page_title: Asheville, North Carolina
section_title: 1900s to present
hierarchical_section_title: Asheville, North Carolina / History / 1900s to present
caption_attribution_description: Asheville City Hall, Asheville, NC
context_page_description: Asheville is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 12th-most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. According to 2019 estimates, the city's population was 92,870. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, with a population of 424,858 in 2010.
context_section_description: In 1900, Asheville was the third largest city in the state, behind Wilmington and Charlotte. Asheville prospered in the decades of the 1910s and 1920s. During these years, Rutherford P. Hayes, son of President Rutherford B. Hayes, bought land, worked with Edward W. Pearson, Sr. to create the African-American Burton Street Community, and worked to establish a sanitary district in West Asheville, which became an incorporated town in 1913, merging with Asheville in 1917. Since its original construction in 1913, under the direction of famed architect and freemason Richard Sharp Smith, the historic Asheville Masonic Temple has served as a gathering place for local Masons to enact their secret rituals through much of the 20th century. The Great Depression, the period of Asheville's history made world-famous by the novel Look Homeward, Angel, hit Asheville quite hard. On November 20, 1930, eight local banks failed. Only Wachovia remained open with infusions of cash from Winston-Salem. Because of the explosive growth of the previous decades, the per capita debt owed by the city (through municipal bonds) was the highest in the nation. By 1929, both the city and Buncombe County had incurred over $56 million in bonded debt to pay for a wide range of municipal and infrastructure improvements, including City Hall, the water system, Beaucatcher Tunnel, and Asheville High School. Rather than default, the city paid those debts over a period of fifty years. From the start of the depression through the 1980s, economic growth in Asheville was slow. During this time of financial stagnation, most of the buildings in the downtown district remained unaltered. Therefore, Asheville has one of the most impressive, comprehensive collections of Art Deco architecture in the United States.
  On July 15–16, 1916, the Asheville area was subject to severe flooding from the remnants of a tropical storm which caused more than $3 million in damage. In September 2004, remnants of Hurricanes Frances and Ivan caused major flooding in Asheville, particularly at Biltmore Village.
  From the 1950s to the 1970s, urban renewal displaced much of Asheville's African-American population. Asheville's neighborhoods of Montford and Kenilworth, now mostly white, used to consist of majority-black home owners.
  In 2003, Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Robert Rudolph was transported to Asheville from Murphy, North Carolina, for arraignment in federal court.
  In July 2020, Asheville City Council voted to provide reparations to Black residents for the city's "historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties".  The resolution was unanimously passed, and "will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities". Also in 2020, efforts were made to remove or change several monuments which celebrated the Confederate States of America or slave owners. Attorney Sean Devereux wanted to name Asheville for Arthur Ashe, whose ancestors were owned by Sameul Ashe, for whom the city is now named.
caption: Asheville City Hall, designed by Douglas Ellington, in the Art Deco style of the 1920s
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