from the Oct. 19, 2008, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

A SUNDAY CONVERSATION TOMMY JAMESON

Forensic architecture

LITTLE ROCK Its a few days before the grand re-opening of the Mosaic Templars Building in downtown Little Rock, and Tommy Jameson is showing a visitor whats left of the original building. Its the stone pediment, an intimidating rock the size of a small car. Carved into the granite is a snake eating its tail. It symbolizes the cyclical nature of life, Jameson says. The huge pediment with its mysterious relief work must have made for an interesting, slightly spooky greeting above the old building. Now it adorns the new buildings main lobby as a curiosity and relic.

Thats a 1,500-pound piece of granite, Jameson says, touching the weathered stone with a combination of pride and sadness.

The pediment and the original cornerstone are about all that survived the fire. Thanks to the fire-the second to strike the original complex-the Mosaic Templars building is just that: new. Its not a rehabilitation or preservation job but a reinvention, an historic copy of the landmark and hub of the black business community that so enriched Ninth Street once upon a time in Little Rock.

Before an arson struck one March morning in 2005, Jameson was working on what he thought would be a restoration of the 1911 Mosaic Templars building. The Little Rock native is one of a handful of architects in Arkansas to specialize in historic preservation-or forensic architecture, as he calls it-even having restored the oldest house in the state, the Jacob Wolf House near Norfork, Arkansas.

Yes, the Mosaic Templars Building and Tommy Jameson seemed made for each other, ideal partners in bringing past to present.

Then the fire. I felt like Id lost a family member, Jameson recalls. It truly was like losing a relative.

His firm, Jameson Architects, had put six weeks into the project already, developing 80 sheets of designs. This is what they mean by Back To The Drawing Board.

In the end, which is the beginning for the new Mosaic Templars Cutural Center, Jameson succeeded in replicating history.

Wed tried to do a faithful reconstruction, he says, pointing out the suspended balcony and pressed metal ceiling in the 400-seat auditorium, an historic clone of a room that hosted such acts as Count Basies Orchestra. Back in the day.

This is kind of an anomaly on my résumé, Jameson continues. We were here because of a historic building.

Now that the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center has opened, Jameson can return to the more comfortable past. Its where hes made his living-and his mark. Hes had a hand in restoring historic Arkansas from border to border.

Consider the projects hes worked on: the rehabilitation of Helenas Miller Hotel, Malco Theater and Moore-Hornor House, among other projects in that Delta town; the rehabilitation of courthouses in six counties; the restoration of St. Edwards Catholic Church in Little Rock; the adaptive re-use of a historic home into a bed-and-breakfast on the Henderson State University campus in Arkadelphia; the rehabilitation of the presidents house (1938) at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway; a partner in the rehab of the Cox Creative Center in Little Rocks River Market; all kinds of work on the state Capitol; and the complete overhaul of the 179-year-old Jacob Wolf House in Norfork.

To name a few.

Richard Butler Jr., a dedicated preservationist from Little Rock, calls Jameson an architectural sleuth.

He has found clues to a houses hidden history in sloppy strokes from a paintbrush, in doorways that seem tooshort, in drip lines created decades ago by seasonal rains, and even in trash buried deep in the ground.

Preservation architects form a small club. (Included among them is one of Jamesons mentors and former employers, Charles Witsell.) And for good reason. Architects say it may be the disciplines most difficult specialty.

Jameson, a Little Rock boy and Malvern High graduate, a kid who was comfortable with a pencil in his hand, became an architect the old-fashioned way: His guidance counselor told him to do it.

So I went to Fayetteville [to study architecture]. In my fifth year, I took a three-hour elective from Cyrus Sutherland called Restoration and Preservation. And I was like, Wow!

A eureka moment?

Yeah. And Cy was into Vernacular Architecture.

What does that mean?

Undesigned. Lots of old houses in Northwest Arkansas didnt have an architect; they were designed by word of mouth and passing down ideas. Cy had all these great names for them. Youve seen cottages that have window, door, door, window? He calls that a dupledoor cottage. He had great little names for all these little generic, undesigned buildings and houses. So that sparked my interest. You know, Im going to come back to Little Rock and buy a historic house when I graduate!

Which is exactly what Jameson did. By the Fourth of July 1977, hed bought a sagging Colonial Revival at 2119 Scott Street. This being Arkansas, the house had a small-world, whos-who connection: it had been owned by Townsend Wolfe, the former director of the Arkansas Arts Center.

He and [his wife] had fixed it up and used the house next door as a studio. Then it was rental property. It looked bad. So I got a good deal on it. I was painting it, then went to work at Witsell Evans Rasco [which specializes in historic preservation] and quickly learned I had overpainted. I had painted it in a Victorian color scheme, and it was a 1906 Colonial Revival house. So I re-painted.

It may have been his first experience with Forensic Architecture. Hes now a kind of Sherlock Holmes of the brickand-mortar set. Or, to be more culturally current, you might think of Jamesons approach as housing CSI.

He practically lives among his historic finds. Well, theres no practically to it. Jamesons family lives in the Little Rock neighborhood of Hillcrest near Knoop Park in an old house-of course-built in 1936 by the man who founded Baldwin Shell construction.

