Asheville, North Carolina aerial view

Asheville, North Carolina aerial view

Asheville (N.C.)

This aerial view of Asheville, North Carolina in the late 1920s, attributed to George Masa (1881-1931), emphasizes the city's growth in the 1910s and 1920s, and also the impact of the automobile on the city's development. Throughout the period, new structures and real estate development dramatically changed the skyline and automobiles expanded access to its downtown. In the space of twenty years the town's population soared from less than 20,000 to over 50,000. Visible on the cityscape in this picture are the Buncombe County Courthouse (1927-1928) and the dramatic Art Deco masterpiece Asheville City Building (1926-1928) seen side-by-side at the lower left, the Jackson Building (1923-1924) on Pack Square to the upper right of the Courthouse and City Building, and the Grove Arcade (1926-1929) and a new Battery Park Hotel (1924) at the far center right of the photograph. This great building boom began to falter in the late 1920s and came to a halt with the 1929 Stock Market Crash and ensuing Great Depression.

Masa, George, 1885-1933

George Masa Collection

Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723

1928/1930

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

jpg;

photographs

StillImage

62351

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/62351

2009-02-03

All rights reserved. For permissions, contact Hunter Library Special Collections, Western Carolina U, Cullowhee, NC 28723;

Buncombe County (N.C.)

5"" x 7""(dimension)

George Masa Collection