15, & Ancient Order of United Workmen) worked with the Women's Library Association to raise funds to purchase the property and start construction.

[1] The Women's Library Association undertook a project to construct the first art and museum gallery hall in the state of Arkansas in 1916.

They used local architect Andrew Coolidge, who had also designed the Jewish country club and multiple commercial buildings in Helena.

Some highlights include a letter signed by the Marquis de Lafayette, the first board cut from the Chicago Lumber Mill in West Helena in 1920, a ceramic gravy boat salvaged from a riverboat that exploded 1831, a masthead off of a Spanish imperial warship that was sunk in the Battle of Manila, the Phillips Guards Confederate Battle Flag, and the city of Helena's original 1820 plat map.

The majority was collected by locals in the southern end of the county, with a few being donated by the first president of the Women's Library Association and noted Arkansas ornithologist, Louis McGowan Stephenson.