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(Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, A Division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage)
Long thought to be built in the 1840s by John Rogers, who acquired a great deal of land here in 1830, recent evidence points to a much later date. After the Civil War and his father's death, Rogers's son, William H. Rogers, subdivided the land into lots and offered them for sale. In July 1867, tobacco broker Louis Tilles purchased this lot. The following year, the Fort Smith Herald (September 5, 1868) recorded that among the city's improvements was a brick house for Mr. L. Tilles. The one-and-a-half-story residence of handmade bricks has full-width porches front and rear; the front porch, a replacement, does not replicate the original. Two single doors each give direct access to an interior room, not a passage, and the house is two rooms deep. Paired chimneys are at the gable ends and there is a large single central chimney. The house, which has had several subsequent owners, was restored in the 1970s. Andrew Tilles, son of Louis and Rosalie Tilles, donated land to the City in the 1920s for a park (Tilles Park; Grand Avenue at N. 37th Street) as a memorial to his parents.