Today, our last day in this campground, we headed downtown to see the final Asheville places that were on our list. We contacted the Asheville Visitor Center to help identify adequate parking, and their own parking lot was the choice. It is free and within reasonable walking distance of the downtown sites.
Our first "stop" was the Minor Basilica of St. Lawrence the Deacon & Martyr. I say "stop" because is was just a photo op from the outside. The Basilica is closed Friday-Sunday so all we could do was admire it from the outside. The church was designed and built in 1905 by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino along with his fellow architect R. S. Smith and the Roman Catholic community of Asheville. From both out Biltmore blog post and yesterday's Asheville Museum of History blog post, Raphael Guastavino's name should be familiar. He was considered 'master of the arch and brought elegance to American architecture using layers of thin clay tiles to build vaults, domes, and roofs in more than a thousand buildings. As mentioned before, he joined the team at the Biltmore Estate. With the Basilica, he created a free-standing elliptical dome, the largest in North America.
Passing the Basilica, we headed down Haywood street with the ultimate goal of visiting the Woolworth Walk. It appears Asheville has done a pretty good job of revitalizing what was likely once a run-down downtown area. There were many little shops open along both sides of the street. The area seemed pretty clean and well-decorated, but there were a few homeless and areas that reeked of urine. I guess that is to be expected anywhere yo go these days.
Soon we arrived at the Woolworth Walk, located in the old F.W, Woolworth building which was established in 1938. Woolworth 5 cent stores started in Lancaster PA in 1878. W.W. Woolworth was only 27 years old when he opened that first store which made a profit the first day of $127, a huge success! The next year stores opened in Harrisburg & Scranton and they changed the name to Woolworths 5&10 (five and dime), catering to the working class. Mr. Woolworth reportedly had three store policies: (1) cater to customers willing to pay cash; (2) offer the best bargains possible; and (3) openly display all wares. He became famous for buying bulk chocolate and selling it by the piece! By 1895 Woolworth became known as the "Merchant Prince" with $1M sales and by 1900 sales exceeded $5M. In 1911 they owned 3000 stores but was reduced to less than 400 when the last store closed in July 1997.
It became a Family Dollar for a short time and then in 2001 became Woolworth Walk and was restored to feature the original colors, original floors, and original soda fountain. The owner ensured the fountain was built to look like the original Woolworth Luncheonette. The 50s decor is a perfect fit, given the role local Woolworth stores played in that era.
Today the soda fountain serves many of the original menu items, like club sandwiches, BLTs, egg creams, and old-fashioned ice cream sodas. One that stood out to me was the "big ass bologna" sandwich, a Southern favorite!
In addition to the soda fountain, the Woolworth walk features artistic displays of more than 160 local artists. It is Asheville’s largest local artist gallery, with displays eclectic enough to appeal to everyone. There’s glass work, metal, photography, apparel, pottery, fiber, painting, and locally handcrafted jewelry. The displays continue on the lower level of the building.
We really enjoyed our stop here, along with the delicious malt and shake! We continued down the street until we got to Pritchard Park, a pie-shaped wooded city park with a water feature in the middle of downtown.
Left turn here and down the street to Biltmore/Broadway, then left a couple blocks to our next stop, the Moogseum. I talked a bit about this in last night's blog, but the museum honors the pioneering legacy of Bob Moog (pronounced Mōg), who was an electronic music engineer. He started building electronic music devices as early as 14 years old and at the age of 20 started his first business selling them. While working on his doctorate at Cornell University he invented his first Moog synthesizer, which transformed to musical industry. The way the story goes, although a brilliant electronic engineer, he was a terrible businessman and only patented one of his devices. This did allow the electronic synthesized music industry to flourish.
The museum here honors his work. Bob passed away in 2005 but his family started a foundation and opened this museum. They have plans to move it to a larger facility which will allow them to segregate the displays and provide photo opportunities inside, but until then photography and videography is restricted to just the entryway.
The museum is laid out in a timeline fashion and took us from when Bob Moog was born all the way through development of his musical products. One of the things I appreciated the most is they had his actual prototypes right there! One of his early works involved a crude handmade wooden keyboard!
This image was downloaded from the Internet but shows one of Moog's most famous creations, his modular 55.
So, again, I got my nostalgia/technology fix and Doreen got a chocolate milk shake and a nice walk through downtown Asheville NC! Even trade?
Tomorrow we pull chocks and head to Chattanooga TN for a few days. Next report from there!
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