From Turbulence to Tranquility:
The Little Rock Arsenal (continued)
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Originally built as a store house...this building has been converted into Officers Quarters at a great waste of space and with very little regard to comfort and convenience. |
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Army Inspection Report, April 20, 1882 |
The Little Rock Arsenal played an important role in political and military events during the Civil War. To avoid armed conflict, federal troops surrendered the arsenal to state authorities in February 1861, shortly before the war's outbreak. The site served as a Confederate arsenal until Union troops occupied Little Rock two years later. After the war, the arsenal continued as a federal military post until it closed in 1890.
During this time, the Tower Building was converted from
an arms warehouse into quarters for married officers and their families,
drastically altering the structure's interior and exterior appearance.
Prior to renovation, a rear basement door provided the only entrance to
the building, while the tower served as a hoist to move munitions between 
floors. By 1868, front and rear porches had been added to the building, as
well as interior walls and stairs, some of which remain today, including
the central staircase.
For the next twenty years the arsenal, renamed the Little Rock Barracks in 1873, settled into the routine life of a peacetime military post. Newspapers reported numerous instances of baseball games played between soldiers and townspeople. In 1880, the arsenal became the birthplace of one of the twentieth century's foremost military figures--General Douglas MacArthur. His father, Captain Arthur MacArthur of the 13th U.S. Army Infantry, had been stationed at the arsenal the previous year. Six months after his son's birth, Captain MacArthur and his family left Little Rock.
In the late 1880s, the War Department decided to close hundreds of small arsenals throughout the United States and establish a dozen military posts near railroad centers to facilitate quick deployment of troops to any point in the country. The arsenal commander received word from Washington that the Little Rock site must be abandoned "not later than October 1, 1890." Two years later, the government transferred the buildings and grounds to the city.