Workshop preserves neighborhood’s past
A historic home that is being restored and renovated into a community resource center and museum was the host site for an all-day workshop Saturday on preserving and repairing windows.
The John Lee Webb house, 403 Pleasant St., served as a classroom for preservationist Bob Yapp, of Hannibal, Mo., to teach registered attendees the process of repairing a double-hung wood window unit from beginning to end.
The workshop was put on by Preserve Arkansas, a nonprofit with the mission of preserving historically rich areas within the state. The class lined up with the broader mission of both the Webb house and Preserve Arkansas, which included the Pleasant Street Historic District on its 2017 list of “Arkansas’s Most Endangered Places.”
“We want people to retain the character-defining features of their historic properties,” Rachel Patton, director of Preserve Arkansas, said. “Windows are often one of those features.”
The 28-acre Pleasant Street District encompasses more than 90 buildings, and represents the largest and most intact area of the city’s historic African-American community.
Yapp called the workshop “a quintessential neighborhood revitalization event.” He said that it was an example of Preserve Arkansas and the neighborhood working together.
Yapp said replacing historic
windows with new ones is often unnecessary, noting that in 45 years as a property developer, he has never replaced a single window.
“(I want to) show people how, with $35 worth of weather stripping and safe paint removal, that they can make an existing 100-year-old window as energy efficient as a replacement window,” he said.
Cheryl Batts, president and founder of People Helping Others Excel By Example, which has been working to restore the house, said 21 people attended the workshop, including some attendees from Van Buren and Little Rock.
Patton said local people with ties to the neighborhood attended, as well. P.H.O.E.B.E. youths assisted with the workshop.
“They’re in there pulling off everything,” she said. “They’re gonna get the window out, get the sash and restore it to where you’ll be able to lift it just very easily. It’ll look great.”
Yapp said the youths underscore the importance of preserving the neighborhood.
“They want to know what the history is of their neighborhood,” he said. “What you see here was done by an African-American builder and architect here in town. That’s pretty special.”
Yapp said the workshop also empowers people to both save money and fix their homes themselves.
“When you are low income, you need to be taught, or learn, how to do things on your own, because you don’t have the kind of resources with a lot of money to just throw at a project,” he said. “You want to try to retain as much of the original material in these houses as you possibly can, because it’s better than any new materials that you can buy today.”