The Eureka Springs Historic District Commission has approved the refurbishing of one of the city’s oldest landmarks.

The stone retaining wall at Crescent Spring Park, located on Spring Street near Carnegie Library, needs repair and improvements, according to Eureka Springs parks director Scott Miskiel.

The parks commission proposed two reconstruction options for the project, which was approved 4-2 at the July 6 HDC meeting at The Auditorium.

“The first is to simply tear down the wall segment, add a steel-reinforced footer, and rebuild the wall with the existing stone to look as similar as possible to its original configuration,” Miskiel wrote in his proposal to Kylee Hevrdejs, the city’s historic preservation officer. “The second possibility is to construct two builtin stone benches … This would provide functional seating, but the engineer has confirmed that it will strengthen the wall.”

Miskiel told the HDC that he likes the idea of including the benches in the wall, but it will come down to costs. Currently, the project is seeking bids.

“Whether we can do the benches is going to be a function of the cost,” Miskiel said. “We think it would be nice. That’s a very long stretch of wall. So, to have a different feature in there we think would look a little nicer, break up the flat wall that we have there.

“So, we do hope to do the benches, but if it comes in at, say, $50,000, we would have to just go with the rebuild the way it currently is.”

Historic district commissioners Judy Holden and Marty Cogan voted against the proposal. Cogan voiced opposition to the idea of adding the benches.

“I mean, I think the addition of the benches would not be in keeping with the historical quality of the wall,” said Cogan, who questioned how the seats would make the wall more structurally sound.

“[The engineer] just indicated that, yes, those 90-degree angles would definitely strengthen the wall,” Miskiel said.

A drainage system also will be added to prevent further water erosion, Miskiel said.

“We hope to reuse all of the stones that we can, but a few of them are crumbling,” he said. “So, we would try to put the new stones down at the base along the sidewalk and reuse the old stone.”

According to the city’s parks and recreation website, the earliest view of Crescent Spring was an artist sketch published in 1881, showing a woodshed built to shade and protect the waters.

“Crescent Spring was revered for its healing waters almost as much as the Basin Spring,” according to eurekaparks. com. “The legendary Indian Healing Spring situated beside the wagon road on a hillside with a rock outcropping described as ‘Crescent-shaped.’ The spring was soon given that name as was Crescent Hotel, a limestone structure built at the summit in 1886.”

The website reports that Crescent Spring and a reservation on the hillside above and on either side of the spring were set aside in the original plat of the city surveyed in 1879.