LITTLE ROCK—The first thing to greet visitors at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center is a reminder of the blaze that nearly derailed the transformation of a Little Rock landmark into a state museum chronicling black Arkansas history.

The large concrete pediment that once stood atop the entrance to the Mosaic Templars of America’s headquarters was one of the few remnants remaining from the Templars building when it was destroyed by a 2005 fire. Rather than forget the blaze, museum organizers made it—and the original building’s cornerstone—the first exhibits visitors encounter.

“The only way a lot of people knew about any of this was through the fire so we start with that,” said Heather Zbinden, assistant director and curator of the cultural center, which opens to the public Saturday. “They’ll get to see a video on the fire and how we rebuilt before we go into community history surrounding the center.”

Three years after the blaze destroyed the historic structure, the rebuilt Mosaic Templars structure is set to open as Arkansas’ first state-funded museum chronicling black history and heritage.

Once located in the heart of the city’s black business district on Little Rock’s Ninth Street, the museum opens in an area dotted with fast-food restaurants, service stations and vacant lots.

The now-defunct district, however, comes alive in exhibits throughout the four-story museum, complete with replicas of a pharmacy and barber shop that once occupied spots on the street.

A giant sign advertises “Red’s Pool Hall.” A touch-screen exhibit allows visitors to see what businesses were just a short walk away from the Templars headquarters. The voices of those who visited or worked on Ninth Street when it was a hub of activity recount their stories in hundreds of hours of oral histories gathered for the museum.

Also coming alive is the division that Little Rock faced under segregation—portions of a wall with the words “WHITE” and “COLORED” painted over the spots where water fountains once hung are among the displays.

The museum also chronicles the history of the Templars, a fraternal organization founded by former slaves John Edward Bush and Chester W. Keatts to offer insurance to blacks to cover sickness, death and burial. Over time, the organization and its headquarters grew to much more—providing other black-owned businesses retail space, opening a nursing school and using its ballroom for dances and musical performances.

At its height in the 1920s, the Mosaic Templars had more than 100,000 members and had chapters in 26 states, the Caribbean and South and Central America. Before its decline in the 1930s, it also had a building and loan association, a publishing company, a business college, and a hospital.

The only active chapter of the organization, located in Barbados, planned to send representatives to Arkansas for Saturday’s grand opening event. They were scheduled to arrive Wednesday evening in Little Rock.

An interactive display allows visitors to search for Mosaic Templars lodges that may have existed in other states.

Even the building’s auditorium, complete with hardwood floors, a horseshoe-shaped balcony and pressed tin ceiling, has been recreated and will be used for private events and public lectures. But it will take a lot to beat its first lecture—Booker T. Washington’s address to 2,100 people at the original building’s dedication in 1913.

A Mosaic Templars preservation group began efforts to save the building before the city of Little Rock purchased the headquarters, then turned it over to the state in 2003. The Department of Arkansas Heritage had embarked on renovation when a fire March 16, 2005, destroyed the original building.

An $8.3 million grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council allowed for construction of a new building on the same site.

The fire, however, gave museum curators a new insight into the center’s history when they found a time capsule atop the building’s granite cornerstone. Inside the capsule, they found a collection of documents bricked over during the original building’s 1913 dedication ceremony.

The documents, which include booklets outlining the Templars laws and rituals and a copy of a speech delivered by Bush on the building’s dedication, will now be a part of the museum’s permanent collection. The new building, however, will follow tradition with a time capsule of its own.

That capsule will include a CD-ROM of the museum’s oral history project, a copy of the Mosaic Templars history and copies of letterhead from the heritage department, the center’s architects and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

“I don’t know if it will ever be opened,” said Constance Sarto, the center’s director. “We weren’t expecting to find a gift from 100 years ago in the first place.”