BARING CROSS

Rising up practically under the shadow of the Baring Cross bridge, the neighborhood by that same name west of Pike Avenue took shape in the 1870s and 1880s as home to railroad workers, churches, schools, cafes, hotels, sawmills and stores. The bridge, the first permanent span of the Arkansas River, opened for trains in December 1873, and then for wagon and foot traffic in 1877 on an upper road that closed in 1908 because of hazards to safety. “Baring Cross” most likely derives from combining the names of London’s Baring Brothers, who financed construction of the bridge, and Judge John Cross, who owned property at the bridge’s south approach. Named for the bridge, the Baring Cross community was situated across the pike from the Iron Mountain railroad shops and a large swamp north of the rail yards. Fertile farm land and Big Rock Mountain’s rolling foothills had attracted settlers to the area since the 1820s. Among the families that helped make Baring Cross were the Shillcutts, Gileses, Boones and Vestals.

Frank Bruner established the Pine Tree Inn about 1873 at Seventh and Pike, followed by Josiah Giles family’s Green Tree Hotel five years later at 723 Pike. The North Little Rock History Commission has a copy of a photograph of the Green Tree about 1886 when Charles Illing was the proprietor. A popular hangout for railroad men around the turn of the 20th century was Frank Bauman’s hotel and restaurant at 809-811 Pike. He also erected a two-story building at Eighth and Pike with a drug store downstairs and a meeting hall upstairs. Baring Cross Baptist Church, founded in 1903, met at Bauman’s Hall for a few years prior to constructing a sanctuary at 10th and Vestal. In the 1880s, residential development from the river shore up to 15th Street centered on land that Giles and J.W. Vestal subdivided. These lots bordered Vestal’s commercial nurseries and greenhouses, which produced some of the finest flowers and shrubs in the nation. Vestal also sold an area north of 11th Street in 1884 to the Arkansas Industrial Company, which operated the “brick yard.” Mord Roberts, a master mechanic for the Iron Mountain line who got into real estate in the 1890s, developed some 30 houses west of Pike from Seventh to 11th streets in the Giles Addition.

A group of 44 residents filed a petition in December 1895 to incorporate the town of Baring Cross. After court approval in April 1896, the town (population 300) elected a mayor, recorder and five-member council and created a school district. No official record of the minutes exists today, so little is known about the Baring Cross government. A column in the North Little Rock Times on September 24, 1898, noted that the council had passed an ordinance three days earlier to regulate bicycles. The columnist also complained of the need for “more commodious quarters” at the Baring Cross school, where 75 students had enrolled. Court documents indicate that Roberts and Frank Cumnock were mayors during the town’s relatively brief existence. It originally incorporated up to 11th Street, but two annexations expanded the territory, the first including two blocks west of Division Street between Eighth and 11th in 1898 and the second taking in the Baring Cross Addition up to 15th Street between Pike and Division in 1903. After North Little Rock won independence in 1904, Baring Cross residents petitioned for annexation to the larger city, which voters approved by 250-6 on January 25, 1905. Thus, Baring Cross merged with North Little Rock, but the unusual name survived.   

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