Founded in 1908, St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines flourished in various incarnations for over seventy-five years. What began in a house on Starnes Avenue with twenty-two students grew to eighteen acres on Victoria Road at what is now Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. Per A-B Tech, “In its heyday, the school enrolled 500 students and its campus expanded to include classrooms, physical education fields, dorms for boarding students, a cafeteria, and residences for the nuns. In addition to the high school and grammar school for girls, the Sisters established the College of St Genevieve’s in 1910, with direct ties to the Catholic University in Washington, DC.”
The Ivy Building was the original auditorium and gymnasium for St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines. The building was purchased by A-B Tech in 1987. In 2011, plans were made to demolish the building, but members of the school’s alumni and PSABC launched a campaign to “Save the Ivy Building.”
PSABC Board Member Kieta Osteen-Cochrane was a former student of St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines, and remembers how she began her involvement in the effort:
In 2010, very early in the spring. I think it was only around February or so. I had a call from a young man named Jack Thompson, and he was also new here, having come from, was it Salisbury? And he had looked around to see in his new position as executive director what needed to be saved. And it just happened to be that my high school at St. Genevieve, the very last brick building, which was Collegiate gothic architecture, was on the demolition list.
Former Executive Director Jack Thomson described the campaign as
Another Kieta monumental success. Kieta attended St. Genevieve’s historic Catholic school, women’s Catholic School, I believe. I think there was a contemporary school for the boys. I can’t remember the name of it. How, yeah. I can’t remember the name of it. Kieta went there. She still has all her friends that went there. And you want to save a place, you get a bunch of women in the second half of their lives together, and you can do any damn thing you want. And that’s exactly what happened. They got AB Tech, you know, loads of political and financial leverage. A huge entity, very important institution needed to tear it down for 20 parking spaces. And, you know, it was, I think, I mean, it was long and drawn out, but quite honestly, I think it was a few phone calls from some alumni that Keita organized to get that project done and saved.
Kieta added,
We did a huge campaign. The campaign was not a fundraising campaign, it was a campaign to see if there was interest in saving the building. So we spent quite a while getting addresses together of alumna. And then we sent postcards out with a return postcard, are you interested in saving this building? And so we got such a good response to that that not only had they already taken it off the demolition list, but in the next coming years, we didn’t even ask. They just did it.
The campaign was ultimately a great victory for PSABC, and the building houses offices for the college today.
