The Metropolis of Asheville’s Planning & City Design Division, which oversees the joint Metropolis/County Historic Preservation Program, recognized in recent times the crucial want for documentation of African American heritage sources inside the metropolis, and in consequence initiated an architectural survey of historic sources particularly associated to Asheville’s traditionally Black neighborhoods.
After a lot exhausting work by native preservation consultants Acme Preservation Companies to revise the draft survey report, the Planning & City Design Division is worked up to publish the African American Heritage Useful resource Survey ultimate report, and we hope the neighborhood will be part of us in celebrating completion of the primary section of this essential work.
The lengthy course of and historical past of this challenge
Historic sources in Asheville have been documented over the course of a number of survey initiatives through the years, starting within the late Seventies via the newest Downtown survey replace occurring from 2007-2012. These efforts have solely nominally documented historic sources important to the town’s African American neighborhood. Few sources have been recorded throughout the town’s traditionally African American neighborhoods, together with East Finish/Valley Avenue, Southside, West Finish/Clingman Avenue, South French Broad, Burton Avenue, St. John-A-Baptist, Shiloh, and Stumptown.
In 2018, the Planning & City Design Division utilized for, and was awarded a $12,000 Historic Preservation Fund grant to help the Metropolis’s efforts to conduct a brand new architectural survey challenge particularly for the needs of figuring out sources important to African American historical past in Asheville. Further funding was allotted by the Planning & City Design Division for a complete challenge price range of $25,200 to fund the primary section of survey of African American historic sources.
A quote from the challenge supervisor
When requested about how the completion of the survey made her really feel, Alex Cole, City Planner with the Metropolis’s Historic Sources Division had this to say:
“As a historic preservation planner, I really feel proud that we’ve shifted the main focus of our program in my time with the Metropolis in direction of documenting and honoring the historical past of historically underrepresented communities. Many individuals consider preservation as a static factor, however I actually see it as a dynamic software that may assist to raise and illustrate the collective historical past that connects us to one another. My hope is that the neighborhood can even really feel pleased with this work, and can use the knowledge we collected to coach ourselves so as to achieve a greater understanding of a extra full and inclusive historic narrative of our neighborhood.”
