North Carolina

Mimetic or programmatic architecture became a nationwide craze by the 1930s, when automobiles became affordable to the middle classes. Some 27 million American automobiles were registered in 1929, the same year that Joe H. Glenn Jr. and Bert L. Bennett of Quality Oil became the first Winston-Salem area affiliates for the Shell Oil Company. Seeking to create eye-catching and self-advertising service stations, they based their mimetic design on the scallop-shell logo of the company. The two men received a patent for their design on November 25, 1930.

Glencoe Mills is one of most well-maintained examples of a late-nineteenth-century water-powered Southern cotton mill complex. It is located on the north bank of the Haw River, three miles north of downtown Burlington in Alamance County. Beginning in the late 1800s, textile manufacturers from New England began to move their operations south, where labor and land were cheaper. Mill villages, such as this one, would soon transform the Southern economy and create new job opportunities and living conditions—often for individuals and families who were leaving rural farms.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of the most popular scenic drives in the National Park System. It stretches 469 miles connecting Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. The picturesque parkway conserves the natural landscape of Southern Appalachia and has provided recreational opportunities for generations of Americans.

St. Thomas Episcopal Church is the oldest surviving religious building in Bath, which was incorporated in 1705 and is acknowledged as North Carolina’s first town. St. Thomas Parish, established in 1696, predates the founding of the coastal town. Congregants initially met in one another’s houses for services. During the colonial era, the British Crown and, by extension, the Church of England, levied taxes to pay for the construction of churches, but in North Carolina, where the Church of England did not have a strong hold, many parishes did not have funds to build.

All Saints Episcopal Church is a little gem of rustic architecture designed by Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It sits within the Linville historic core.

The Palmer-Marsh House is one of only three surviving eighteenth-century buildings in historic Bath, North Carolina’s first town, and among the most significant of the era in the state. It was built circa 1751 for Michael Coutanche, an émigré from Normandy. Located on Main Street, the house sits roughly in the northwest part of town, one row of houses back from the western border at the Bath River and one block below the northern border of town at Bowen Avenue.

Biltmore is the largest privately owned residence in the United States, the masterpiece of famed American architect Richard Morris Hunt, and possibly the most prominent icon of the Gilded Age. Built for George Washington Vanderbilt (1862–1914), the grandson of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, the estate’s name derives from the family’s Dutch ancestral home, Bildt, and the Middle English word “more,” meaning an open rolling landscape.

The Black Mountain College (BMC) was an experimental art and design school located in the western North Carolina mountains and in operation from 1933 to 1957. Despite its short life, its reputation lives on today.

All Souls Episcopal Church forms the centerpiece of historic Biltmore Village and marks the approach to the grand estate of George W. Vanderbilt. Frederick Law Olmsted, who planned the village, designed it in a fan shape, locating the most important building, the church, at the pivot.

Biltmore Village was the model village designed to house the workers employed at George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate. To construct the village, Vanderbilt acquired the entire settlement of Asheville Junction, located on the south bank of the Swannanoa River about a mile from where it joins the French Broad River, and relocated its residents. Also known as the town of Best, the site featured a railroad stop two miles from the center of Asheville and near the entrance to the estate.