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BATTERY PARK HOTEL (OLD) | |
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| "Having a railroad did not by any means
Complete Asheville's happiness; for it had no hotel accommodations at
all commensurate with the tide of travel which immediately set in. At
this juncture came the late Col. Frank Coxe, who built the present
Battery Park Hotel. It was opened July 12, 1886, with Col. C. H.
Southwick manager. It has remained the principal hotel of Asheville
ever since. It has been twice enlarged and frequently improved. For
several years it was managed by the late E. P. McKissick. It is a
credit to this community, and has become an indispensable asset."
(1914, Arthur, p.508.) |
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| "When we alighted, weary, at the gate
of the pretty hotel, which crowns a gentle hill and commands a
pleasing, evergreen prospect of many gentle hills, a mile or so below
the works and wholly removed from all sordid associations, we were at
the point of willingness that the whole country should be devastated
by civilization. In the local imagination this hotel of the
company is a palace of unequaled magnificence, but probably its good
taste, comfort, and quiet elegance are not appreciated after all.
There is this to be said about Philadelphia--and it will go far in
pleading for it in the Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity
and the Babel-like ambition of its Public Building--that wherever its
influence extends there will be found comfortable lodgings and the
luxury of an undeniably excellent cuisine. The visible seal that
Philadelphia sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good
hotel." (1889, Warner, C. D. On Horseback..., pp.
42, 43.)
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| "Asheville's hotels are famous all over
the nation. Battery Park on a hill in the centre of the city of
Asheville, commanding prospects of the whole country around 'rus in
urbe,' also withdrawn enough for quiet but not selfishly excluded, its
drives, its electric car line, its whole environment make the guest
feel at home, the master of his time; his views, his comings and his
goings. An hour's contemplation of Mount Pisgah majestic against the
sky would furnish an army of exhausted preachers with new
metaphors.
The hotel a Queen Ann edifice, is three stories high 300 x 175 feet
in dimension, with broad verandahs which in winter are closed in by
glass."[North Carolina and Its Resources. State Board of
Agriculture. Raleigh: Winston. M.I. & J.C. Stewart, Public
Printers and Binders, 1896. p. 293-294] |
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See: E.M.
Ball Photographic Collection
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| See: Frank Coxe Papers - http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/coxef/coxef.html , particularly the photographic colletions. | |
Bibliography:
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