Masonic Temple

The Ancient Free and Accepted Mason is a fraternal order with a worldwide membership, thought to have arisen from practicing stone masons and cathedral builders in the early Middle Ages. The lodge, first formed in early 18th-century England, is the ...

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 ...

Unearthing Florida: S.S. Tarpon

The SS Tarpon was one of the unfortunate steamships in Florida’s maritime history.

For over three decades SS Tarpon, built in the late Nineteenth Century, never missed its weekly trips hauling cargo and passengers along the gulf coast, but on August ...

De Soto Winter Encampment Site

Florida’s Spanish presence dates back to the rugged conquistadors who trail-blazed the European path through its swamps, forests, and rivers in the 16th century.

Hernando De Soto, who assisted in conquering the Incas in Peru, led an expedition to Florida ...

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 ...

Highland Hospital

Though predominantly a single family residential neighborhood, land use in Montford has been mixed since the earliest days of development. A number of establishments from boarding houses to public schools to a city cemetery have appeared throughout the neighborhood. Several ...

Princess Anne Hotel

The three-story Princess Anne Hotel was built by registered nurse Anne O'Connell in 1922. The hotel played an important role in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood. Asheville was known as the Nation's most famous location for the treatment of tuberculosis and ...

Manor and Cottages (Albemarle Park)

The Manor and Cottages compose a picturesque small historic district, evocative of Asheville's dramatic turn-of-the-century resort town boom era. The Manor, a resort with an English inn atmosphere conceived by Thomas Wadley Raoul and his father William Greene Raoul, was ...

Grove Park Inn

The Grove Park Inn, built by Edwin Wiley Grove, is an earnest attempt to erect an honest building with no substitution of contemporary popular design for classic construction forms, all the more remarkable because an amateur architect designed it during ...

Hanscom Park Flower Garden

Land for Hanscom Park was donated in 1872 by Andrew J. Hanscom and James Megeath. Improvements including flower beds, lakes, cascades and fountains greatly changed the site’s rugged character. In time, the park was referred to as “one of the ...