THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507110456
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
LENGTH: Long : 246 lines
FOR THOMAS WOLFE, Asheville's most famous (if not its favorite) son, the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains that surround his North Carolina hometown symbolized entrapment. In ``Look Homeward, Angel'' his literary alter ego, Eugene Gant, yearns to escape the fictional Altamont and what he saw as its small-town shortcomings.
But a new generation sees those same mountains as sheltering arms, and people now are moving to Asheville for some of the same reasons Wolfe wanted to leave it. Metropolitan Asheville has a population of nearly 200,000, but the city has a comfortable small-town feel attractive to people looking for a good place to work, raise a family, retire.
Life is slower, a genteel slower, in Asheville. People actually admit that they take time to enjoy the azaleas.
You can't turn around without meeting somebody who's left some other part of the country to settle here. Novelist Rick Boyer, author of the Edgar Award-winning ``Billingsgate Shoal'' and several other mysteries, moved here from Boston after literally writing the book on the best places to live in America, ``The Places Rated Almanac.'' In 1982, in the almanac's first edition, Boyer and co-author David Savageau picked Asheville as the No. 1 city.
``It's one of those small towns that are just terrific,'' said Boyer, a professor of English at Western Carolina University at nearby Cullowhee. Lower taxes, shorter winters and cool mountain summers were, for Boyer, Asheville's biggest attractions. It's no accident, Boyer noted, that the people who run the federal government's National Climatic Data Center chose to locate the office in Asheville.
Asheville is near the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which winds a leisurely way through eye- (and ear-) popping mountains all the way to Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. From its early days, not surprisingly, its panoramic scenery has attracted the vacationing rich.
Among the most celebrated: world traveler George Washington Vanderbilt, an eminently cultured New York shipping-and-railroad scion whose Biltmore Mansion - a 255-room house covering four acres is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year (see story, Page G1).
Because of its relatively mild mountain climate - cooler in summer with winters that are altogether bearable - and spectacular scenery, Asheville has been a destination for people wanting to get away from it all since before the Civil War.
At one time, in fact, the area became such a popular, sophisticated summer retreat for the monied that it became known as the Paris of the South and the Saratoga of the South.
Asheville's literary air is genuine, having been breathed by such national notables as novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, who reputedly whiled away many hours here drinking and hitting on the Grove Park Inn's female guests while his Zelda received psychiatric treatment in the local hospital in which she finally died.
Short story specialist O. Henry, a North Carolinian buried in Riverside Cemetery here, became an Ashevillian for a while after marrying one of its residents. Connemara, a 263-acre farm 26 miles down Interstate 40 at Hendersonville, became home in 1945 to historian-novelist-poet Carl Sandburg.
By far the city's best-known literary icon, however, is the word-factory Wolfe, a torrentially prolific and erratically brilliant author whose 1929 novel, ``Look Homeward, Angel,'' brought Asheville both admiration and embarrassment. It also introduced a national reading public to the world of Wolfe's mother's rooming house, which the book re-christened ``Dixieland.''
Today, besides serving as a gateway to the Smokies and all those endless autumn vistas, Asheville is home to a compact, first-rate museum and arts complex that includes botanical gardens, two theater groups, a symphony orchestra and the University of North Carolina-Asheville.
At the center is the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, the historic Biltmore Estate.
Here's a look at some of the must-sees and must-do's for a visit to Asheville.
DOWNTOWN WALKING TOURS
One of the best ways to get acquainted with Asheville is to walk its downtown. You can take a self-guided tour or sign on with Asheville native Betty Molnar, who has been offering guided downtown tours for four years.
Whichever way you go, you'll get an eyeful of the varied building styles that make Asheville one of the more architecturally interesting cities in the Southeast.
According to Molnar, Asheville trails only Miami for examples of the art deco style in the region. You'll also see Gothic revival, Romanesque revival, Neo-Tudor Gothic, Greek revival, Renaissance revival, Georgian revival, Neo-Spanish romanesque and art moderne styles.
On the other end of the spectrum is the modernist I.M. Pei Building, a contemporary glass, metal and concrete monolith that towers over Pack Square and appears to be out of sync - way out of sync - with the rest of the city.
