Love Letters to Lost Places

We work to protect the charm and unique character of Asheville to ensure that it remains a beautiful place to live and a prosperous place to work.  However, we know there is more to loving a place than beauty and prosperity.  Places are our tangible connection to our history.

These places mattered. These personal accounts illustrate why place has such an impact on our memories.  Our mission at PSABC is to ensure that important places don’t just become memories but remain for future generations to experience and create their own stories.

Honor these Love Letters by supporting our mission with a donation or membership today.  Your gift will be put to work protecting the places that are important to you.

 

The Enduring Legacy of the Castle on the Hil

By Starlett Russell Craig I grew up in the looming shadow of the “Castle on the Hill”. My street still stands but for the cause of urban renewal, the  house that I lived in has long been  demolished. Looking back, my neighbors and friends on Circle Street were like...

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Cocoa Inn

It was the on the sweetest spot in a town called the “Sweetest Place on Earth”.  At the southeast corner of Chocolate and Cocoa Avenues, the “Cocoa Inn” was the center of Milton Hershey’s model town, Hershey, Pennsylvania.  But for me it was a landmark, both in the...

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Victoria Inn

Attending St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines (SGP)  K-12 in the old  ”Victoria Inn” (later the SGP “Main Building”) was “home away from home” as a day student.  The grammar school was on the first floor, classrooms encircling a small gym/assembly/play room.  There was a St....

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Richmond Hill

One of Asheville's most significant historic structures, and one of The Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County's greatest preservation successes was the magnificent home of Richard Mumford Pearson, jr, statesman, congressman and diplomat -- at various...

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The Castle

As I look back on my years at Stephens-Lee High School, I think in amazement about the loyalty the majority of the people who walked its halls had for such a place.  You see, it was such a different time, a time when African Americans were denied much to be proud of....

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