Finally, some walls going up in the Lesmeister!

After months of preparation, including a new roof and new concrete slab floors (with new plumbing and electrical beneath), the workers have started putting up the stud walls that will create the apartment spaces.

Below are two photos showing the current state. The first one shows the metal studs that will create the side walls of the apartments, allowing enough space to have wiring inside the walls of the rooms rather than having to surface-mount it all on the old plastered brick walls.

The second photo shows the wood studs that are beginning to separate the east apartment, which I’ve named “The Laurel“, from the west apartment, which I’ve named “The Julia Dean“. The Laurel was the first steamboat to make its way up the Black River, in 1829, to the new settlement of Pocahontas. When the boat arrived here, it blew its steam whistle and sent future Arkansas governor Thomas Drew’s pigs running wild all over town. Some say some of these pigs escaped to the wild and became the famous Arkansas razorback ;-)

The Julia Dean was a well-known steamboat that called on all the Black River ports before it sank in the Black River just south of Pocahontas in the long ago. The sunken hull caused a sandbar to build up in the river around it. This bar, know as the Julia Dean sandbar, is where they later found a musselshell containing the largest freshwater pearl ever found in the Black River.