History
The original Battery Park Hotel was built in 1886 by Colonel Frank Coxe. It was designed by Philadelphia architect Edward Hazlehurst (1853-1915) in "spectacular" Queen Anne style. It was the first hotel in the South with an electric elevator, and one of the first with electric lighting.
Once the railroad reached Asheville in 1880, the mountain town attracted 20 passenger trains a day from the nation's largest cities, and people found out what a wonderful place the community was to visit. One reason for visiting Asheville was the clean mountain air, which helped problems such as tuberculosis. Fine hotels were built, and Coxe's Battery Park Hotel was the best of these. For one thing, its location on Asheville's tallest hill provided magnificent views.
The Rockefeller and Lorillard families were among those who stayed in the Battery Park. Another notable guest was George Vanderbilt, who from his window could see the land that would one day become Biltmore Estate.
On September 4, 1943 a U.S. Government Official, Clifton Alheit, jumped to his death off the roof of the Battery Park Hotel in an apparent suicide.
People hated to see the old Battery Park Hotel torn down, but Edwin W. Grove, known also for the Grove Park Inn, built a fine hotel in the same location.
Architect William Lee Stoddart of New York City designed the 220-room Battery Park Hotel that stands today. The modern building was built of reinforced concrete with brick, limestone, and terra cotta, with a Mission Revival roof that offered a dining area. The architectural style was a mix of Neoclassical and "Spanish romanticism".
The hotel closed in 1972 and the Asheville Housing Authority took it over in the 1980s, coverting it into apartments for senior citizens. Today, businesses operate on the first floor.
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“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)