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1883
A frame house of 1883 became the boarding house Old Kentucky Home
The two-story frame house was built in 1883, influenced by Queen Anne style architecture. By 1906, when Julia Wolfe bought it, it was a boarding house named “Old Kentucky Home”. She went to live there with her youngest son, Tom, while the other Wolfes stayed at their Woodfin Street residence.
The angel
His father carved gravestones and kept an angel statue in the window
Wolfe was born in Asheville, the youngest of eight children. His father was a stone carver who ran a gravestone business, and he used an angel statue in the window to attract customers. Wolfe described the angel in great detail in Look Homeward, Angel.
Dixieland
Wolfe renamed the boarding house Dixieland in his first novel
Wolfe lived in the boarding house until he went to the University of North Carolina in 1916. He used it as the setting for his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), renaming it “Dixieland”. His brother Ben, whose death at age 26 is chronicled in the novel, was the closest to him.
A memorial
The house became a memorial and a National Historic Landmark in 1971
Julia Wolfe enlarged the house in 1917 by adding five rooms. After her death the house became a memorial to Wolfe, who died in 1938. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 and has been open to visitors since the 1950s. The state of North Carolina has owned it since 1976.
1998
A fire set in 1998 destroyed 200 of the house's 800 original artifacts
In 1998 a fire set by an arsonist during the Bele Chere street festival destroyed the dining room and 200 of the house's 800 original artifacts. The perpetrator remains unknown. After a restoration costing 2.4 million dollars, the house reopened in 2003.
Day 1, morning
Next is Basilica of St. Lawrence.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Thomas Wolfe House and the Wikipedia article Thomas Wolfe, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.