Architectural Tidbits

by Dale Wayne Slusser - January 2026 The urgent need for more housing for veterans returning home at the close of World War II was both a national and local crisis.  In February of 1946, President Harry Truman gained bipartisan approval from Congress for what was...

by Dale Wayne Slusser December 9, 2025 O, give back Swannanoa The joys of yesterday That wrought a mystic aura About your winding way. -Mary Finch     Hurricane Helene and its resultant catastrophic flooding wreaked havoc along the banks of the Swannanoa River in...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Asheville, North Carolina, founded in the 1790’s in the mountains of Western North Carolina, remained remote and rather inaccessible well into the latter half of the nineteenth-century.  And although promoted as a “health resort”, beginning in...

 by Dale Wayne Slusser And smiling fields of golden corn, The mountains and the vales adorn, And fruits and beauteous flowers grow, Upon the banks of Swannano! -W.[1]   The site of the Cloisters Condominiums along the north bank of the Swannanoa River, and parts of...

by Dale Wayne Slusser “Governor -elect Locke Craig within the next few weeks, will begin the erection of a modern country home on his property on the Swannanoa River.” -Asheville Citizen-Times, January 9, 1913.   In 1949, North Carolina erected a historical marker...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Gone forever from thy borders, But immortal in thy name, Are the Red men of the Forest! Be thou Keeper of their fame! Paler races dwell beside thee, Celt & Saxon till thy lands… - poem, "Swannanoa: Nymph of Beauty" All the land now occupied by...

by Dale Wayne Slusser It all started with a cottage by the river. One day in 2013, I was driving on the road that runs along the north side of the Swannanoa River, near the historic Biltmore Village, when I noticed an abandoned shingle-styled cottage, sitting at the...

by Dale Wayne Slusser - December 10, 2024 O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love And I’ll no longer be a Capulet. ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy. In her above soliloquy from...

by Dale Wayne Slusser - December 2024 “More than 1,000,000 new spindles were added to the Southern textile mills in 1924 and 1925.  While Eastern and Northern capitalists continue to purchase established plants and erect new mills, Southern capital is being employed...