Rob Neufeld

Columnist

Buck Hotel

The AC Hotel under construction at 10 Broadway St. in downtown Asheville replaces the BB&T parking garage, which replaced the 1912 Langren Hotel, demolished in 1964, which in turn had replaced the Buck Hotel, pictured here in the 1890s, when it had become Mrs. Evans's Boarding House. James McConnell Smith completed the Buck Hotel, a log and frame structure, in 1825 to appeal to the turnpike trade. In 1907, the structure was torn down, after which it took five years for Gay Green and his partners to negotiate a sale with the Smith estate before building the Langren. Rick Frederick's blog, Asheville and Buncombe County (ashevilleandbuncombecounty.blogspot.com), posts a letter written by Albert T. Summey to the Asheville Citizen in 1906 in which he recalls that in 1842 "there were seven stores in Asheville... The only building on North Main Street was the old Buck Hotel and a house built... and owned and occupied by N.W. Woodfin. On the west side of the street the Stradleys had a blacksmith shop and down below the junction of Merrimon Avenue and North Main there was an old tannery owned by Samuel Chunn... The ground occupied by Patton avenue and the Battery Park Hotel (as well as by Haywood street) was a heavily timbered forest, and I have killed many a squirrel in those woods."

Rob Neufeld, neufeldrob@gmail.com, @WNC_chronicler