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Asheville By Nancy and Richard Woodworth When George W. Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad titan Cornelius Vanderbilt, set out to build the largest private residence in America, he chose a site just outside Asheville. The widely traveled young Vanderbilt thought it one of the most beautiful places in the world. These days, many of the 850,000 visitors who are drawn annually to his Biltmore Estate would agree. The estate enjoys a sweeping view of Mount Pisgah and the Great Smokies, and almost nowhere in that great expanse is a sign of civilization. Although it is less than four miles from downtown Asheville, the Biltmore is not readily visible from the city and vice-versa. Asheville, which native-son novelist Thomas Wolfe described as a town existing within the rim of an enormous cup, is surrounded by the East’s highest mountains. It blends the friendly, small-town feeling of a somewhat remote Appalachian town with the sophistication of the worldly transplants who have settled here. The city, whose minor-league baseball team bears the appropriate nickname the Tourists, has been created by and for outsiders. A number of its current attractions were built by people like Vanderbilt who visited and decided to stay. The beauty and spirit lure the affluent, artists and New Agers to what some liken to an energy vortex, as in the Sedona of the East. The arts and crafts scene is unrivaled in the Southeast. Bohemian coffee shops abound. A downtown sidewalk vendor does a brisk business in vegetarian hot dogs. Asheville owes its cachet today not only to its spectacular location. Rather than default on its loans after the Depression, it chose to pay back every dollar, a burden that took until 1976. The city was thus spared the bulldozing of urban renewal, and retains much of the look of its 1920s heyday. Its flashy art deco city hall in pink and green sits side by side with the staid county courthouse at one end of wide-open Pack Square. Alongside is contemporary Pack Place, developed by the city as an arts and cultural center. Curving, one-way Wall Street is the nucleus of a revitalized downtown. Though surrounded by office buildings, novelist Wolfe’s childhood home remains rather homey (and was planned for reopening after a 1998 fire). Not at all homey is the sprawling Grove Park Inn, one of the South’s grand resort hotels carved out of boulders on the side of a mountain. The last decade has spawned a number of inns and B&Bs, where visitors can quickly feel at home. Many of them find Asheville to be a livable city that they might like to call home. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in the Southeast, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2000. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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