the mayor’s office is reputed to have triggered the Kansas City massacre. The mayor was Leo Patrick McLaughlin, an evil rogue who refused to let the kids in town have a playground. He preferred that they continue to loiter in pool halls. Known as Dixie’s Jimmy Walker, Leo always sported a fresh carnation in his lapel, wore his hat brim up in front and down in back and paraded around town in a carriage drawn by two hackney ponies named Scotch and Soda. His only advice to the gangsters was, ‘Check your irons at the state line.’

“McLaughlin met his downfall in 1946 when a group of GIs, led by Sid McMath, an ex-Marine officer who later became governor of the state, and Nate Schoenfeld, a onetime Syracuse halfback and Harvard Law School graduate, rallied an independent party that defeated the crooked machine. The GIs were reformers but not bluenoses. They closed down the gambling, purging it of Leo’s cronies, but after McMath became governor, it opened up again. The people wanted it that way.”

I grew up 35 miles from Hot Springs. It was my “big city” during the 1960s and 1970s when I was a boy, a seemingly exotic place filled with exotic people. There were the auction houses on Central Avenue, the ethnic restaurants and the places intended for adults only. I was a newspaper junkie (I still am) and was amazed that one could buy a copy of that day’s Chicago Tribune in the Arlington lobby. Large numbers of people from the Chicago area still vacationed in Hot Springs back then.

A half century ago, Winthrop Rockefeller, the state’s new governor, began shutting down the illegal gambling operations. Downtown Hot Springs fell into an era of decline that only recently has begun to abate. But in 1962, downtown was hopping.

Schoenfeld told Boyle: “The best way to govern is to do a hell of a lot of leavin’ alone. The people are the ultimate repository of what the good God has put in them. The gambling is home-owned and operated. There’s no hoodlum element, no oppression, no scum. No one forces himself on anyone else. There is no guy around here with greasy hair and a Mafia smile. The people are capable, clean, decent, friendly. This place reflects the quality, character and charm of all of us. This place has got roots. It’s 24 hours of happiness.”

The three big casinos were the Southern Club, the Belvedere and The Vapors.

Boyle wrote: “All have nightclubs. Jan Garber and his orchestra play regularly for dancing at the Belvedere throughout the season. In addition, there are about half a dozen smaller gambling places. … All the gambling houses in the city pay a local tax, $500 a month for what the law defines simply as ‘a large place’ and $200 a month for ‘a small place.’ When the city fathers passed this law in 1958, they noted, ‘It is not the intention of the City Council to legalize any of the operations, but if same are conducted, taxes shall be paid.’ The tax money goes into the Hot Springs Municipal Auditorium and Civic Improvement Fund, and this year the city clerk expects to collect $80,000. A few years ago the town, led by the local state senator with the wondrous name of Q. Byrum Hurst, tried to get the Legislature to legalize the gambling, but a handful of rural representatives helped beat the bill. By custom and tradition, the governor of Arkansas keeps hands off Hot Springs. The state needs the tourists for its economy.

“A spokesman for the gamblers is Dane Harris, 43, president and general manager of The Vapors, a partner in the Belvedere and an enthusiastic member of the Chamber of Commerce. A boyish-looking six-footer with a crew cut, Harris could pass for a young college professor. ‘Of course this town’s illegal,’ he says, with candor. ‘But it’s been running open for years. People expect it and want it. This is strictly a local operation, has not been anything else and will not be anything else. This is a different type of element. Check the police records for the lack of prostitution and narcotics. Probably our own interest in gambling is more of an interest in it as business than gambling for its own sake. It looked like probably one of the few things that could be big enough to build the town on.’

“The Vapors, which books such acts as Les Paul and Mary Ford, the Andrews Sisters and Jane Russell, has 200 employees, and Harris hesitates to think about what would happen to them and the town, and his partners and himself, if the FBI brought a case against the casinos. ‘We’re fixin’ to build a new auditorium here,’ he says. ‘If there were no funds from the amusement tax, that would not be possible.'”

Boyle described Oaklawn Park this way back in 1962: “Oaklawn itself is a charming little track with a nine-hole golf course in the infield. Golfers played there opening day, but they are usually barred when the races are on for fear a slice will conk a horse. Flanking the old wooden clubhouse are glass-enclosed, steam-heated grandstands. ‘The first in the world,’ says John Cella proudly. Ordinarily Cella is a traditionalist. Instead of using a car to haul the starting gate around, he uses a team of Clydesdales.

“Although Cella has been coming down to Hot Springs for years, he never fails to be delighted by the varieties of life on exhibit in the town. ‘I don’t know of any place like it,’ he says. ‘It has a unique flavor all its own.’ As a case in point, he cites the sermon Father Mac, the assistant pastor at St. John’s, delivered at mass a couple of Sundays ago. From the pulpit, Father Mac said he had been out at the track a few days before and noticed a man who kept staring at him after one race. Finally the man came up to him and said, ‘Father, you cost me $100.’ ‘How could that be?’ asked Father Mac. ‘Well, father,’ the man said, ‘when the horses were parading to the post I saw you blessing the No. 9 horse. I bet him, and he finished last. ‘Son,’ said Father Mac, ‘I wasn’t blessing him — I was giving him the last rites.'”

Boyle also described the country club and the characters who hung out there: “The flavor of the town not only extends to but permeates the Hot Springs Golf and Country Club, where the annual Hot Springs Open is played in May. Only this country club could have a teaching pro like Gib Sellers, a onetime golf hustler known as the Round Man. For years the Round Man hustled with the best, often as a baby-faced kid in partnership with Titanic Thompson, the great con artist. When they traveled through the Midwest together, Thompson liked to set up the suckers for killing by airily pointing toward Sellers, who had only two woods in a dilapidated bag, and say, ‘I’ll just take that kid over there and play you two guys.’

“A Hot Springs native, Sellers practiced hour after hour on the local course, trying to look bad, and he trimmed everyone who came in for a game, even the other hustlers. ‘No hustler ever came in here and went away happy,’ he says with a smile. ‘They all got beat here. There wasn’t a player in the world who could beat me here. I shot that thing anywhere from six to eight under par. My best round was a 62, playing five guys low ball.’

“When not hustling, the Round Man played with the gangsters who used to frequent Hot Springs in battalion strength. ‘They had a truce when they came here,’ he says. ‘They were real gentlemen here.’ The best golfer among them was a gent known as Phil — he used sundry last names — who shot around par. Joe Adonis was in the high 70s, Ralph (Bottles) Capone around 80, Frank Costello between 80 and 82 and Lucky Luciano high man with 95.”

Boyle closed his story by quoting Nate Schoenfeld: “We have bounty. We have many things no one else has. We want to share it with all the world. We invite you.”

Posted in Hot Springs, Thoroughbred racing, Traveling Arkansas | No Comments »

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