03/14/2026
Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Sandra Taylor Smith, Retired North Little Rock Historian.
In the 1980s and early 1990s the Argenta neighborhood was arguably the worst neighborhood in the city and one of the worst in Central Arkansas. The part of Argenta from 4th Street South to the Arkansas River had been torn down by Urban Renewal to remove blight. The Urban Renewal maps listed every house from 4th Street north to the railyard, meaning every house in Argenta, as “Unsalvageable” and they were all slated for destruction until Urban Renewal ran out of money.
During all this upheaval Sandra Taylor Smith, the city’s historian, started pushing for historic district status for Argenta. Sandra did the research on the neighborhood. A nomination was then sent to the state preservation people for approval to be followed by submission to the National Register. Argenta would be the state’s first working-class historic district. Argenta was listed on the National Register as a historic district in 1993. It included 258 residential and commercial properties. Over half of the structures in the district had to be considered contributing, which meant they were not substantially altered from the original state. The Argenta district was the first non-contiguous district in the state with both a residential and a separate commercial sector. Then legislation written by Sandra adopted by the City Council to make Argenta a local ordinance district. This required the formation of a Historic District Commission which would have to review and approve any major exterior changes to the contributing structures in the district.
In North Little Rock Sandra also did the architectural resource surveys for Park Hill, Edgemont, and the Baring Cross neighborhoods. Sandra surveyed Hillcrest, Central High, Downtown, and Capitol Zoning neighborhoods in Little Rock. Her reach across the state included surveys in Harrison, Fort Smith, Conway, Morrilton, Eureka Springs, El Dorado, Hot Springs, Osceola, Rogers, Hamburg, West Memphis, Huntsville, Heber Springs, Benton, Rector, Tyronza, Piggott, Mountain Home, DeWitt, Jonesboro, Lake Village, Mahony, and Boonville.
She presented National Trust of Historic Places nominations for sixty-two nominated sites in Arkansas. This includes Charles L. Thompson buildings state wide, Civilian Conservation Corps structures in state parks, courthouses, commercial districts, cemeteries and residential neighborhoods across the state. The list includes the Mosaic Templars of America Building at 9th and Broadway in Little Rock, the Park Hill Fire Station & Water Company Complex on Magnolia Street in North Little Rock, the Lands End Plantation in Scott, the McRae Elementary School in Baring Cross, Arkansas Post Offices with WPA Murals, the Stifft Station Historic District in Little Rock, and two expansions of the Argenta Historic District in North Little Rock.
From 1975 to 1979 Sandra was the National Register Coordinator for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. She has been a Preservation Consultant since 1980 and was the Director of the North Little History Commission and the North Little Rock Historic District Commission from 1992 to 2025. Sandra was a founding board member of the Argenta Community Development Corporation and a member of the Main Street Argenta Design Committee from 1995 to 2002. She drafted the ordinance establishing the Argenta Local Ordinance Historic District which was approved by the City Council in 1993.
She wrote the design guidelines for that district. She also authored design guidelines for historic districts in Fort Smith, Helena, Van Buren, Rogers, Hot Springs, Texarkana, and Russellville, and El Dorado.
She has received the Quapaw Quarter Jimmy Strawn Preservation Leadership Award and the Parker Westbrook Lifetime Achievement Award. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Alliance, been a tour guide for the Quapaw Quarter Association Tour of Homes, has Co-Chaired the QQA Christmas Potpourri Tour, was an Ex-Officio Board Member of the Argenta Leadership Council, was President of the Pulaski County Historical Society Board of Directors, and was a Board of Directors member of the Friends of the Old Mill.
If you look at historic preservation efforts across our entire state, you will find Sandra Taylor Smith’s fingerprints on many of them. Her efforts not only started the rehabilitation of the Argenta neighborhood in North Little Rock, but has affected neighborhoods throughout Arkansas. We in North Little Rock are lucky enough to have experienced a preservation legend in our midst.
