Pack Memorial Library Special Collections (Asheville, North Carolina)

The North Carolina Collection at Pack Library is a fully cataloged collection of published materials reflecting history, literature and life in Western North Carolina. Within the collection there is a particular emphasis on material relating to Asheville and Buncombe County.

Click here For online access to the North Carolina collection database.

In addition to a wide variety of books relating to the history of WNC, the North Carolina collection also includes:

* Photographs
* Historic documents
* Genealogies
* Postcards
* Maps
* Oral Histories
* Microfiche of local newspapers

The online database contains an inventory of historic photographs and documents from the North Carolina Collection at Pack Memorial Library. It includes over 1000 images and items that document the history of Asheville and Western North Carolina available online. The collection is only partially online now, but images and other research aides are being added as they become available.
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Photograph of the North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library courtesy Pack Memorial Library. Click on photograph for a larger image.

Hotel Berkeley (Asheville, North Carolina)

(click on photograph for larger image)
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Features of the season's improvements, adding to the popularity of the NEW BERKELEY, are the new offices and lobbies, the ladies' entrance, cozily fitted reception rooms and handsome parlors. Maloney's Asheville, N.C. City Directory (1900-1901).

The Grand Central Hotel was built by the late S. H. Chedester. It was afterwards operated as the Hotel Berkeley, but in 1911 was converted into a department store by Solomon Lipinsky. However, that same year the Hotel Berkeley merged with the Swannanoa Hotel (located corner of Biltmore Avenue and Aston Avenue) and was renamed the Swannanoa-Berkeley Hotel. This apparently was just a business combination as the Hotel Berkeley was located on Patton Avenue, corner of Lexington.

Today (2011) this Patton Avenue location is the site of Kress Building, which opened in 1927.

John Henry Tarbell (1849-1929)

John Henry Tarbell (1849-1929) apparently was born in Groton, Massachusetts, and moved to Asheville, North Carolina, in the 1890s (where he remained until early in the twentieth century). He apparently had a younger brother named Frank Bigelow Tarbell (born c.1854 in Groton, Massachusetts). One researcher states that neither brother married. That researcher also reported that when Frank died in 1921 he left John his Phi Beta Kappa key, which you see in the photograph. When John died in 1929 there was no one left to bury him except the family's lawyer. He must have had an affectionate relationship with his cousin Kate Tarbell, as he left her $500 in his will.

Source: Photographing the Negro in the South




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A Souvenir Directory to the Land of the Sky

Photographs
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