Mt. Zion Baptist Church

Mt. Zion Baptist Church, a handsome redbrick late Victorian Gothic church, is home to one of Asheville's largest congregations of African Americans. In the spring of 1880, Reverend Robert Parker Rumley established a new African American Baptist church in Asheville, ...

Oteen Veterans Administration Hospital Historic District

Asheville has long been known as a health retreat, beginning first with American Indians who set this region aside as a place to bring their sick and ailing. Dr. Z. P. Gruner opened the country's first private sanitarium in Asheville ...

Clarence Barker Memorial Hospital (Biltmore Hospital)

Shortly after All Soul's Parish was established in 1896, George W. Vanderbilt gave the land and contributed handsomely to the endowment of the Clarence Barker Memorial Hospital, incorporated on June 13, 1900. The hospital was designed by Richard Sharp Smith, ...

Unearthing Florida: 1733 Spanish Plate Fleet

Shipping riches of gold, silver, and exotic resources from the New World across the Atlantic was often dangerous for Spanish sailing fleets centuries ago: especially during hurricane season.

In July of 1733 the New Spain fleet, made up of four armed ...

All Souls Episcopal Church and Parish House

The All Souls Church and Parish Hall, sanctified in 1896, are at the pivot point of Biltmore Village's fan-shaped plan, opposite the train depot and tapered plaza, so passengers arriving by train had an exaggerated perspective view of the church. ...

Southern Railway Passenger Depot (Biltmore Depot)

The village of Best, named for owner of the Western North Carolina Railroad, William J. Best, was the location of Asheville's first railway station with its initiation October 3, 1880. Railway passengers traveling to Asheville and surrounding areas used the ...

St. Matthias Episcopal Church

St. Matthias Episcopal Church stands at the top of a steep hill in an area of central Asheville known locally as "East End," one of the oldest neighborhoods developed by African Americans in the city. Reverend Jarvis Buxton, a noted ...

Unearthing Florida: Apalachicola River

Flowing over 100 miles from the northern state line to the Gulf of Mexico meanders one of the most important waterways in Florida’s history: the Apalachicola River.

The Apalachicola River basin within Florida covers more area than the state of Connecticut ...

African American Masonic Temple

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area south of Pack Square was the center of the black business district, complete with doctors, lawyers, restaurants, a drug store, boarding house, library, and the Young Men's Institute. Brick buildings ...

Pack Square

The public square has been a central feature of Asheville since the town's creation in 1797. The county court ordered that lands for a public square be procured in the "most convenient and interesting" place. Lying at the intersection of ...