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
The Emporium Department Store Fire The current photo exhibit in Pack Memorial Library’s North Carolina Room pictures some of the city’s most noteworthy fires. Among them is the Emporium Department Store fire of July 25, 1923. The Emporium fire was, according to a later, undated Asheville Citizen article, “one of the most spectacular if not
“Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.” Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel Recently a man renovating a house on East Chestnut Street found a box of letters and pictures,
The Great Depression was in full swing in 1934. Looking back at people’s wildly varying reactions to such adversity elicits a mixed bag of emotions. Great sadness for the suffering. Amazement at the triumph of human spirit. Bafflement at seemingly futile (but perhaps poetic) gestures of hope. Take, for example, this poor family passing through Pack Square on a