Historic Arkansas Museum: 200 E 3rd St, Little Rock, AR 72201.
John Horn and Andrew Zawaski build two presses. One is in the Historic Arkansas Museum, the other one in the John C. Horn Collection of Antique Printing presses. “Recreation of the Ramage printing press brought west of the Mississippi River in 1819 by William Woodruff.”
The Museum has a ‘virtual tour’ of the second floor of the museum to show the Woodruff Print shop.
Cindy Ladage writes: ‘The reconstructed Print shop was completed in 2010. William Woodruff was the young man, who ran the shop and printed the first edition of the Arkansas Gazette at the Arkansas Post. Woodruff moved to Little Rock after the territorial government moved to town. The two-story brick print shop was used from 1824 to 1827.’
Website: “Across the block, in the upstairs of a brick building meant to be a representation of the circa 1824 print shop of Arkansas Gazette founder and printer to the Arkansas Territory William Woodruff, stands another project that consumed Zawacki’s craft and passion for over a year: a huge wooden press he built from oak and cherry, copying an original he found in Vincennes, Ind. Featuring Zawacki’s artful woodwork and metal parts fabricated by Stone County Ironworks in Mountain View and Central Machine Shop in Little Rock, the press is period-correct in every detail, and has actually been used on occasion for demonstrations and to do short runs of handbills and other printed goods.”
