Around the World: Asheville

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Biltmore Estate is a large private estate and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Châteauesque-styled mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet (16,622.8 m2) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age, and of significant gardens in the jardin à la française and English Landscape garden styles in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.






George A. Mears House






Conabeer Chrysler Building


Sawyer Motor Company Building


B&B Motor Company Building


Grove Arcade: Edwin Wiley Grove (1850 – 1927) was a self-made millionaire most famous for his "Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic." In this chill tonic, which came out 1878, Grove found a way to bottle a quinine mixture that would eliminate the bitter taste. The tasteless chill tonic, which some claimed was not all that tasteless, was an improvement over taking straight quinine for fevers and chills caused by malaria. A sweet syrup and lemon flavor was added to Quinine, cinchonine and cinchonidine, which were the main ingredients in crystal form in the tonic. Some sources claim that by 1890 more bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were sold than bottles of Coca-Cola.
“I had a little drug business in Paris, Tennessee, just barely making a living, when I got up a real invention, tasteless quinine. As a poor man and a poor boy, I conceived the idea that whoever could produce a tasteless chill tonic, his fortune was made.” — E.W. Grove
His company was called the Paris Medicine Company and it was through this fortune that he built the Grove Park Inn with his son-in-law Fred Loring Seely in 1913.
Between 1902 and 1905, Grove bought land in Atlanta which he would develop in 1912 as the streetcar suburb Atkins Park, named after family friend and mentor Colonel John DeWitt Clinton Atkins. Later he would develop the Fortified Hills suburb in Atlanta, now the Grove Park neighborhood of Atlanta.


The Battery Park Hotel is the name given to two hotels in Asheville, North Carolina. The one standing today is 14 stories tall and was built in 1924 by Edwin W. Grove, during a time of increased tourism in the North Carolina mountains. It replaced a Queen Anne style hotel which stood 125 feet tall. The name came from the fact that Confederate forces used the site for batteries of artillery.


Biltmore Estate Office


Biltmore-Oteen Bank Building


Biltmore Hardware Building




Samuel Harrison Reed House


Kenilworth Inn, located in Asheville, North Carolina, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a towering example of large-scale Gothic Tudor architecture overlooking downtown Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains and serves as tribute to American architecture over the past 125 years.


William E. Breese, Sr House


Asheville High School (known as Lee H. Edwards High School 1935-1969) in Asheville, North Carolina, United States, is one of two secondary schools in the Asheville City Schools system. It is located at 419 McDowell Street, in a building designed by Douglas Ellington. Construction of the original building was begun in 1927 and completed in 1929. A modern addition was built in 1970, and in 2006 a new cafeteria was finished. There is a second school located at the same address; the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA).


The Smith-McDowell House is located in Asheville, North Carolina. It is the city's first mansion and oldest surviving house, and the oldest brick structure in Buncombe County.
The house was constructed in 1840 for James McConnell Smith. His daughter Sarah Smith-McDowell bought the house after her parents died It is a blend of architectural styles dating from its original 1840 construction and additions completed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The floor plan is typical of Adam style, better known as Federal style in America.


Whitford G. Smith House


Mrs Minnie Alexander Cottage


The Omni Grove Park Inn is a nearly one-hundred-year-old historic resort hotel on the western-facing slope of Sunset Mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a AAA Four-Diamond Hotel and has been since 2001. It has been visited by many United States' presidents and other people of notoriety. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is an example of the Arts and Crafts style. It also features a $44 million, 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2), modern subterranean spa, which placed #13 worldwide in Travel + Leisure's World's Best Hotel Spas in 2008.

Comments

Asheville

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, some great houses!

Suze

[addie71.livejournal.com]

Great pictures here, too. Asheville is another place I've never been that I would love to see. I might make it there some day as my father was born near there and I've always wanted to visit the area he was from.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

My mom loved it, she said she wanted to retire there