ASHEVILLE ARCHITECTURE

Asheville is a very interesting city architecturally. It was settled before the Civil War, and survived because it wasn't big enough for Sherman to bother marching through. They only had one Civil War battle here which apparently was two weeks after the war actually ended and nobody was killed. They were definitely very ambivalent and didn't particularly want to fight on the Confederate side and were surrounded by other Confederate states so they did anyway.  

They had some very forward looking civic leaders throughout the years and had a huge building boom in the 20s, which results in Asheville having more Art Deco buildings than any place but Palm Beach.  

While they are in fact Art Deco buildings, they're not as over-the-top as some others we've seen in other places.

When the depression hit things got really bad in Asheville, and they had millions I guess of dollars of bonds that other cities simply defaulted on and Asheville said they never would. The end result of that was that they had no civic growth even after the depression ended because they were just endlessly paying off all these bonds. This was partly because the holders of the bonds were rich people in Asheville and they were not going to lose their money.  They finally paid off their bonds in the early 40s. And had a big bond burning party where Miss Asheville tried to set the bonds on fire and it took three times to do it.

They had the usual downtown fleeing to the suburbs shopping all problems and that one time we're going to destroy a major part of the down town in order to put a shopping mall downtown. Apparently they didn't have anyone with the vision to drag in  a third rate basketball team and put a sports arena downtown instead.

Fortunately, calmer voices prevailed and they actually saved the downtown which meant they saved a number of these wonderful Art Deco buildings and maintained the original flavor of downtown.

Downtown is now a very busy, very eclectic place with music on every corner, wonderful independent shops. They are very against any kind of chain stores coming in, though they do have Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie.  

The Grove Arcade was a particularly fun place to visit, especially Mission at the Grove, a great A&C furniture and lamp store, Appalachian Strings, where I may go back and buy a mountain dulcimer that you hold like a guitar and which sounds wonderful and which I TOTALLY do not need. 

We also visited today and ate at a place called Pack's pub, Pack having been one of the early civic leaders in town who donated a lot of money to build downtown.  The major downtown square is named Pack Square.  They have some very nice sculptures which show an art trail through town.

The pigs represent the fact that they once herded pigs down the road that later became the Main Street. 

We took a little walking tour of the downtown area today and a bus tour where we went to the Grove Park Inn which is a major attraction around here.

Tonight we have a preview of the Biltmore estate which is what we are going to visit tomorrow.