Asheville

Saved by going broke

Asheville's downtown survived because the city went broke. When the 1929 crash hit, Asheville carried one of the heaviest per-capita debts of any American city, and rather than default it spent nearly fifty years paying the bonds off. With no money to tear anything down, the Art Deco buildings from the boom years stayed standing while other cities knocked theirs flat, and today the downtown holds one of the best collections of Deco architecture in the Southeast. The boom had started with the railroad and with George Vanderbilt, who finished the Biltmore Estate in 1895. With about 250 rooms, it is still the largest privately owned house in the United States. Thomas Wolfe grew up in his mother's boarding house a few blocks away and turned the town into the fictional Altamont in *Look Homeward, Angel*. Many locals were furious about how he portrayed them, and the library reportedly kept the book off its shelves. The city sits where the Swannanoa meets the French Broad, with the Blue Ridge Parkway along its edge. In 2024, Hurricane Helene's floods badly damaged the River Arts District, and the city has been rebuilding it since.