Does anyone remember what Asheville was like in the 70s?

[flatwood]

If you are an architecture fan, such as myself, Asheville was an awesome place in the 70s and 80s. Seemed like a forgotten town, fun to visit before the crowds. Much like many now over-crowded places ( LA, London, Key West ).

[Above Average Bear]

Originally Posted by flatwood

If you are an architecture fan, such as myself, Asheville was an awesome place in the 70s and 80s. Seemed like a forgotten town, fun to visit before the crowds. Much like many now over-crowded places ( LA, London, Key West ).

My friend who told me about his expect in downtown, (owned a leather shop there) was that a lot of the architecture was boarded up.

[Shooting Stars]

This subject has come up before.

My mom and dad moved up from Miami and lived in Asheville for a year after they were married because my dad was in college at Mars Hill. So, I was born in Asheville in 1958 a year after their marriage and they moved back to Miami six weeks after my birth. They took me back in 1967 when I was nine years old, and downtown Asheville was a thriving bustling small city. I remember my parents saying "People still dress up to go downtown!"

(You can read about Asheville's early history and see that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Asheville drew a lot of visionaries to it until the Depression stopped everything.)

I understand that when the mall was built in the 1970s, people stopped going downtown as much and it began to decline.

I next saw it in 1992 and it was an absolute ghost town with boarded up buildings. We ate at one of the only nice restaurants near Pack Square and I remember looking around at so many interesting buildings and thinking that if the place was discovered again, it would be amazing. There was almost no people walking around.

By the time I moved to WNC in 2001, Asheville had been discovered and has only continued to develop it's potential since then. So, this is Asheville's second or third renaissance.