Asheville High School, McDowell Street, Victoria, Asheville, NC
Built in 1927-1929, this Art Deco-style building was designed by Douglas Ellington and Nickolaus Louis Englehardt to house Asheville High School, consolidating the city’s two previous segregated white high schools, David Millard High School in Downtown Asheville and Hall Fletcher High School in West Asheville, into a single student body, with the former high schools subsequently being converted into Junior High Schools. The school opened for the 1929-1930 school year, but the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the subsequent Great Depression, forced the school to close due to funding issues after the 1933 school year, with students being transferred back to Hall Fletcher and David Millard temporarily, until funding was secured to reopen the school in 1934. Upon the death of Lee H. Edwards, who had spoke at the school’s dedication ceremony in 1929, and served as the school’s first principal, the school was renamed in his memory, and operated as Lee H. Edwards High School for several decades. The school was integrated in 1965 in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and was consolidated with the formerly all-black segregated Stephens Lee High School, later known as French Broad High School, in 1969, upon which it was renamed Asheville High School. The building features a rough-hewn stone exterior, a Y-shaped footprint radiating from a central hexagonal tower below a hipped roof and copper finial, decorative spandrels between paired one-over-one and two-over-two windows, an arched opening in front of the front entrance doors, which feature a large arched transom, polychromatic stone trim, a hipped red terra cotta tile roof, smaller wings attached to the ends of the main south and west wings of the building, with adjacent buildings on the campus, built in 1970, 1993, and 2006, which stand to the north of the historic main building. The main school building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Between 2016 and 2019, the building’s exterior was rehabilitated and restored, while the interior is the subject of ongoing renovations to modernize the school facilities within. The building remains in use by Asheville High School, as well as the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA).
Asheville High School, McDowell Street, Victoria, Asheville, NC
Built in 1927-1929, this Art Deco-style building was designed by Douglas Ellington and Nickolaus Louis Englehardt to house Asheville High School, consolidating the city’s two previous segregated white high schools, David Millard High School in Downtown Asheville and Hall Fletcher High School in West Asheville, into a single student body, with the former high schools subsequently being converted into Junior High Schools. The school opened for the 1929-1930 school year, but the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the subsequent Great Depression, forced the school to close due to funding issues after the 1933 school year, with students being transferred back to Hall Fletcher and David Millard temporarily, until funding was secured to reopen the school in 1934. Upon the death of Lee H. Edwards, who had spoke at the school’s dedication ceremony in 1929, and served as the school’s first principal, the school was renamed in his memory, and operated as Lee H. Edwards High School for several decades. The school was integrated in 1965 in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and was consolidated with the formerly all-black segregated Stephens Lee High School, later known as French Broad High School, in 1969, upon which it was renamed Asheville High School. The building features a rough-hewn stone exterior, a Y-shaped footprint radiating from a central hexagonal tower below a hipped roof and copper finial, decorative spandrels between paired one-over-one and two-over-two windows, an arched opening in front of the front entrance doors, which feature a large arched transom, polychromatic stone trim, a hipped red terra cotta tile roof, smaller wings attached to the ends of the main south and west wings of the building, with adjacent buildings on the campus, built in 1970, 1993, and 2006, which stand to the north of the historic main building. The main school building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Between 2016 and 2019, the building’s exterior was rehabilitated and restored, while the interior is the subject of ongoing renovations to modernize the school facilities within. The building remains in use by Asheville High School, as well as the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA).