Sep

Smith McDowell House: My Museum Day Destination

By Tamahome Jenkins · September 28, 2009

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Smith-McDowell House Today

This past Saturday, in honor of Smithsonian Museum Day, my wife and I went to Smith-McDowell House, located in Asheville, North Carolina. Built in 1840, Smith-McDowell House is Asheville’s first mansion, first brick home, and oldest surviving structure. Over the years, it has been owned by 11 different families, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The home’s design has been greatly influenced by all of its owners, and as such, it is presented in a timeline fashion, with each room representing a different decade. Our presenter on the tour was Bill Adam, one of the most congenial people I’ve ever met. Mr. Adam’s connection to Smith-McDowell House is so intimate, that the tour took the same amount of time as a tour of the Biltmore Estate, despite it being a fraction of the Biltmore’s size. Here are a few tidbits that I picked up from my visit.

James McConnell Smith
In 1827, the Buncombe Turnpike, which connected Greenville, Tennessee to Greenville, South Carolina by way of Asheville, was completed. As a result, nearly 180,000 hogs a year passed through the area. James McConnell Smith, the “Smith” part of Smith-McDowell, was heavily invested in the Turnpike, and was also granted exclusive rights by the state of North Carolina to build the only ferry across the French Broad River. This is how James Smith made his fortune.
James Smith never actually lived at Smith-McDowell House. He actually had it built as a testament to his wealth. At the time, western North Carolina was a popular tourist destination for wealthy families from the east coast, in particular, Charleston, South Carolina. Smith felt that by building such a grand home, the only brick house in Asheville at the time, it would be a show of his achievements.
In 1857, William Wallace McDowell, James Smith’s son-in-law and the “McDowell” part of Smith-McDowell House, purchased the home and 300 surrounding acres for $10,000.
In 1881, McDowell sold the home to Alexander Garrett, a wealthy businessman from St. Louis, Missouri. Despite not having his name on the house, Garrett has made perhaps the most indelible surviving mark on the house. He had an addition built onto it that connected the summer kitchen to the rest of the house. He also had oak floors installed at right angles to the pre-existing pine floors; even today, there’s not a creak in the house when you step. He replaced the wood front porch with a tile front porch, and had a solarium added to the house for his daughter who was sick with tuberculosis. Garrett also founded Victoria township, a wealthy area surrounding the house.
George Vanderbilt had electric lights installed in Biltmore Estate in 1895. Alexander Garrett had them installed in Smith-McDowell House a year later, in 1896. I surmised that Garrett would have installed them sooner, but Vanderbilt had all the area’s electricians working on his massive estate…but I have no evidence to back that up.
Oak Valley Plantation
Most surviving homes in the southeast built before the Civil War, are in the Antebellum style, similar to Oak Valley Plantation. However, James Smith had this home built in the Greek Revival style, which was popular up north. It is said that he did this to honor the first democracy, Greece, and also to show that he had worldly tastes.

Here is what I learned from Bill Adam, that doesn’t necessarily involve Smith-McDowell House, but I feel is worthy of sharing:

Remember how I mentioned that Alexander Garrett had a solarium added to the house for his TB-infected daughter? Well, at the time, people believed that the cool, clean mountain air could cure you of TB. For those who were not wealthy enough to build their own mansions, there were 31 TB sanitariums in the Asheville area, and TB patients from all over the country would come to Asheville to convalesce.
William Wallace McDowell formed the Buncombe Rifleman as a response to John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. The regiment would become part of the Confederate Army once North Carolina seceded from the Union, and would be the first one from western North Carolina.
James Smith was Davy Crockett’s brother-in-law. Smith married Mary Patton in 1814, and Crockett married Elizabeth Patton in 1815. Today, Patton Avenue, in downtown Asheville, is named for the Patton family.
Actress Andie MacDowell
I’m unable to confirm this, but supposedly actress Andie MacDowell is related to William McDowell in some way. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, as she was born in the Upstate of South Carolina, and her family had a summer home in Arden (just south of Asheville), but you should take this one with a grain of salt.

If you’re ever in the Asheville area, and you prefer a more intimate look at the local history than what is provided at Biltmore Estate, you should definitely swing by the Smith-McDowell House. I promise you won’t regret it.