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The East Markham Street Historic District

The East Markham Street Historic District is comprised of four of the earliest still existing buildings on this historic commercial street. Since 1820 the East Markham Street area was the commercial center of Little Rock. The architecture of the four buildings in the East Markham Street Historic District include examples of vernacular commercial variations of the Italianate style applied to late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century commercial design, and Craftsman style. At different times throughout their colorful lives these buildings have incarnated, and reincarnated as wholesale businesses, hotels and rooming houses, storefronts occupied by restaurants and saloons, Machinery Companies, Electric Supply Companies., Wooley Electric Companies, Radio and Appliance stores., Furniture Companies, wholesale and retail grocers, and a Dry Goods store. In 1896 a saloon was opened and was operated by an African-American proprietor. The fourth building located at 313-315-317 East Markham, was designed for Charles E. Rosenbaum in 1904, and constructed in 1905. The Rosenbaum Company occupied the building until the late 1940s. All four of the buildings in the East Markham Street Historic District, had intermittent occupancy in the early part of the century. Though the four buildings within the district have suffered from neglect and unsympathetic alterations through the years, they represent some of the oldest existing structures on East Markham. All four of the buildings are in the process of renovation.