Asheville - Smith - MacDowell House

This is one of the places I visited during my "mom's weekend off" in Asheville and it totally deserves a post of its own. Gorgeous place!

I headed there after checking out of my hotel, it was maybe 10 minutes away from Downtown. They have self guided tours so you can take all the time you want to visit every room and examine everything in detail. Again, there's a benefit to traveling by myself... I could stare at silver tea sets and antique dinner settings for a very long time without anybody telling me to keep moving... haha...
The house was built in 1840 and is supposed to be the oldest mansion in the Asheville area. The house really is huge, the McDowell family, who were the first family to actually live there, had 10 kids and I'm sure they had plenty of room to spread. Each room is representative of a different decade of the 19th century. The house was updated and modernized as time went on and it went from one owner to another, so that's why each area draws attention to the typical items from each era as well as the changes made to the original house.

So here we go.

The old winter kitchen, it was located in the basement. Back in that time a rich family would have had staff to cook for them so all the kitchen mess was kept away from the public spaces. They also had a summer kitchen which was in a separate small building behind the house. At one point though, consecutive owners extended the back of the house and connected the main building with the summer kitchen, and conveniently added several indoor bathrooms...

Old timey high chair...

Main hallway and staircase

Bedroom

Sketch of the house

Parlor

A lady's bedroom and dressing area

Old timey vacuum anybody?

2nd floor hallway and staircase

Dining room and details

Meiser tea set... supposedly worth over $6,000 these days

Pretty table

Sitting room

Pretty dress... No surprise, all the clothes were tiny! People were so much smaller in those days. I would have been considered a giantess at my 5 foot 9 inches...

Gorgeous tea set

Sun room

I loved the tour and would love to come back. They told me that they were expanding the exhibit and that they update it periodically (for example for Christmas). I would just love to see it all done up in wreaths and garlands!

And on the way out of Asheville I passed the world's fanciest McDonalds and had to document it...

 

It was an awesome trip and a very restful weekend! Thanks Daddy for taking care of Katherine all weekend so I could finally get some time off!