Pleasant Street Historic District

Preserving Historic Buildings within Gateway Community

On June 20, 2003, the Pleasant Street Historic District was listed on the National
Register of Historic places. The district is located inside the Gateway Community
Association formerly the Pleasant Street Neighborhood Association boundaries, it
is an important part of community and revitalization efforts.
Source data: US Department of Interior National Park Service NL Listed 6/20/2003

This Is the description as registered with US Department of Interior National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places application dated April 4, 2003 submitted by the City of Hot Springs. The district’s official name is the Pleasant Street Historic District or the John Webb Neighborhood Historic District. The Pleasant Street Historic District located near Hot Springs, Arkansas’ famous Bathhouse Row in the Hot Springs National Park, is a collectionof ninety-three (93) buildings representing the most intact area of the city’s historic black community. The Malvern Avenue commercial corridor and its adjacent neighborhood in its heyday from 1920-40, and 1950-70, was a thriving mixture of professional offices, stores, musical venues, churches, Mural on Malvern Avenue called the New Black Broadway schools, hotels, rooming houses, and single family residences. Building in the district represent the remaining fragment of the neighborhood, now surrounded by new development and ever-changing major thoroughfares through the city (E. Grand-Highway 70 and Malvern Avenue).Two buildings in the district were previously listed on the National Register of Historic Places – Visitors’ Chapel A.M.E. Church, at 317 Church Street and the Woodmen of the Union Building and the Malvern Avenue. Additionally, one building, the Webb Center at 133 Pleasant Street was listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places. Sixty-nine of 74% of the building in the
district have been determined contributing to the historical significance of the neighborhood.During the heyday, the prosperous racially-mixed neighborhood encompassed residential and business development on Church, Cottage, Gulpha, Garden and Pleasant Streets, the continuing growth of previous decades as home to businessmen and professionals who helped shape development of Hot Springs. The ninety-three (93) buildings in the district (Shown in Map), 74% of which contribute to the historic significance of the area, represent the center of African American economic and cultural activity that peaked during the 1920’s and ’30, and again in the 1950/s and 60s.