Smith Mc-Dowell House - 283 Victoria Road, Asheville, NC  828-253-9231

Directions: The Smith McDowell House Museum is located on the campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. From I-40:Take Exit 50 toward Biltmore Estate and downtown Asheville. Turn left at end of ramp on Biltmore Ave. Proceed ½ mile and stay in right hand lane as the road forks. Stay on Biltmore Ave. for 1 mile. Turn Left onto Victoria Road at the signal by Mission Hospital’s St. Joseph Campus. The Museum is located on right ½ mile down Victoria Road

The Smith-McDowell House is the oldest surviving house in Asheville and the oldest brick house in Buncombe County, North Carolina. The house was built by James McConnell Smith (1787-1856) and his wife Mary “Polly” Patton (1794­1853) on land that Smith’s father Colonel Daniel Smith (1757-1824) acquired via a land grant for Revolutionary War soldiers. Smith’s parents were among the earliest settlers to the region and James is said to have been the first white child born west of the mountains in North Carolina.

Smith was one of the most influential men in antebellum Asheville and one of the leading businessmen in North Carolina. He was a judge and mayor, and owned a store, the Buck Hotel, a tavern, two plantations, a tannery, and a gold mine. In 1833, Smith built and operated a state-licensed toll bridge over the French Broad River on the Buncombe Turnpike, a part of the Drovers’ Road which linked farmers from Greeneville, TN and western North Carolina to markets in South Carolina and Georgia. Because of his monopoly on the bridge, Smith was able to acquire great wealth for his times. At one time, he owned more than 30,000 acres across the County. Around 1840, Smith, built a mansion on his plantation south of Asheville. Slave labor was probably used to produce the four-story brick house. Brick was rare in the region at the time, and most of Smith’s contemporaries lived in log cabins.

Upon Smith’s death in 1856, his son, John Patton Smith (1823-1857), inherited the house. When John died a year later, James’ business partner and son-in-law, William Wallace McDowell (1823-1893), and Sarah Lucinda Smith McDowell (1826-1905) purchased the house and 350 acres for $10,000. On the eve of the Civil War, McDowell organized the Buncombe Riflemen, the first group of Confederate volunteers from Western North Carolina and achieved the rank of Major. During the War, the house was visited by Union troops.

After the War, economic reversals forced the McDowells to sell portions of their land. In 1881, they sold their home and 15 acres to Alexander Garrett (c. 1820- 1895) an immigrant from Ireland who had made his fortune in St. Louis, Missouri. Like many others, Garrett came to Asheville with hopes that the mountain air would cure his daughter-in-law’s tuberculosis. Garrett updated the house and connected the summer kitchen to the main house. He also founded and became the Mayor of Victoria, the wealthy community surrounding his home, and built the Victoria Inn. Later, he sold the house to his son, Robert for $1.00.

Dr. and Mrs. Charles Van Bergen purchased the house from Robert in 1898. Van Bergen commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to create a landscape plan for his property and added a new carriage house that, according to tradition, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. (The formal garden area and the carriage house are pictured in around 1913). Subsequent owners were Henrietta Bates McKee (friend of the Vanderbilts and President Roosevelt), millionaire Brewster Chapman, and Herman Gudger (General Manager of DuPont during WWI and Vice-President of the Goldwyn Corporation of film fame). Chapman hired Richard Sharp Smith, supervising architecture for Biltmore Estate, to update the house in 1913.

In 1951, the Catholic Diocese purchased the house for a boy’s school dormitory. In 1974, the then dilapidated house and grounds were purchased by Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. That same year, the Western North Carolina Historical Association rescued the house from demolition by negotiating a lease to restore the house as a heritage center. After fund-raising and extensive restorations, the Museum opened in 1981. Today, the restored Smith-McDowell House is a nonprofit museum and is included in the National Register of Historic Places. It is the finest surviving example of brick antebellum architecture in Western North Carolina.

Grove Park Inn

DRIVING: Directions to The Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa: From I-26 or I-40, take I-240into Asheville. -Take exit 5B, Charlotte Street.  -Proceed north on CharlotteStreet for approximately 1.3 miles. - Turn right on Macon Avenue and continue for .8 mile. -The Grove Park Inn Resort &Spa entrance will be to your left.

Walking Through History at the Grove Park Inn

The hotel’s own history began in the late 1800s when Edwin W. Grove, founder of Grove’s Pharmacy and Paris Medi­cal Company in St. Louis, began spending summers in Asheville, N.C. in hopes the invigorating mountain air would provide relief for his bronchitis. Not only did the Asheville’s restore Grove’s health, it inspired him to build a magnificent hotel where others could come for relaxation and restoration as well. There’s a delightful display of memorabilia from the inn’s early days that’s part of the walking tour. The nostalgic collection includes vintage photos, original roof tiles (the inn retiled its famous red roof for the first time in 87 years in 2000) and a collection of patent medicines produced by Edwin Grove’s company. My favorite: the bottle of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic.

