The UNCA Ramsey Library Special Collections, Asheville Art Museum and the Asheville-Buncombe County Library in cooperation with the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies, Asheville Historic Resources Commission, History@Hand, and the UNCA Center for Diversity Education, propose to develop a virtual collection of 7,000 drawings, historical images, contemporary photographs, augmented with significant archival and contextual information of the built environment of Asheville, NC.  The persistent and growing numbers of people seeking information about the city’s built environment rarely seek only images of the building.  They also want to know significant contextual information such as when the building was constructed, the names of architects, businesses and residents, and “stories”.  This collaborative project seeks to demonstrate that organizing informational content around a specific geographical location will enable people to make place and context connections without significantly expanding the process of data organization and points of access.

1.  PROJECT NARRATIVE  

1a. Project Overview

The University of North Carolina at Asheville Special Collections (UNCA); Asheville Art Museum (AAM) and Pack Memorial Library of the Asheville-Buncombe Library System (ABLS) in cooperation with the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies (UNCA CJS),  the Asheville Historic Resources Commission (HRC), the Center for Diversity Education (CDE), and History@Hand (HH)propose to develop a virtual collection consisting of approximately 7,100 items documenting Asheville’s built environment.  

This grant builds on a 2000 LSTA pilot grant given to the Land of the Sky Consortium that began digitizing African American materials from the different institutions and a 2001 LSTA grant that sought to add selected ethnic materials that related to the culture of western North Carolina . The proposed virtual collection will selectively draw from and develop and analyze the rich holdings of the participating institutions. It will seek to enrich access for the educational community both locally, within the state, and nationally.   

The project seeks to pilot a new method of digital asset management and access that will enable improved sustainability and growth of the collaborative virtual collections. An RFP was prepared for vendors, demonstrations given by vendors, and consensus gained on the digital asset management system best suited for the project. CONTENTdm is the proposed system of choice.

 1b. Scope & Significance

The proposed virtual collection documents  the important period in Asheville’s and western North Carolina’s development between 1880, when the railroad crossed the Eastern Continental divide, growing the city population  from 2,610 in 1880 to over 10,000 a decade later,  to the late twentieth century when the city of Asheville paid off the debt incurred during the Great Depression.  

The built environment of Asheville and the surrounding environs reflects  amazing growth.   Grand private, public and commercial buildings such as the Battery Park Hotel (1886), Kenilworth Inn (ca. 1890), Biltmore Estate (1895), the Grove Park Inn (1912), a new Kenilworth Inn (1918), the Grove Arcade (1921), were constructed.  The momentum continued through the 1920s as the Art Deco style became a pronounced influence through buildings such as the Merrimon Avenue Fire Station (1927), Asheville City Building (1928), Asheville High School (1929), Grove Arcade (1929), and the S & W Cafeteria (1930).  The Great Depression brought financial ruin to Asheville and construction of grand buildings came to a halt. As the Depression ended, the built environment reflected the city’s sometimes slow recovery from the heavy financial burden inherited from the depression.  Significant private residences and public buildings were erected such as Beth Ha-Tephila, the Asheville Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the Asheville Union Bus Station, the Woolworth Building, buildings on the Mars Hill College Campus, the Brevard College Library, the Asheville Citizen-Times building, the Montreat Commercial Center; and the D. Hiden Ramsey Library at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  Major architects include Raphael Guastavino, architect for the Basilica of St. Lawrence, Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect for Biltmore Estate; Douglas Ellington, the noted Art Deco architect who designed some of Asheville’s most noted and distinctive public buildings; and a group of architects with the firm Six Associates.  

This proposal seeks to develop a critically needed Web repository that will make the rich and diverse heritage of western North Carolina more readily accessible for study and reflection to a wider audience particularly North Carolina K-12 students, educators, local historians, heritage tourists, scholars, and business interests.   Understanding  how the new transportation means, economic cycles of expansion and  decline, and the effects of long-term debt affect the built environment of Asheville and western North Carolina, are lessons that go beyond regional geographical boundaries and becomes imminently relevant to all North Carolinians, and national patterns in the built environment.  

