Sometimes, everyone while driving down a street–like Haywood, Charlotte, Merrimon or Patton Avenue, names so common–stops and wonders about the name. “I wonder who Charlotte Street was named for? And sometimes, there are streets that wondering where the name came from is the last thing in the world anyone would think about. Like Page Avenue.
A college student was interning with the North Carolina Room and on her first day we were showing her around. We mentioned that, for history purposes, we’d kept our N.C. card catalog. We noticed she was looking around the room as if lost. She didn’t know what to look for because she didn’t know what she was
I was looking through a stack of photographs in the collection we received from the Patton/Parker family after the death of Mary Parker. This photograph intrigued me. The writing on the back of the photo upped my intrigue. I wasn’t familiar with any of the names. The Ravenel family lived at 2 Short Street in Biltmore. Short Street became Kitchen Place
The photographer only had about 30 days to get the above interesting picture. This is what’s missing. The building above as it appeared in 1909 as the Asheville Library building at 4 Pack Square South. It was for many years before that known of as the First National Bank Building. In 1889 the bank purchased two small brick buildings that predated
Throughout this past summer, the North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Public Library presented a six-month series exploring “Asheville in the 1980s.” The series delved into the impetus for, and lasting results of, the City’s transformation during that critical decade. The programs attracted large and sometimes overflow crowds to Lord Auditorium. Now the entire six-program
Be sure not to miss this last program of the series! Incredible panelists and an engaging topic, and extremely relevant today. When we were planning this series last winter, we all saw Peggy Gardner’s “The Wrap” as a metaphor for the series. This program hopes to encircle all of the topics of this series.
Asheville’s first parking garage was at 11 North Market Street. It was built in 1926 for the Western Carolina Auto Co. Except it was called an Auto Hotel. Historical research on the building for the Urban Trail marker for transportation, found that the building had an overhead bridge connecting the auto house to the Langren Hotel.
What do these have in common: The Asheville City Parks & Recreation Department, Quality Forward, Community Arts Council and the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, along with thousands and thousands of volunteers? FESTIVALS! They all worked together in the 1970s and 1980s to create a broad range of festivals that were created in part to bring people
If you are familiar with early postcards of Western North Carolina, you’ve probably seen this image before. But which one did you see? There were numerous variations. The photograph is titled “Above the Clouds” (title slightly visible at left lower corner in box) published by Lindsey & Brown, Land of the Sky, Views of WNC,