The family lived there till they died in their 70s, Jameson says. The two words to best describe it would be, Decayed Elegance. In 20 years, weve done a lot. Painted it outside three or four times. Soaked the wallpaper off. Its more us now, but it was a very, very well built house. Uncommonly good. Load-bearing walls. No stud cavity. Concrete and steel foundation.

Jameson talks about solid construction the way an English teacher might a properly diagrammed sentence-with deep affection for an under-appreciated craft.

Hes being interviewed in his office, which serves as inspiration for his trade and his romantic view of it. If youve driven down Third Street near the state Capitol, youve seen the offices of Jameson Architects.

Oh yes you have. On the corner of Third and Pulaski? Not far from Cothams? Still not getting the visual? How about this: Its that canary-yellow turn-of-the-20th-Century cottage with one of the worlds great wrap-around porches.

Yes, that one. Originally the 1904 Abrams house, then That Dump Near The Capital, its now Yellow House On Corner and the calling card for Tommy Jameson, who, naturally, restored it. Practice what you preach, he says.

A wise business decision, because the only thing more irresistible for a Southerner than a refurbished old house is a refurbished old house witha killer porch.

Southerners love old houses for at least a couple of reasons: (1) We have lots of them. (Pity we dont have more.) They haunt the post-bellum South like proper ghosts, inviting all kinds of gossipy mystery. And (2) old houses have stories. We love stories.

The Little Rock writer James Morgan once authored a book entitled If These Walls Had Ears, a biography of a house. And anybody in a drafty old house anywhere in Arkansas could relate. Old houses speak to us-even if they cant talk.

Consider the Jacob Wolf House of Norfork. Built circa 1829, the Wolf House is the last remaining territorial courthouse in the state. And when Jameson and his team undertook its restoration a few years back, in their attempt to exhume the past, the house spoke.

Heres one example: Jameson & Co. couldnt tell for certain which side of the house was the original front. The house sat between a road and the White River, but research showed that the road was built during the Civil War, decades after the Wolf house went up. The river, of course, has flowed since memory runneth not to the contrary.

An archeological dig found trash buried deep underground-on the road side.

Which means?

Jameson turns to his computer, quickly tapping the mouse to bring upsnapshots and maps. Everything in the ground on this side, he says, pointing to the river side, is pre-Civil War. Everything in the ground on this [road side] is post-Civil War. You dont throw trash out in the front yard. You throw it in the back yard. Before the Civil War, the river was the highway. The front was the river side. During the war, a military road came in. The back became the front of the house.

He turns away from the computer, and smiles wide. Forensic architecture, he says.

On the cluttered bulletin board across from his equally cluttered desk, Jameson keeps a Before picture of another house that spoke from the past. Its the Palmer House in Monroe County. It was built not long after the Civil War by war veteran, lawyer and newspaperman John Coleman Palmer.

Visible from Highway 49, the Palmer House rises out of the flat farmland like a gorgeous, Italianate-style, three-storyand-attic mistake. The locals called it Palmers Folly. And still do.

Jameson has been a consulting architect on the Palmer House. Problem: There are no old blueprints and hardly any old photos of the Palmer place. So nobody knows for sure just what it looked like when ol John Coleman built it in the middle of Nowheresville, Ark.

A screened-in wooden porch ran the length of the house across the front, and most folks thought it was original. On closer inspection, Jameson discovered the faint, white outline of a smaller porch and doorway. What looked like unimportant white chalk lines on the faded red brick were clues. He hit the books. Sure enough, the style of Italianate architecture in the late 19th Century tended toward the smaller porch.

Et voila! The house had spoken.

Forensic architecture.

So what is it about restoring, saving, breathing new life into old buildings and structures and homes that makes us put in all the money and sweat equity? Especially when its so much easier to just build a new something?

Most homeowners cant build something new from scratch due to the limitations of time and skill. But a homeowner can put sweat equity into an existing structure while theyre living in it-and there are two benefits that come to mind. Sweat equity is just that-equity-that builds value and does not cost as much out of your pocket, thus a homeowner can make money by doing it themselves.

The second benefit, particularly with a historic structure, is the pride, satisfaction and good feeling that comes from saving/restoring/preserving/recycling something that has a history, character, charm, a story, as well as the pride [and] satisfaction. . . . from accomplishing it yourself. It feels good!

A final question. And this one isnt fair to any architect or lover of old buildings, especially in Little Rock where weve lost so much housing stock. (Just look at photos of Main Street in its early20th Century heyday, then walk down the street today. Sad.)

Is there an old building or house in Arkansas that youd like to restore or see restored?

We were involved in a project called the Early Arkansas Settlement Study, where we documented eight unique log structures in Arkansas. All were built before the Civil War. Two of them have settled futures: McGuire House, west of Fayetteville, and Arnold Spring outside Melbourne. Arkansas had thousands of log structures built in the 19th Century-only a modest number are left, and theyre going fast. Also, Helena.

Weve been working Helena for a variety of clients for 14 years. During that time, it seems more buildings have come down than have been saved. I wish we could rehabilitate and restore the whole town.