Architectural Tidbits

By Dale Wayne Slusser When the current owners of 169 Flint Street (in Asheville’s historic Montford district) asked me to research the history of their house, they also asked me to investigate the possibility that their house was designed by Richard Sharp Smith.  “R....

By Dale Wayne Slusser  Most often when I’m asked by a homeowner to trace the history of their “old house”, the owner assumes that their house was originally designed and built for a specific owner. Often, they also assume that the house was designed by a notable...

By Dale Wayne Slusser  Perched high on a steep wooded site on Sunset Mountain, accessed from below, up a series of rustic stone steps and a magical pathway that winds up the hill through the dense ivy ground-cover, is an enchanting Storybook-style cottage,...

By Dale Wayne Slusser As the ravages of the “Great War” began to fade and the post-war prosperity of the early 1920s dawned, those U. S. servicemen and women who had served overseas, began to replace their images of the horrors of war with the more pleasant memories...

By Dale Wayne Slusser How Old is My House?: James M. Blair House- A Case Study “How Old is My House?” is the prominent thing that historic house owners want to know about their house.  Implicit in this question is also the question, “Who Built My House?”, meaning who...

By Dale Wayne Slusser “What are our Real Estate owners thinking of in not building houses?”[3], implored an anonymous subscriber to the Asheville News in November of 1869.  In his (or her?) long appeal, the anonymous subscriber gave a comprehensive state of building,...

By: Dale Wayne Slusser Shortly after British born architect Arthur John Wills left Asheville in early 1893 and returned home to St. John’s Newfoundland, after three years of living and working in Asheville, he sent a letter to the Asheville Citizen-Times with the...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Asheville, for a small city in the mountains of Appalachian North Carolina, has since the arrival of the railroad in 1880, attracted many of the most creative artists and architects from both across the United States and abroad.  And for some...

by Dale Wayne Slusser “Two hundred feet below under the shade of a pine tree a log cabin snuggles into a laurel thicket,” writes Muriel Sheppard in her 1935 book, Cabins In the Laurel, her literary portrait of life in the coves, hollars, hills, and mountains of...

by Dale Wayne Slusser Architect “A. L. Melton”, a little-known architect from Morganton, NC, moved to Asheville in 1886 to participate in the building boom which followed the 1880 arrival of the railroad. For the ensuing three decades, Melton was responsible for the...