Smith-McDowell House

Smith-McDowell House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
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Location	283 Victoria Rd., Asheville, North Carolina
Coordinates	35°34′23″N 82°33′18″W / 35.57306°N 82.55500°W / 35.57306; -82.55500Coordinates: 35°34′23″N 82°33′18″W / 35.57306°N 82.55500°W / 35.57306; -82.55500
Built	1845
NRHP reference No.	75001243 [1]
Added to NRHP	August 1, 1975

The Smith-McDowell House is located in Asheville, North Carolina and is one of the "finest antebellum buildings in Western North Carolina."^[2] Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it was the Asheville's first mansion and is the oldest surviving brick structure in Buncombe County.^[3][2]

History[]

The house was constructed around 1840 for James McConnell Smith on a portion of the land grant issued to his father, Colonel Daniel Smith, as payment for Revolutionary War service.^[3][2] The second mayor of Asheville, Smith became one of the wealthiest land owners and businessmen in the region because of his various business, including a toll bridge across the French Broad River, the Buck Hotel, a tannery, a gristmill, a sawmill, and a mercantile.^[2][4] Smith's choice of brick for his "farmhouse" was a show of wealth as this building material was atypical for antebellum Western North Carolina.^[3]

In 1859 after her parents died, Smith's daughter Sarah Lucinda and her husband, Confederate Major William Wallace McDowell, bought the house and 350 acres from her siblings for $10,000.^[5][6] The McDowells raised eight children in their home and lived there until 1880 when post-Civil War financial difficulties forced them to sell.^[6]

In 1881, Alexander Garrett purchased the house and made changes to modernize his new home, including connecting the summer kitchen to the main house and adding a solarium, Italianate windows, and a metal roof to replace the original wood shingles.^[6] Garret built the Oakland Inn down the road from his house, and also became the mayor of the town of Victoria, a small community built on former Smith-McDowell plantation property.^[6]

Garret died in 1897, leaving the house to his son Robert who sold the house and six acres to Dr. Charles Van Bergen for $10,000.^[6] Van Bergen hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the son of the then deceased Frederick Law Olmsted, to design a landscape plan for the property.^[2] Socialite Caroline Bates McKee purchased the house in 1909, followed by Brewster Chapman in 1913.^[7] Chapman hired architect Richard Sharp Smith, previously supervising architect for the construction of Biltmore, to redesign the interior of the main level.^[3] Changes included adding a side entrance to use with automobiles, bathrooms, new mantles, mahogany doors, and oak flooring throughout. Exterior changes included adding decorative caps to the chimneys and the addition of a red slate roof.

In 1951, Smith-McDowell House was converted into classrooms (main level) and dormitory (upper two levels) for a private high school.^[2][3] Years of neglect, followed by the school's closing, had ravaged the structure that was part of a land acquisition by Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in 1961.^[8][9] In 1974, the Western North Carolina Historical Association leased the house from the Community College, and began its restoration over a six-year period under the supervision of architect Henry Gaines.^[10] Smith-McDowell House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.^[11] The Association opened its Smith-McDowell House Museum on May 31, 1981.^[12]

Architecture[]

The three-story Smith-McDowell House is a blend of architectural styles dating from its original 1840 construction and additions completed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The original architect and builder of the house are unknown, although family tradition says the plans were brought from England and original interior woodwork is similar to that by Ephraim Clayton who was active in the area at the time.^[3]

The floor plan is typical of Adam style, better known as Federal style in America.^[3] It is a double-pile plan, Flemish bond, five-bay mansion that features a double-tier porch semi-engaged beneath an extension of its gable roof. Each three-bay end wall has a pair chimneys. The brick walls are 12 to 20 inches thick, with plaster applied directly. The original Federal character that dominated the house's exterior remains in the large fanlights above the front doors and in the delicacy of the front porch that is supported by twelve slender fluted columns (six on each level). The house has corbelled cornices that feature dentils. The exterior of the building at one time displayed penciling, and remnants remain in several spots. Although much of the dwelling's original Greek Revival interior woodwork was replaced during a Neoclassical style remodeling in 1913, the second floor's mantels, window frames, and door frames are original, dating from the 1840s. A one-story semicircular solarium was added to the southern end wall in the late 1880s.^[3]

There are two remaining brick outbuildings from the plantation era, both located in close proximity to the rear of the house: the summer kitchen, which is now attached to the main house, and a dependency that was used for salt curing and as a laundry.^[3]

WNC Historical Association[]

Today, the house is a part of the campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and is operated by the Western North Carolina Historical Association as a nonprofit museum.^[13] The museum is organized as a timeline house museum, showing how families lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

References[]

External links[]

• Media related to Smith-McDowell House at Wikimedia Commons
• Western North Carolina Historical Association: Smith-McDowell House Museum
• Asheville, North Carolina, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary