Asheville's Climate and Edwin Grove

As our way to learn about Asheville (NC), we boarded the hop-on, hop-off trolley and headed to the Montford historic neighborhood, located just north of downtown. This was not a "hop-off" portion of the tour, so the photos had to be taken from the trolley.

"A portion of Montford is a National Register Historic District with 600+ buildings, mostly residences built between 1890 and 1920...with architectural influences reflecting the cosmopolitan character of Asheville during the turn of the 20th century.

"Victorian, Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts styles combined with Neoclassical, Colonial Revival and castle-like motifs, result in an overall complex quality of designs and artistic talent throughout the neighborhood.

"Few neighborhoods express the rich architectural heritage and vitality of Asheville better than the Montford Historic District.

"During an era of remarkable growth in Asheville and in an environment of a few powerful individuals with enormous personal wealth, Montford grew as a residential neighborhood for middle-class people.

"Businessmen, lawyers, doctors, architects and the retired all came home to Montford" (romanticasheville.com/montford).

Montford's history has largely been residential; however the neighborhood maintained a mixed use of several boarding houses and sanitaria for tuberculosis, mental disorders and other ailments.

By the late 1800s, Asheville’s moderate climate was being touted as an essential factor in treating ailments ranging from asthma to malaria, citing measurements of humidity, air pressure and elevation.

Dr. Karl von Ruck, who dedicated his life to the study of tuberculosis linked Asheville’s climate with tuberculosis treatment. This led more physicians to refer patients here, and they came in droves.

Best known of the many clinics and hospitals was Highland Hospital, originally known as "Dr. Carroll's Sanatorium," founded by Dr. Robert S. Carroll, a distinguished psychiatrist.

Highland Hall, once part of Highland Hospital

Rumbough House, this late 19th-century home became the Administration Building for Highland Hospital

Homewood, home of Dr. Carroll and his wife, world-renowned concert pianist Grace Potter Carroll.

Grace Potter Carroll ran a music school at their house from which she gave lessons and held performances for many years. Among her students was Nina Simone, a nationally known jazz musician herself (nps.gov/nr/travel/asheville/hig).

St. Louis entrepreneur Edwin W. Grove, the multimillionaire inventor of such cure-alls as the elixir “Tasteless Chill Tonic,” came to Asheville searching for a cure. In 1913, he completed construction of the Grove Park Inn, which remains an internationally famous resort.

Grove, owner of a pharmaceutical company manufacturing Bromo-Quinine, arrived in Asheville in 1900 and found the mild climate so much to his liking that he purchased a large tract of land on Sunset Mountain. Grove had the idea for a magnificent lodge, grand enough to mirror the majesty of the mountains that would provide its foundation.

"The Grove Park Inn is an earnest attempt to erect an honest building with no substitution of contemporary popular design for classic construction forms, all the more remarkable because an amateur architect designed it during an era of architectural pretension.

Grove's concept called for a building with the natural rough stone of the mountains surrounding the lodge. After finding that no local architects could grasp his concept, Grove entrusted his son-in-law, Fred L. Seely, to design the building. Seely had no formal training in architecture but undertook the project as both designer and contractor.

The Inn was constructed using rocks that had been quarried from the surrounding mountains. The workers used teams of mules, ropes, and pryers in collecting the stones which were delivered to the construction site on wagons.

The Italian Stonemasons were given instructions “that when the Inn was finished not a piece of stone should be visible to the eye except to show the time-eaten face given to it by the thousands of years of sun and rain that had beaten upon it as it had lain on the mountainside.”

The Grove Park Inn was completed in 11 months and 27 days and opened on July 1, 1913. The unusual and striking intimacy between the building and its natural environment is one of the factors of the continued success of the Grove Park Inn and perhaps the chief factor in its architectural significance" (nps.gov/nr/travel/asheville/gro).

Built in less than one year, completed over 100 years ago, characterized by a "flowing" roof line, and sporting an exterior that looks like a stack of mortar-less rocks, the Grove Inn is an amazing architectural accomplishment.

What must the interior look like?

To be continued.