Architectural Tidbits

By Dale Wayne Slusser We often find that in telling the story of a single building we are also telling the broader story of time, people, places, and events. This phenomenon can be summed up in one word: “microcosm”, which is defined as, “a community, place, or...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Often when researching the architectural history of a house or building, one tends to “go down rabbit trails”, seemingly off track from the object of the research.  But sometimes those rabbit trails lead to a related and often more interesting...

by Dale Wayne Slusser As if finding a stash of empty, lidded, stacked liquor bottles behind a basement wall, and finding a shoe that was intentionally placed inside of a plastered wall, were not mysterious enough for the homeowners of 191 Murdock Avenue, tracing the...

by Dale Wayne Slusser We preservationists have flown banners in front of historic properties which tout: “THIS PLACE  MATTERS!”.  But what do we mean by the word PLACE!  The house that Samuel D. Holt built in 1906, at 162 W. Chestnut Street, for me is an example to...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Montreat started in 1897 as a summer religious conference ground.  Now after 125 years, Montreat has evolved into an incorporated town within which lie not only the religious conference ground, but also a Christian liberal arts college, a...

by Dale Wayne Slusser At the northwest corner of Woodward Avenue and Norwood Avenue there sits a late-nineteenth-century gambrel-roofed house, which obviously predates all the other houses in the 1914 Norwood Park subdivision in North Asheville, which surrounds it. ...

by Dale Wayne Slusser A small unassuming log cabin, which sits on a bluff just above the John B. Lewis soccer fields in East Asheville, and which is now sadly in need of restoration, is famously known as “The Thomas Wolfe Cabin”, although Thomas Wolfe never owned it,...

By Dale Wayne Slusser When researching the history of a house, the primary goals, for me, are to try to discover who had the house built, who was the builder and/or architect, and when was the house built.  Usually, the answers to these three questions, in most cases,...

by Dale Wayne Slusser An East Asheville homeowner inquired of the Preservation Society, if anyone in the Society knew anything about the mysterious dressed granite stone, incised with the name “WHITE BOULDERS”, which sits on top of a low stone wall along Old Chunns...