RE: Louis and Elsie Freund
My first recollection of Louis and Elsie Freund was when my Grandfather, Claude A. Fuller, introduced me to them in the early 1940’s, during a time which was World War II.
At that time, I was just a young boy, but I remember they had a summer home on East Mountain that they would come to, as they were teaching at Stetson University in Florida.
I remember they were always enamored with Eureka Springs, and the many scenes and opportunities it afforded artists from all over. Eureka Springs had attracted artists almost from its founding, and it has been a magnet, so to speak, for the artist community down through the years.
The Freunds were very preservation-minded, and were among the many of us when we wanted to jump-start this sleepy Ozark Mountain Victorian resort community. One of the first things we did was to get the town placed on the National Register of Historic Places. From that start in 1972, the approaching centennial and the appointment of the Centennial Committee in 1977, we began the planning during all of 1978 to celebrate in all of 1979.
From the springs to the courthouse, the transformation of Eureka Springs began, and the entire town was almost totally restored within two years. Louis and Elsie were very enthusiastic about what they saw happening here, including cleaning up and identifying all the major springs, the restoration inside and out of the Western District Courthouse, the return of the trolley car and the train, the mural on the north side of the Chandler building (in which Louis played a leading role), the Bank of Eureka Springs restoration to an old time bank inside and out using existing furniture and architecture from the old Eureka Springs bank buildings, the first striped awning going up on the bank’s community room at 67 South Main, the restoration of the burned out Sanford Building that had sat there with only 4 walls for 20 years, the restoration of the Fuller House after the great fire, and almost all of the downtown business buildings being restored as well as many homes. These projects, and many others, brought new life to our 100-year-old stair-step town, and made us all proud.
The Bank of Eureka Springs commemorated the coming of the Centennial with its first historic calendar put out in 1978 to encourage restoration and preservation, and to this day homes and business buildings are still being restored in what has become an ongoing process.
Sometime during the late 1950’s my Grandfather commissioned Louis to do a portrait of him with the town of Eureka Springs in the background, and this portrait hung over the fireplace in the lobby of the Basin Park Hotel even after my Grandfather’s death in January of 1968, until we sold the hotel in 1975.
As co-chairman of the Centennial Commission in 1978/79, we commissioned Louis to do a mural on the north outside wall of the Chandler Building, which survives today, and it is my understanding that the Eureka Springs Preservation Society is going to touch it up once again, as has been the custom every 10 years or so.
After the bank’s remodeling, which was commemorated as a Centennial Event in 1979, we commissioned Louis, in 1982, to do a mural on the interior wall behind the teller cages of the bank’s main office at 70 South Main Street.
And finally, knowing that Louis was getting a little long in the tooth, we persuaded him to do a large painting of the town as you would look down on it from the Ellis House at the end of Wall/Wheeler Street, high atop East Mountain. The interior wall décor of the Ellis House is local scenes by local artists, and Louis’s painting hangs prominently there today.
In Louis’s later years, and before he and Elsie left for Little Rock, he tried to get a large building built next to the museum, but it was a rather ambitious project, and the money was just not available. If memory serve me correctly, the new building was to showcase the works of various artists down through the years.
We still miss Louis and Elsie. She, of course, was an artist in her own right, not only in the making of jewelry, but in her paintings as well, and we have one that she gave us many years ago. It is a painting of the old feed store where the livery stables used to be, and where the Bank of Eureka Springs now sits at 70 South Main. The painting is still hanging in this location.
Those that knew the Freunds know Louis spoke his mind and pointed his finger to make a point, while Elsie was quiet and laid back. I have visited in their home on several occasions, and always enjoyed listening to them, and seeing their works. They were indeed a unique couple. They were not only good bank customers, but our friends as well as great friends of the City of Eureka Springs.
I have a pretty extensive file on the Freunds, with various newspaper articles, Paul Greenberg’s editorial of January 3, 2000 in the Arkansas Democrat/Gazette, my letter to Mr. Greenberg and his reply, etc., etc., etc.
John Fuller Cross
