Commercial Building. ca. 1926. Contributing.
Plain, striated brick two-story Commercial Style building with recessed panels above the second story windows. Display window areas intact, with replacement modern doors. Recent removal of an awning has left holes in the brick just above the storefront level. This corner lot was the location for several prominent hotels in Hendersonville’s early history. In 1943 it was in use as a restaurant in part of the building.
1920s.
Plain two-story brick building with three storefronts. 126-130 have been modernized with enameled panels, and original windows replaced.
126-130 N. Main Photo taken in 1987
122 N. Main Photo taken in 1987
HISTORIC MARKER PLACED IN 2009:
122 N. Main ca. 1920 Tenants of this building have been Beck Hardware, Court House Cafe, City Cife, C & D Music Shop and Elizabeth of Carolina Women's Wear. For over 30 years the Justice of the Pece office was upstairs.
Early 20th century.
Two-story painted striated brick commercial structure. Four bays wide at second floor level. Parapet has been rebuilt with no cornice. Building is extremely plain except for recently constructed new storefronts.
Photo taken 1987.
Davis Store block, 1900.
Block of three two-story brick stores built by W. J. Davis. Center store is beige brick; two end stores are red brick. Corner store has corbelled brick cornice and segmental arch windows; the other two have a continuous cast concrete denticulated cornice. During the early 20th century, the corner shop served as Liverett's Clothing Store, and later M. M. Shepard's mercantile business. The other stores served various uses such as a harness shop, a printing shop, and as general stores. All three stores have recently undergone extensive rehabilitation at the storefront level.
Photos from 1987.
1905.
The site of the courthouse square has remained constant since the town was laid out in 1841. The gold-domed Neo-Classical Revival courthouse, begun in 1904 and completed in 1905, replaced a two-story stuccoed brick structure which had been one of Hendersonville’s earliest buildings. In 1903, the county commissioners deemed the old courthouse inadequate and appointed Frank P. Milburn as architect for a new courthouse. However, they rejected Milburn's plans and accepted instead the plans of Richard Sharp Smith. R. S. Smith, an Englishman, had come to Asheville to supervise construction of the Biltmore House. After the death of Richard Morris Hunt, the architect of the Biltmore House, Smith served as Vanderbilt's resident architect. The contractor was local builder and architect W. F. Edwards.
The most notable feature of the three-story brick courthouse is the gold domed three-stage cupola, which consists of a columned drum and domical roof, crowned by a statue of Athena. The rectangular building has front and side entrance pavilions, a pedimented hexastyle portico with Corinthian columns at the main entrance, and tetrastyle porticoes at the sides. The interior is finished simply with gray granite floors and brick wainscot. The courtroom has been remodeled. On the whole, the relative sophistication and grandeur or the courthouse seems a reflection of the aspirations of a small county seat whose economy was booming and whose population was beginning to soar.
