In 1947, Newt Hailey built a new Art Deco-style building in downtown Rogers to house his automobile dealership. Large, curved storefront windows under a tiled facade allowed passersby to view the Ford and Mercury automobiles on display in the showroom. The yearly unveiling of new models was a special event. Workers sneaked the cars into the showroom overnight and covered both the showroom windows and the cars themselves so they could not be seen before the big moment. Residents dressed up for the Saturday event to admire the new cars, even though most could not afford them.
Hailey’s building housed Ford/Mercury sales and service departments until 1967 when the Rogers Daily News purchased the building. A newspaper does not need a showroom or automobile service area. By 1969, the Art Deco automobile dealership was buried beneath a Federal-style building, with heavy brick walls and square columns and a portico around its entrance. The thick walls of the remodeled building hid the curved showroom wall so that corners became square inside and out. The ground floor held office space and the heavy press that printed the newspaper every day. A dark room and storage space were tucked up into the attic.
A remodel and addition in 2006 made the building more utilitarian but also more pedestrian. While it fit the needs of the newspaper, it would not have looked out of place in a strip mall — aside from the lack of large windows.
In 2015, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, successor to the Rogers Daily News, closed its Rogers office.
Across the street, the Rogers Historical Museum had outgrown its location and needed more space. Following a 1982 donation, the Rogers Historical Museum had moved into the Hawkins House, located across South Second Street from the Hailey Building. The small Hawkins House was supplemented in 1987 by the Key Wing annex (named in honor of donor Vera Key).
A block away, the old Rogers Youth Center was repurposed as the museum’s collections storage. Over the years, the old Youth Center building has housed the Rogers City Hall and Benton County administrative offices. Vacant before the museum took it over, it now has a purpose again.
The museum began planning an expansion almost 10 years before the newspaper closed its Rogers office. Instead of having to build a new building, the acquisition of the Hailey Building meant that the museum would have the space it needed and that the historic building would be restored and saved, the front returned to its original appearance.
The renovation began in 2018, a joint venture between Louisville, Kentucky-based De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop and local Rogers architects Hight Jackson Associates. The architects faced the challenge of restoring the building to its original appearance while making it fit the Rogers Historical Museum’s needs. The 2006 building addition needed to defer to the character of the older structure, so it was reskinned in gray brick and tone-on-tone metal panels to provide a simple, elegant backdrop for the historic building.
The facade was found partially intact within the 2006 remodel by the newspaper, but the architects needed historical photographs in order to reconstruct it. Original brick remained, damaged by the construction that concealed the Art Deco building. Brick was carefully curated to match in color and texture. The rare Vitrolite glass tiles that covered the facade also needed to be refurbished or replaced, the existing tiles supplemented with Vitrolite tiles salvaged from across the country. To complete the exterior renovation, a true neon sign was built for the museum to replicate the Ford sign that had once hung over the front entry.
For new materials, the architects alluded to the original form and function of the building. High lacquer surfaces and smoothly rounded corners evoke the lines and paint of the old Ford and Mercury automobiles. Paint colors were pulled from the original terrazzo floor found under carpet during demolition and restored to be the flooring for the main lobby.
Much of the original showroom space inside is open once again. For the building’s grand opening, a stagecoach similar to those that plied the Butterfield Trail sat where classic Ford and Mercury cars once had. The formal exhibit spaces take advantage of open-web steel trusses that give the exhibits the flexibility to move and change as needed. A diagonal circulation path shapes the galleries and leads to the exterior alley behind the museum. The 2006 addition now houses visitor-support spaces, a smaller specialized gallery, the administration area, and an exhibit workshop and delivery area.
Taking advantage of exterior spaces, the newspaper’s loading dock was transformed into an outdoor classroom that continues on to the alley space behind the museum. The adjacent parking lot, with tree plantings, doubles as an exterior plaza.
Over the last decade and more, the city of Rogers has attempted to revitalize its historic downtown area. Many buildings in the area that were vacant or falling into disrepair have been renovated and serve as restaurants, shops, bars and offices. A block northeast of the Hailey Building, where downtown meets the railroad tracks, has been reimagined as the Frisco Park, a multiuse public space that includes a historic caboose with interpretative panels provided by the museum.
The Rogers Historical Museum campus (the Hailey Building and Hawkins House) — adjacent to the Frisco Front and Victory Row Experience Districts identified in the city of Rogers Master Plan — anchors the southeast side of the historic downtown district. Giving these historic buildings a contemporary purpose reinforces the museum’s mission to “enrich lives through education, experience and exploration” of the region’s unique heritage and celebrates the idea of the “city as exhibit” by capitalizing on relationships between the stylistically diverse collection of downtown buildings, outdoor public spaces and connective pedestrian pathways that engage the community at large.
The Hailey Building once gave residents of Rogers a destination to view the latest, most modern cars. It once again provides a destination, but now to view the city’s and region’s history.
Gail Shepherd is a principal architect at Hight Jackson Associates, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP.