More in touch is Wall Street, a pedestrian avenue lined with inviting shops, and brick-lined Market Street - a style all the rage for downtown streets until those in command decided pavement was a more practical, if less civilized, way to go.
BILTMORE ESTATE
This is Asheville's crown jewel. When it comes to grand American homes (read ``castles''), only William Randolph Hearst's little place in San Simeon comes close.
The mansion is the dream come true of George W. Vanderbilt, grandson of wealthy industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt. The younger Vanderbilt fell for the area during a holiday visit in 1887 and decided to make Asheville the site of his country estate.
Not being one to have to worry about downsizing, Vanderbilt commissioned a 255-room mansion modeled after the chateaux of France's Loire Valley. It took five years to complete the project. When it was finished - 100 years ago this year - it was the largest private home in the country. It still is.
Today, guests can see the house almost exactly as it was in Vanderbilt's day because its sculptures, paintings, furnishings and household items have been carefully preserved.
THOMAS WOLFE MEMORIAL
Many of the incidents in ``Look Homeward, Angel,'' took place in Wolfe's mother's boardinghouse, Old Kentucky Home, which Wolfe called Dixieland. And many of the characters in the book were thinly disguised Asheville residents.
According to Steven Hill, site manager at the boardinghouse that is open for tours, many of Asheville's residents were so upset about their less-than-flattering portrayal in the book that they warned Wolfe that he shouldn't return if he valued his hide.
However, as Wolfe's fame continued to grow, Hill said, Asheville residents saw the light, and the only ones who were miffed were those who weren't included in the book.
The rambling, 29-room Victorian clapboard house, at 48 Spruce St., sits, dwarfed by a modern Radisson hotel, in a little park. Wolfe's mother, a local real estate speculator of considerable ambition, operated the home over the objections of her husband, a well-educated tombstone manufacturer who believed that keeping boarders was beneath the family's station.
Touring the relatively spartan place, with its naked light bulbs hanging from cords, its chamber pots and wash pitchers, its beds crammed into corners and even hallways, one infers the monotonous loneliness of traveling salespeople and others in the early 1900s who occupied this three-story jumble of places of rest.
Just inside the door and to the left is a piano-boasting - but not very cheery - parlor to which guests could repair in the evenings after dinner. Just down the hall and on the right, brightened by a couple of lightly curtained windows, is a dining room resembling a modest small-town restaurant in an old movie. Farther down the hall is the kitchen and a small adjoining room where Mrs. Wolfe rested when she had a moment. Across the wooden porch outside the kitchen door is another door opening onto the bedroom of her husband, furnished with a substantial, well-filled bookcase.
Upstairs, reached via a staircase across the hall from the dining room, are the ``rooms,'' including one now furnished with son Tom's antique manual typewriter and a picture of his editor, Maxwell Perkins. In the rambling maze, Tom had no permanent bed of his own and thus roamed the halls each evening looking for an empty one in which to pass the night.
GROVE PARK INN
You don't have to stay at this hulking pile of rough-hewn granite at the foot of Sunset Mountain on the edge of town to appreciate it.
The Grove Park was built in 1913 by E.W. Grove, a pharmaceutical magnate, much of whose fortune derived from a nostrum called Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic. (An old advertising flier for the stuff displayed a drawing of a plump, pink pig with the face of a grinning child, and the slogan ``Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic - Makes Children and Adults Fat as Pigs.'')
The original building, constructed of native stone, opened in 1913 and was billed ``the finest resort hotel in the world.'' It's been a staple on the Asheville scene ever since.
The inn's soaring Great Hall is home to massive twin fireplaces. Furnishings include handsome mission oak pieces, some of them originals, with newer pieces added over the years.
The resort offers 510 pricey rooms ($121-$285, depending on size, view and season) and a guest book whose signers have included, among others, presidents, literary lions and other celebrities such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Enrico Caruso, Michael Jordan, Burt Reynolds, Charles Kuralt, Daniel Day-Lewis, Crystal Gayle and Barbara Mandrell.
