Silas Owens, Sr. House | NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, vernacular (architecture)

 house, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, vernacular (architecture)

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Historic house listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

Built: c. 1948
Architect: Silas Owens, Sr. (masonry work only)
Architectural style: Mixed-masonry Vernacular
Areas of significance: Architecture
Notable past owners: Silas Owens, Sr. (see below)
Area: less than 1 acre
Date added to NRHP: 2/15/2005
Other designations: part of the Mixed Masonry Buildings of Silas Owens, Sr. Multiple Property Submission
Notes: This was the personal family home of African-American master stonemason Silas Owens, Sr. Owens' own home is one of a total of 20 properties listed collectively on the NRHP in recognition of his fine and distinctive exterior masonry work. Born in 1907 in the small town of Solomon Grove, it is thought that Owens began his career in stone-masonry in the mid 1930s while helping build structures for the Works Progress Administration at the Little Rock Zoo. His skill as a stonemason was largely self-taught, and the earliest building that is known definitively to be his work dates to 1938 and is located in the town of Twin Groves. Although the term is applied to masons other than Owens, "mixed masonry" in his case refers to the use of sandstone and/or limestone, in combination with brick trim, usually cream or buff colored. Sandstone and limestone are both abundant rock types found naturally in this region of Arkansas, and thus were popular and inexpensive materials with which to build homes through the first half of the 20th century. Silas Owens, Sr. was just one stonemason out of many who utilized these materials of convenience in his work, but Owens possessed perhaps the most distinctive masonry work of these builders. One of the signature design hallmarks that commonly indicate his work is the "three in, three out" style of brickwork at corners and around windows and doorways, where the bricks outlining these corners and openings would occur in alternating groups of three bricks, with the first set of three placed horizontally, followed by the second set of three placed vertically, and so on. The collection of buildings in the Silas Owens, Sr. group are scattered around the region, and consists of a total of 17 homes, two churches and one former gas station. Interestingly, Owens' personal home displays relatively restrained masonry work stylistically, in comparison to some of his other work.