page_title: Capitol View/Stifft's Station
section_title: Stifft Station Historic District
hierarchical_section_title: Capitol View/Stifft's Station / History and architecture / Stifft Station Historic District
caption_attribution_description: This sign near the intersection of Markham and Kavanaugh marks the original site of Stifft's Station street and trolly car stop.
context_page_description: Capitol View/Stifft's Station is a neighborhood of Little Rock, Arkansas, in the west-central portion of the city encompassing approximately 1500 homes. Roughly, its boundaries include the area south of West Markham, north of Interstate 630, east of Pine, and west of Summit, as well as south of Riverview between Park and Summit. Capitol View/Stifft's Station is just west of Downtown, north of the Central High School Historic District, southeast of Pulaski Heights and uses the 72205 ZIP code.
context_section_description: Stifft's Station makes up the western part of the Capitol View/Stifft's Station neighborhood. The historic district is rectangular in configuration and is bounded by a historically significant traffic artery, Markham, on the north, Woodrow (formerly May) on its eastern edge, 7th Street along its southern perimeter and Martin forming the western boundary. The neighborhood remains one of mixed use, though primarily residential in character, and includes a commercial band along Markham distinguished by storefronts and freestanding commercial structures. The commercial development along the Northern edge of the district is complemented by additional non-residential development along the Southern boundary. Specifically, the Little Rock School District's Woodruff Elementary School, designed in 1911 by Theo M. Sanders, sits in the Southeast corner of the district while the Billy Mitchell Boys and Girls Club is its neighbor to the North and Lamar Porter Field (NR 12-06-90) is positioned to its immediate west.
  One surmises that the name of Stifft's Station was derived from the development of the Stifft Addition and the active participation of the prominent local businessman and civic booster Charles Stifft in the growth of this portion of Little Rock's streetcar suburbs. It appears on the 1929 map of the “Street Railways of Little Rock” at the intersection of Markham and Prospect Avenue (now Kavanaugh), where a trolley stop was located on the Pulaski Heights Line. Additionally, the city directory from  that same year records the operation of two neighborhood businesses which included “Stifft Station” in their names — one a grocery store and the other a barber shop—-which underscores the adoption of the name generally. Because the area retains this name and identity, it is the obvious choice for the district's appellation.
  There are 295 structures included in the Stifft Station Historic District, 238 are contributing while another 57 are considered non-contributing, principally because of condition rather than date of construction with two already included individually on the National Register of Historic Places. Consequently, the district can boast of an extraordinary 81% of contributing to non-contributing structures. The district sits alongside the southern portion of the Capitol View Historic District, notably sharing a boundary along Woodrow with the Young's Park and Ferndale Additions.
  The additions or portions of additions within the Stifft Station Historic District, listed chronologically according to the dates when they were first platted are: C.O. Kimball and Bodemann Addition (1890), Beach Addition (1893), C.H. Taylor Addition (1895), Boone's Addition (1896), Stifft's Addition (1898), Feild's Addition (1911), Hick's Subdivision of Block 4 of Boone's Addition (1912), E.F. Feild Addition (1926). It is also noteworthy that despite its platting in the late nineteenth century, according to city directory listings and Sanborn maps, the first houses were not built on these lots until after 1910.
  City directories, Sanborn maps, abstract records and other historical sources help to paint a picture of the neighborhood. Within its boundaries, one finds a plentiful offering of largely unaltered working class cottages accompanied by a still robust commercial strip along West Markham as well as a bustling elementary school and the landmark Lamar Porter Field made famous by the local hero Brooks Robinson who grew up playing in its outfield. Even the Billy Mitchell Boys and Girls Club with its playground and open spaces serves as a reminder of fields and woods where the children of Stifft Station Historic District played as their neighborhood grew from a sprinkling of scattered houses in the first years of the twentieth century to the fully realized and largely stable neighborhood it remains today. Stifft Station Historic District is a credit to its humble but handsome housing stock, reasonable real estate prices, minimal intrusive or unsightly infill and, significantly, its residents willingness to acknowledge the importance of an act
caption: Commemorative sign at Kavanaugh and Markham
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