Louise Loughborough's 1939 campaign saved this cluster of houses, now the Historic Arkansas Museum in downtown Little Rock. Here, the story begins not just with exhibits but with a 1939 law: Act 388 of the Arkansas General Assembly created the Arkansas Territorial Capitol Restoration Commission and charted the museum's course. The act named Louise Loughborough chairwoman; she had joined the Little Rock Planning Commission in 1935 and launched a campaign to save houses on a half-block at Cumberland and East 3rd Streets that were slated for condemnation.
Among them was the Hinderliter House, long considered the oldest building in Little Rock and one of Loughborough's evocative "town of three Capitols" alongside the Old State House and the current Arkansas State Capitol Building. Folklore holds that the Hinderliter House was the Territorial Legislature's last meeting place, though that use is not known. Loughborough brought together the Works Progress Administration, the Arkansas General Assembly and private donors, and worked with architect Max Mayer to restore this little cluster of houses.
Picture Cumberland and East 3rd Streets threading past the Hinderliter House toward the Old State House and the Arkansas State Capitol, Loughborough's three Capitols brought together at last.