Young Men's Institute Building

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area surrounding the Young Men's Institute (YMI) was the center of the business district for Asheville's African Americans. George Vanderbilt built the YMI in 1893 to serve as the equivalent of ...

Unearthing Florida: Nombre de Dios

In 2011 archaeologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History uncovered an extraordinary find- the possible ruins of the oldest stone church in the state.

Originally built in 1677, the church at the Spanish mission of Nombre de Dios in St. ...

Unearthing Florida: Bureau of Archaeological Research

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the artifacts that archaeologists unearth in Florida?

The State of Florida’s Bureau of Archaeological Research, or BAR, in Tallahassee has a wonderful conservation lab and collections facility. This is where the artifacts found ...

Asheville Hotel Building

Asheville Elks Lodge #608 (now known as the Asheville Hotel Building) opened their new home on June 14, 1915, (Flag Day) with great fanfare and attention. Located at the corner of Haywood and Walnut streets and designed by Smith and ...

Arcade Building (Grove Arcade)

Dr. Edwin Wiley Grove envisioned the Arcade Building, built between 1926 and 1929, as a massive commercial mall with covered pedestrian thoroughfares and rooftop terraces surmounted by a skyscraper tower. It was the most ambitious project conceived by Grove, a ...

Battery Park Hotel

The 14-story Battery Park Hotel stands as an architectural and historic monument to Asheville's tourism and development boom of the 1920s. The hotel was erected in 1924 by Edwin W. Grove "as a capstone of his excavation and leveling of ...

First Baptist Church

When it was dedicated on March 6, 1927, the First Baptist Church embodied the distinctive style of its architect, Douglas Ellington, who incorporated traditional Beaux-Arts planning, the stark forms of early Christian church architecture, and fashionably modern Art Deco details ...

Brexton Boarding House

With the arrival of the railroad, tourism boomed as thousands of visitors boarded trains to Asheville's region for a restful stay in the cool of the mountains. Some came to spend the entire season and built ever more elaborate summer ...

O.B. Wright House

The O. B. Wright House is located in the Montford community in Asheville and was built around the turn of the 20th century for Osella B. and Leva D. Wright. It is one of Asheville's best surviving examples of a ...

Belvedere

Built in 1905 for the estate of the late Captain Thomas D. Johnston, Belvedere was constructed as a residence for his daughter Eugenia. Johnston served as mayor of Asheville in 1869. In later years, the Captain was elected to the ...