LITTLE ROCK—The Arkansas Governor’s Mansion has served as home to the state’s first families for more than half a century. Now it will get its own special place in a history drawing upon the accounts of those who lived there.

John P. Gill, a Little Rock lawyer and author of “The Crossroads of Arkansas,” began the undertaking after talking last spring with Arkansas Governor’s Mansion Commission chair Wayne Cranford about writing a history of the mansion.

Graduate students in the public history program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock helped Gill gather material for the history. They spent the spring conducting interviews of some 30 former governors or their family members, including brothers Phillip and Bruce McMath, Bill Bumpers, and John Mark Huckabee.

Gill has begun poring over governors’ papers and reading newspaper files. In these early stages, he is trying to pin down the architectural style, and says “federal Georgian” might best describe the building. He notes some interesting details—it was “built like a fortress” with reinforced concrete, it once had a bomb shelter, and its dental features are on brick instead of wood.