Former Turrentine Home

On March 17, 1923, Henderson acquired a two-acre tract of land offered to the school by Rev. Archelaus Turrentine and his family “in payment of their directed gifts to Henderson-Brown College.” The Trustees agreed to accept this offer on condition that the College be given “an option on the homeplace of Rev. A. Turrentine should the place ever be offered for sale”. Immediately north of the campus and approximately 504 feet by 173 feet, the tract was valued at $515.

In 1963, while McBrien Hall was being constructed, the Board of Trustees was making plans for a Fine Arts Building, which would be located on the west campus facing Twelfth Street. For the site to be prepared, however, the Board agreed on June 15 to purchase the property owned by Mrs. Florence Turrentine for $33,500. On July 6, 1963, Mrs. Turrentine deeded the property, consisting of a one-story red brick house on a lot 163 feet by 180 feet, to the College. In the meantime, the College had advertised for bids to remove the Turrentine house from the site of the proposed Fine Arts Building and reconstruct it for use as rental property. Roy Stover of DeLight, Arkansas, the lone bidder, was awarded the contract on August 1, 1963, to remove and reconstruct the brick veneer house for $6,500. The house was reconstructed on part of a three-acre lot west of Highway 67 and south of Mill Creek purchased by the College on September 30, 1961, from Mrs. Lena Tobey Kaufman and her husband, W. A. Kaufman.