The project’s proposed website will document the changes that occurred to the built environment by including historical photographs, architectural drawings and pertinent archival records of buildings in a uniform database.  To augment visitors’ ability to identify and understand these changes, the site will also include analytical web pages about how the use of the built environment has changed over time.  The site will include information about the businesses, leaders, and ethnic groups that brought these buildings to life and gave Asheville its distinctive character. It will pay particular attention to the role of ethnic minorities in that process.  

The source material for the website will be drawn from the holdings of the University of North Carolina at Asheville , Asheville Art Museum , the Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and will draw on the collective knowledge, expertise, and documents held by the cooperative institutions described above. Other cooperative institutions will be invited to participate as the project grows.   

The Asheville Art Museum holds 4,000 drawings by Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect for Biltmore Estate and other Asheville monuments.  Smith and his partner Albert Heath Carrier were responsible for many of the remarkable buildings and private residences constructed in Asheville between 1895 and 1924.  The museum also holds approximately 500 drawings and blueprints by Douglas Ellington, a noted Art Deco architect.  These records document Ellington’s designs for some of Asheville’s most noted, and distinctive public buildings including City Hall, Asheville High School , First Baptist Church, the Merrimon Avenue Fire Station, and the S&W Cafeteria.  The Museum expects to add approximately 2000 records selected from the holdings.  

The Asheville-Buncombe County Library holdings include historical photographs of buildings designed by Ellington and by Smith and Carrier.  The library also holds Richard Sharp Smith’s three volume letterbook which contains field notes of his work.  Additionally, the library has an extensive collection of drawings, photographs, and notes from the Asheville architectural firm of Six Associates.  This firm was a major influence on the city’s architecture from the 1940s through the 1960s. The Library expects to contribute approximately 1000 records (photographs, architectural plans and drawings, maps, and documents) selected from their holdings.  

The University of North Carolina at Asheville, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections has significant collections of historical photographs that visually document the work of the architects mentioned above and others.  The Ewart M. Ball Photographic Collection contains images created between 1918 and 1969 documenting Asheville’s architecture, street scenes, and transportation information.  The personal papers and business items of Edgar M. Lyda includes construction bids, letters, designs, blueprints, and photographs related to the building of the Buncombe County Courthouse as well as the building plans, architectural drawings and photographs of the Asheville City Hall designed by Douglas Ellington.  The Biltmore Industries Collection contains rich material on the Grove Park Inn and the Biltmore Industries buildings as well as correspondence related to Asheville’s built environment.  The Asheville Area Photographic Collection contains images of the city when in the late 1970's and the recently acquired Julian Price Papers contains images of Asheville during its 1990's reconstruction process. UNCA expects to contribute approximately 4000 records.

 Cooperative Community institutions and UNCA departments will contribute information and interns to the project. An important feature of the website is the inclusion of web pages containing contextual information about the construction, functions, and, as appropriate, the demolition of the built environment.  This feature will enable site visitors to interpret how the built environment reflects changes in the larger community and visa versa. The idea of ‘where you are’ will be placed against other places, spaces and other people to explore the politics of place. Each of the three grant partners will contribute information to create these value-added web pages that will explore the webs of spatial relationships in which people are entangled.  Additional information about the businesses, leaders, and ethnic groups that brought these buildings to life and give Asheville its distinctive character will be supplied by the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies, Asheville Historic Resources Commission, Center for Diversity Education, History @ Hand consulting firm, the UNCA Departments of History and Political Science, various local businesses, and the western North Carolina grant project for teacher education headed by Pauline Johnson at Mars Hill College.  

The resulting content will be made accessible over the Internet via a digital asset management system, CONTENTdm.  Workshops to promote the use of the site will be held for the libraries of the Western North Carolina Library Network, K-12 educators in Western North Carolina , WNC Public Libraries, and other audiences as they are identified and recruited.   

The workshops will focus not only on how to access the different content pages, but  how to utilize the site to make the rich and diverse heritage of western North Carolina more readily accessible for study and reflection to a wider audience. Educators will be included in the workshop planning and instruction and analytical and critical analysis of the built environment will be emphasized.

rev. 2005-04-20