Johnny Reep has clear memories of when he first became fascinated with firefighting. It was when he was a boy growing up in Warren. If the night watchman at the massive Bradley Lumber Co. mill spotted a fire, he would blow the mill whistle to alert volunteer firefighters. Awakened at home, Reep would race to the scene and watch those firefighters work.
Reep moved to Little Rock in 1971 and later joined the Little Rock Fire Department. He has remained fascinated with firefighting since his retirement from the department. His home is filled with items he has collected through the decades. Some of that equipment is on display at Little Rock’s Firehouse Museum & Hostel, which is in MacArthur Park in a 1917 Craftsman-style building that served as a fire station until the late 1950s.
I drive down Commerce Street on a Tuesday morning to meet Reep at the museum. On my left is the spectacular Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, which has received glowing reviews since opening in May. It was described by Forbes as “America’s most inviting art museum.” MacArthur Park is welcoming visitors who otherwise wouldn’t have set foot in this neighborhood. The AMFA parking lot is filling up as I walk into the Firehouse Museum & Hostel.
Reep and other members of the organization’s board want to take advantage of the park’s increased profile for a major fundraising campaign. They’re hoping to raise more than $3 million to double the size of the museum. Reep shows me a drawing of the expanded facility. Antique fire trucks would be housed in the Brooks Robinson Family Engine Bay. Brooks Robinson Sr. retired from the Little Rock Fire Department in 1974. His son, Brooks Robinson Jr., was born in Little Rock in 1937.
Brooks Jr. played for the Baltimore Orioles from 1955-77 and is considered the greatest defensive third baseman in baseball history. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, receiving 92 percent of votes cast on the first ballot.
“Brooks Sr. spent many hours between 1942 and 1974 coaching young men to be baseball players,” Reep says. “We researched Little Rock Fire Department records and learned that Captain Robinson spent part of his career here at Fire Station No. 2 in MacArthur Park. This led to our decision to honor this exceptional family.”
On the day before the March 31 tornado hit Little Rock, the board held a fundraising event and announced the expansion plans. The 140 guests watched a video interview of Brooks Jr.
“We’ve been talking about this expansion for a long time,” Reep says. “With all the additional visitors next door, it’s time we finish this project and in the process revitalize this whole part of MacArthur Park.”
Renovations at the firehouse took place from 2003-16 before the facility finally opened. John Fordyce had traveled to Europe through the years and found hostels to be friendly gathering places for travelers who wanted to save money.
“Many who have stayed in hostels think it’s a great way to travel if you’re going for what’s to be seen in an area rather than looking for a five-star hotel,” Fordyce told an interviewer in 2015.
The nonprofit group Hostelling Arkansas renovated the 4,663-square-foot building so they could bunk up to 36 people in men’s and women’s quarters upstairs with a common area downstairs. The city of Little Rock owns the building. The initial fundraising efforts brought in about $400,000.
Reep, the man most responsible for the Arkansas Fallen Firefighters Memorial on the state Capitol grounds, took those involved in the hostel project to a firefighters’ museum in Memphis. Those volunteers were persuaded to make the museum part of the project. Reep shows me everything from helmets to antique nozzles that are on display. There’s even a fire alarm system from 1889. The expansion will allow far more items to be displayed.
“We want to include conference rooms where we can do fire safety education programs,” he says. “We have a two-acre footprint here in the park with which to work. We need to make the most of it. There’s a lot going on now with the opening of the art museum, and we should be a more integral part of all that’s happening. People can stay here for as little as $32 a night, and that includes cereal and fruit for breakfast.”
The first overnight visitor in August 2016 was a man from Baltimore who found the hostel through a website listing. Each of the 23 steps to beds upstairs is marked with the name and address of a Little Rock fire station.
Fundraising for the original renovation took years, but Reep is patient. It took 28 years of fundraising and political maneuvering before the Fallen Firefighters Memorial was dedicated in 2014. Relatives of firefighters who have lost their lives are regular visitors to the memorial.
Reep describes the memorial as a way to show that “the people of Arkansas haven’t forgotten the sacrifice of your family members. If we didn’t engrave their names, their names would be forgotten. This is an eternal appreciation for their service and sacrifice.”
Just as the memorial at the Capitol draws people from across the state, Reep views an expanded firehouse museum in MacArthur Park as a statewide attraction.
“School groups will be able to stop by here while also going to the art museum and the military history museum (the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in the park’s historic Tower Building) on the same day,” he says. “The expansion needs to happen, and I believe it soon will.”
Senior Editor Rex Nelson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
