Alexander Inn

"Alexander Inn is a rambling two-story log and frame structure sited just north of the old east-west roadway in the Swannanoa Valley, about twelve miles east of Asheville, N.C.  The inn is sited at a strategic point where the valley floor narrows to several hundred yards, and hence faces hot only the old roadway but also the railroad, highway US 70, and Interstate 40—all of the major transportation links into Asheville from the east.  The Black Mountains rise gradually to the north behind the inn, eventually cresting at Mt. Mitchell, eastern America's highest peak, less than fifteen miles away.

The inn was initially a small log structure built about 1820 by George C. Alexander. It was enlarged in several stages throughout the nineteenth century until it took its present form—a two-story main block, seven bays long with an engaged two-story porch under a simple gable roof, and with a one-story ell to the rear at its eastern end. A covering of asbestos shingles, added ca. 1950, provides a deceptively unified facade, as revealed on the building's rear elevation where the recent removal of a shed addition has exposed its various framing systems.  The building has suffered extensively from termite damage and poor maintenance, but still contains intact and salvageable fabric from all of its construction phases.  Relatives of the present owner, a descendent of the builder, have expressed considerable interest in rehabilitating the structure and are presently searching for the means of achieving such a goal.

Framing material exposed on the inn's rear elevation suggests that the building was at first a two-story log house with an exterior rock chimney on its eastern gable end and with opposed doors approximately centered front and back.  Half-dovetail cornering and mud daubing reflect the standard log building technology of the area.  Although perhaps not weather-boarded immediately the log house received a heavy frame addition within a decade or so and presumably the ensemble was weather-boarded at that time.  The addition was made to the west, chimney-free end of the house and included a dug-out cellar.

The two-story, double-pen structure that resulted from this initial expansion displays consistent Federal style detailing in its surviving original materials.  Six-panel doors on strap hinges remain in each of the three exterior doorways.  A molded cornice and chair rail survive in the west ground-floor room.  This room also displays some original hand-planed board sheathing; the other rooms received match board sheathing in the late nineteenth century

Board and batten doors survive in place on the second floor of this Federal period section of the inn.  The original arched stone fire opening with simple board mantel shelf also survives on the second floor; the ground floor fireplace received a rustic stone remodeling early this century.  Scars in the second-story floor suggest a boxed in stairway rose, in the southwest corner of the. original log rooms.

Sometime during the third quarter of the nineteenth century—perhaps upon the transfer of the inn from father, George.C. Alexander, to son, George N., in 1869,  the building was doubled in size by the addition of a two-story saddlebag-plan section to the east of the original stone chimney.  This was also apparently the time at which double-tiejr porches were added across the building's facade.  The rafters in the Federal section were extended to engage the porches under a simple gable roof, and the boxed-in stairway was replaced by an exterior stairway tucked into the interstice occupied by the original chimney and opening onto the porches which became open-air hallways.  Either at this point or later in the century, porch rooms were enclosed at the ends of both porches. The ground-level east end porch room was later removed, but the other three remain." [Description from National Register of Historic Places application]