The tonic is the only “tasteless” thing about the walking tour, which really begins before you enter the hotel. The Grove Park’s unique look was inspired by the craggy rustic style of the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, which Grove had visited. Unable to find an architect who understood his concept, Grove turned to his son-in-law Fred Seely, who without the aid of an architect or contractor, designed and supervised the construction of the inn himself. Huge granite boulders—some of them weighing as much as 10,000 pounds - were taken from the nearby Sunset Mountain and fitted into place over a steel and concrete frame by Italian stonemasons and hundreds of local workers. On July 13, 1913 after a year of construction, the Grove Park Inn opened its doors with William Jennings Bryan delivering the address at the grand opening banquet. Upon entering the hotel today, you’ll find yourself lost in the lobby—or Great Hall as it is more aptly called. At 120 feet long and 80 feet wide, this is a lot of lobby. Anchoring the hall at either end are two massive fireplaces—each large enough to burn 12-foot long logs and each containing an elevator. That’s right, an elevator. These hand-operated wonders run alongside the chimney shafts within the rock work of the great fireplaces and transport guests and luggage to the upper floors.

Back in the Great Hall, however, there’s even more to wonder at. Originally the lobby was furnished in wicker pieces but all that was replaced in the 1930s with the wonderful wormy chestnut Paddlearm sofas and chairs that guests sink into today. Authentic Arts and Crafts furniture and lighting fixtures are seen throughout the lobby and in the main inn’s guest rooms. The most famous piece is the Roycroft grandfather clock that stands against one of the Great Hall’s center columns. Only three of these clocks were made and the Grove has two of them (the other keeps time across from the memorabilia collection just off the Great Hall). Another unique feature of the Great Hall are the inspirational quotes engraved on its stone walls. You can pick up a complete list of quotations at the concierge’s desk or just wander about and read the words of everyone from Thoreau and Emerson to anonymous Oriental and Native American thinkers.

Grovewood Gallery

This very special gallery is home to an extraordinary collection of fine craft, garden sculpture, and handcrafted furniture… pre­sented in such a delightful setting that it’s no wonder it was chosen as one of the top 10 craft galler­ies in the country. Come see for yourself this collection that delights the eye as well as the heart. 

Homespun Shops Celebrated By Bruce Johnson

In the years after the Biltmore Estate opened in 1895, George and Edith Vanderbilt spent hours exploring the surround­ing Blue Ridge Mountains, buying for their Northern friends homespun fabrics from the women who lived and worked in mountainside cabins. Edith Vanderbilt took a keen interest not only in the fabrics she discovered, but in the people as well. In 1901, she founded the Biltmore Estate Industries, an industrial school to train young men and women living in Biltmore Village, which George Vanderbilt had constructed for the man and women who operated his estate. While many crafts were taught in those early years, the hand-weaving of fine cloth and woodworking proved the most popular and practical. Edith Vanderbilt recruited two young teachers, Charlotte Yale and Eleanor Vance, and sent them to Scotland to learn even more about looms and the art of weaving quality homespun cloth from wool. The woodcarving department evolved from the Biltmore Boys Club, which Edith Vanderbilt also organized in 1901. The original club was restricted to boys between the ages of 13 and 17, but within months the club had become a depart­ment of the Biltmore Estate Industries in Biltmore Village. Under the leadership of Yale and Vance, and with the benevo­lent guidance of Edith Vanderbilt, Biltmore Estate Industries soon established a reputation for quality craftsmanship. By 1916 the eight looms of Biltmore Estate Industries could not meet the demand for their homespun cloth; their hand-carved walnut, and mahogany bowls, candle-sticks, bookends and furniture sold briskly in their shop in Biltmore Village. The need for additional space was only partially relieved by moving some crafters into a building on the estate. But at a time when the Biltmore Estate Industries needed additional leadership and business experience, tragedy struck. In 1914, the 52-year old George Vanderbilt died. Edith Vanderbilt became solely responsible for the sprawling Biltmore Estate and a single parent for their 14-year old daughter Cornelia. George Vanderbilt’s lavish lifestyle had left little available cash for his widow and daughter. While their extensive land holdings and family trust insured a secure future, Edith found it necessary to sell 80,000 acres of timber to the U.S. government for the Pisgah Mountain National Forest and later subdivided another portion of the estate into lots for a development called Biltmore Forest. Without the time, experience or money to expand and direct Biltmore Estate Industries, Edith Vanderbilt considered selling her personal project to Fred Seely, the son-in-law of Edwin W. Grove. Seely had supervised the construction and furnishing of the Grove Park Inn in 1913 and since 1914, leased the 150-room hotel from Grove and managed it himself. In just three years in Asheville, Seely had demonstrated his ability to organize and direct the staff at the Grove Park Inn, garnering the reputation as “the finest resort hotel in the world.”

Thomas Wolfe Memorial