Try the Sunset Terrace, an outdoor dining veranda, for lunch. The views to the mountains, especially during the fall, are stunning. Prices are moderate, and the menu has a Southern accent. (Open through late October, weather permitting.)
PACK PLACE MUSEUMS
The cultural heart of Asheville. A highlight of this complex on Pack Square in downtown Asheville is The Health Adventure, an upbeat museum that elevates health to an entirely entertaining level.
Compare your teeth to those of a beaver or vampire bat. Find the part of the brain that processes information from eyes, ears, mouth and skin. Try jumping as high as Michael Jordan. The kids will love this place, too. Many of the hands-on displays have been designed with them in mind.
Also housed in the complex are the Asheville Art Musuem, which features a collection of American art from the last 100 years, and the Colburn Gem & Mineral Museum, with a beautifully displayed collection from North Carolina and around the world.
The 500-seat, state-of-the-art Diana Wortham Theatre plays host to jazz, drama, poetry readings, storytelling, Broadway musicals, heavy metal, swing, pop and more.
The YMI Cultural Center is a part of the museum complex and is around the corner from the square at Market and Eagle streets. It chronicles black life in Asheville.
FARMER'S MARKET
This market, operated by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, includes large warehouses of mountain-fresh produce, preserves and crafts plus a wholesale operation that ships goods cross-country. It's the real thing.
Look for a North Carolina fall harvest of red delicious, golden delicious, Rome beauty and Granny Smith apples, some priced as low as 33 cents a pound; apple butter, $3 a pint; mulled cider, $5 a gallon; green tomato pickles, $3 a pint; country ham slices, $5.89 a pound; fresh apple pound cake, $2.39; sourwood honey, $2.50 a half pint.
Also shop for inexpensive crafts - split-twig bird feeders, $7; rag rugs, $10.50 and up; straw and fabric scarecrow dolls, $12; Indian corn dolls, $7.
FOLK ART CENTER
A few miles east of Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the 30,000-square-foot Southern Highland Handicraft Guild Folk Art Center is home to the Allanstand Craft Shop, one of Appalachia's oldest and best-known crafts outlets.
It features the work of the more than 200 members of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, and it's quite a show. This is not a bunch of funny little things made out of acorns and pine cones. Much more sophisticated and a bit on the pricey side.
You might find bark berry baskets, $40; red oak rockers with rush seats, $600; handwoven wool neckties, $24; handcarved chestnut trays, $360; straw-angel Christmas-tree toppers, $25; quilted wall hangings and quilts, $46-$3,200; small wood carvings, $7.
BOTANICAL GARDENS
You've been to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and seen all the wonderful crimson ones, the stunning orange ones and the shimmery golden ones. Now head for The Botanical Gardens at Asheville to find out exactly what kind of leaves totally knocked you flat.
The 10-acre gardens, at 151 W.T. Weaver Blvd., ramble over hills and meadows laced with streams crossed by arched wood bridges. It's a bucolic microcosm of the North Carolina mountains, and many of the trees are labeled so that you can discover which one produces what fall color.
For example, you'll learn that the American elm and the black walnut produce golden leaves. Crimson comes from sourwood and black gum, and orange from sassafras. MEMO: Gary Krino of the Orange County (Cal.) Register, Diane White of the
Boston Globe and Jack Hurst of the Chicago Tribune contributed to this
report. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASHEVILLE/BUNCOMBE COUNTY TOURISM
Asheville, N.C., is a center for Appalachian crafts. Here, a
furniture maker demonstrates his technique.
Photo
ASHEVILLE/BUNCOMBE COUNTY TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
Thomas Wolfe's boyhood home is now a popular tourist spot, but the
author felt trapped in Asheville.
Graphic
IF YOU GO
Asheville Regional Airport is serviced by Delta, USAir and
American Eagle. The larger Charlotte/Douglas International Airport
is 1 1/2 hours southeast in Charlotte.
For information on Asheville, including lodging, events and maps,
call the Chamber of Commerce (800) 257-1300; for information about
the Wolfe Memorial, call (704) 253-8304; for the Biltmore Mansion,
call (800) 543-2961.
by CNB