Medical Arts Building
Arkansas’s first skyscraper still rises 180 feet over Bathhouse Row, its fluted pilasters and stone frieze announcing Art Deco to a town that had, until 1929, never built past six stories.
At a glance
Completed in 1929 to designs by the Little Rock firm Almand & Stuck, the Medical Arts Building gave Hot Springs its first true high-rise: sixteen stories and 180 feet of stone and steel that made it the tallest building in Arkansas until 1960. It rose specifically to serve the doctors and specialists drawn to the city’s thermal-bath tourism trade, stacking medical offices above Central Avenue’s famous bathhouse row. Architects John Parks Almand (1885-1969) and Elmer A. Stuck (1900-1978) gave the tower a restrained Art Deco vocabulary rather than the heavier Beaux-Arts language of the bathhouses across the street.
Key facts
- Built: 1929
- Architects: Almand & Stuck — John Parks Almand (1885-1969), Elmer A. Stuck (1900-1978)
- Height: 16 stories, 180 feet (55 m)
- Style: Art Deco
- Address: 236 Central Avenue, Hot Springs, Arkansas
- Heritage: NRHP #78000588 (November 30, 1978)
History
The Medical Arts Building opened in 1929, at the peak of Hot Springs’ identity as a national spa town: visitors came for the thermal waters of what would later become Hot Springs National Park, and the doctors who treated them needed offices close to the bathhouses on Central Avenue. At sixteen stories, the tower was Arkansas’s first skyscraper and held the record as the state’s tallest building for three decades, only surpassed in 1960.
The building’s fortunes tracked the town’s. As Hot Springs’ bathhouse tourism declined through the later twentieth century, occupancy fell with it, and by 1991 every floor above the ground level had been closed to the public. The building was declared endangered in June 2012, before a preservation push secured it against demolition. In May 2021, a $3.5 million purchase of the first fifteen floors set the tower on a new course: conversion into an Aloft Hotel, returning the Medical Arts Building to the same tourism economy it was built to serve.
What you see
The main entrance is framed by fluted pilasters rising to floral panels and a stone frieze that spells out the building’s name — a compact, legible piece of period signage rather than applied ornament. The tower’s stepped massing and vertical piers are typical of American commercial Art Deco of the late 1920s, built to read as a landmark from Central Avenue’s low bathhouse skyline.
Set against the white-stone Beaux-Arts bathhouses lining the street below, the Medical Arts Building’s height and geometric restraint make it the one building on Central Avenue built to be seen from a distance, not just walked past.
Practical information
- Status: Under renovation as an Aloft Hotel — exterior visible from Central Avenue
- Best view: From Bathhouse Row, looking north along Central Avenue
- Photography: Exterior freely photographable from the public sidewalk
- Nearby context: Directly across from Hot Springs National Park’s historic bathhouses
Getting there
The building stands on Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs, the same street that runs past Bathhouse Row and the Hot Springs National Park visitor center. It is walkable from any of the downtown hotels and parking areas; the nearest commercial airport is Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, about 55 miles northeast.
Nearby
- Hot Springs National Park and Bathhouse Row — directly across Central Avenue
- The Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa — a few blocks north on Central Avenue
- Downtown Hot Springs historic district — surrounds the building on foot
Sources
- Wikipedia: Medical Arts Building (Hot Springs, Arkansas)
- National Register of Historic Places, NRHP #78000588 (November 30, 1978)
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