by Dale Wayne Slusser George Washington Vanderbilt began building his 250-room French Renaissance château in the mountains of Western North Carolina, just south of Asheville in 1889. Designed by the renowned architect, Richard Morris Hunt, construction of “Biltmore”...
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 Owners of a historic 1920’s English Arts & Crafts house in the high-end historic Grove Park neighborhood in Asheville, discovered that their house may not have been built as a “one-of-a-kind” custom built home, as they had discovered that...
