1914 Post Office
Occupied in 1914, the post office above was replaced 50
years
later by the present building, below. A delegation including
post-
master J. Harry McPherson and editor J. R.
Taylor secured a
$50,000 federal appropriation for
construction of the city's
first modern post office at Court
and Second streets. Work
started in 1912 and was completed in 1913 but the building
was not occupied until January 1914. When the post office
had out-grown the building, there were no
federal funds available for building post
offices, only for remodeling them.So, in the guise of a
remodeling project, the new, larger structure was built
around the old one. Some of the old walls
were torn down once the new ones were in place, but
others were retained and can still be seen in
certain parts of the present building. |
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Crowley Home
Efforts in the mid-1960s by the Greene County Historical
Society to have the site of this home either
incorporated into the nearby Crowley's Ridge State
Park or disassembled and reconstructed on park
property were unsuccessful. At the time, it was
considered the oldest home still standing in the county. The
U.S. Department of Agriculture photog-rapher who
took this picture while he was
documenting erosion problems along
Crowley's Ridge said in his field noted
that the house was built in 1825 by Lucy and
Wiley Crowley, the latter a son of the original
Ben Crowley. But the question of who actually built
the house, and when, prompted a lively debate in the pages
of the Greene County Historical Quarterly during the
time the society was trying to save it. The house was said
to have been made of immense hewn
logs which were later covered with
weatherboarding and the society hoped to have it restored as
a pioneer home to serve as a museum and tourist attraction.
Vandervoort Hotel
During its heyday, the Vandervoort Hotel was the center of
just about everything --civic meetings, school dances,
coffee shop talk. The building was razed in 1961 to make way
for First National Bank, adding the
Vandervoort -- named for its manager -- to the city's
long list of lost hotels. Befitting its
role as a railroad town, Paragould offered
travelers a variety of accomodations,
among which, at various times, were the Coles Hotel,
Iron Mountain Hotel, Commercial Hotel, Greene House,
Walker House, Lodi Hotel, Stancil House, Harvey House and
Paragould Hotel. |
