The History Of The Albemarle Inn

Near the foot of Sunset Mountain in north Asheville, Dr. Carl V. Reynolds (1872-1963) constructed a large Neoclassical Revival style house for his private residence. Reynolds, then city health officer, was a native of Asheville descended on both lines from prominent Buncombe County families. His father, John Daniel Reynolds, was an early Asheville medical practitioner.

Although Carl Reynolds received his early education in Asheville, his medical schooling was at the City of New York Medical College, with a post-graduate course at Brompton Hospital in London. He returned to Asheville to set up a private medical practice around 1896 and specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis.

Reynolds shifted his interest into public health and was appointed city health officer from 1903-1910 and 1914-1923. Dr. Reynolds instituted a number of sanitation measures, including: the vaccination of school children, a campaign against the housefly, a milk ordinance, and the required wrapping of bread.

In 1924 Reynolds was elected president of the North Carolina Medical Society and in 1931 as president of the State Board of Health. He also was instrumental in founding the school of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in 1935 he served on its faculty.

The Albemarle’s life began in 1907 when Reynolds purchased some land holdings from the Pack family in Asheville and began construction of his house on Edgemont Road in “Proximity Park,” so named because of his real estate corporation the Proximity Park Corporation comprised of local businessmen. The group purchased land from George Pack, a wealthy lumberman from Cleveland who invested money in Asheville land to donate to civic causes after moving to the city in 1880.

Dr. Reynolds and the Proximity Park Corporation provided a successful approach to managing this land, home to two trolley systems. Prior to the group's acquiring the land, George Pack had leased 130 acres of land he owned at the end of Charlotte Street to the Swannanoa Golf and Hunt Club. Richard Howland, who moved to Asheville in 1905 from Providence, Rhode Island, owned the lands adjacent to Pack and managed a steam dummy railroad (the Asheville and Craggy Mountain) which ran from the end of Charlotte Street up Sunset Mountain to a quarry and gravel pit. The railway ran along the current route of Macon Avenue and was later converted into an electric trolley system intended to transport passengers as far north as Weaverville. The Asheville Rapid Transit (a competing electric trolley) acquired right-of-way through George Pack’s property in 1906. At Charlotte Street, both of the existing trolley systems fed into a city trolley system.

The Proximity Park Corporation developed building lots out of the approximately 130 acres served by the two trolley systems. Most of Reynolds’ land holdings (excluding his residence on Edgemont) were sold to Edwin Wiley Grove, soon to be Asheville’s real estate giant of the twentieth century. E.W. Grove converted Macon Avenue into an “autoway” in anticipation of the construction of the Grove Park Inn (built in 1913), which halted this portion of the trolley system. The Asheville Rapid Transit System ran between Macon Avenue and Edgemont Road until the 1920s. Reynolds is thought to have influenced Mr. Grove’s decision to invest in Asheville’s “Proximity Park.”

By 1917, 40 residences were constructed in Proximity Park. Between 1917 and 1925, another 20 houses were built. A number of prominent citizens were drawn to the area due to its mountain ambiance, neighboring Country Club, and the trolley system connecting the northern portion of the city with downtown. Along with Dr. Carl V. Reynolds, a number of other well-known individuals made the neighborhood their home: Walter A. Hildebrand (owner and editor of the Asheville Gazette), Dr. George Tayloe Winston (retired president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of the University of Texas), Frank R. Hewett (civil engineer and mining entrepreneur), Samuel Lightfoot Forbes (realtor, banker, and coal entrepreneur), Duncan C. Waddell (son of the Asheville Street Railway Company developer), and George Stephens (developer of Myers Park in Charlotte and well-known newspaper publisher).

In September of 1920, Carl and Edith Reynolds built the first house in the new town of Biltmore Forest. Reynolds then sold the house on Edgemont to the Grove Park School, a prestigious private institution founded in 1900 as the Asheville School for Girls. E.W. Grove and Thomas A. Cosgrove, the chief executive officer and headmaster, were the principal owners of the school.

In the autumn of 1920 the house suffered damage in a fire, but was repaired by the school. Adjacent to the house, a two-story frame classroom building was added in the 1920s.

The Plonk sisters, educators in the arts, leased the school in 1929. In 1938, the name of the school changed to the Plonk School of Creative Arts. The Misses Plonk operated the school in the building until 1941, and the school was to continue to operate until the 1960s under the credo of teaching the “total person-mind, body, voice, and spirit.”

The Plonk School moved to a new location in 1941, and in the following year Thomas and Mary Cosgrove (the sole owners) sold the house to T. Avery and Marie L. Taylor. Under the Taylor ownership, the house became the “Albemarle Inn,” a rooming house. In 1980 the property was purchased by the Mellins of Florida who converted the rooming house into a bed and breakfast. The inn changed hands several times until Cathy and Larry Sklar, the present owners, purchased it in 1998. Thus, the house has retained its name and function over the last four decades and through five separate owners.

The most famous guest at the Inn was the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945), who lived here during the rooming house days for approximately 9 months in 1943. While residing in the Inn, Bartok composed his Third Concerto for Piano, also known as the “Asheville Concerto.” It is thought that the work was inspired by the “concert of birds” that he heard singing in the gardens and trees surrounding the house.

Today, one may see the remains of ashlar culverts and bridge footings from the days of the dummy steam railway along Macon Avenue. Proximity Park has become an upper middle class neighborhood of preserved homes and quiet streets. Mature oaks and pines and a number of Norway spruces (the favorite evergreen of landscapers during the time) still abound.

We invite you to walk the neighborhood and enjoy the wonderful variety of architectural styles. We have created a self-guided walking tour for our guests to use. Please ask anyone in the staff, if you would like a copy.