Arts & Crafts event puts the “home” in home tour
A classic Arts & Crafts home in North Asheville.
Photo by Rachel Pressley
Christina and Brett Becker spent a year looking at the house directly across the street from the one they were renting in North Asheville’s historic Norwood Park neighborhood. “We loved that house,” Christina says. “But the owner had lived in it 35 years and we didn’t think he was going anywhere. We wanted to stay in the neighborhood, so as the end of our lease was coming up, Brett e-mailed the neighborhood association asking if anyone was thinking of selling their house, to let us know.”
Their first response was from the man living in the house across the street. “He walked us through his home, he named his price, we shook on it and that was that,” she says. The couple carried furniture and boxes from their old house to their “new old house.” Not long after, they began an extensive renovation carefully planned to maintain the character and design elements of the 1921 Colonial Revival with Craftsman details, but also to accommodate their family of two young daughters and a toddler son. “It’s challenging to renovate a home not up to any code,” she says with a laugh.
Barbara Hornaday knows the feeling. When she decided to leave Austin, Texas, for a place with four seasons, she was drawn to Asheville, where she also had family. When she began looking for a house, she didn’t have a particular neighborhood in mind, but she did have a list. “I had three criteria: a roomy front porch, a backyard my dog could run around in, and a dining room that could seat ten people,” she says. “I got all of those and more in this house.”
Photo by Rachel Pressley
“This house” is a 1921 one-and-a-half story bungalow which also underwent a top-to-bottom remodel; it boasts “an engaged” — i.e., architecturally connected — front porch, as described in the history written by the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County for its annual Arts & Crafts Home Tour in February. The tour will again be in Norwood Park, a small neighborhood in North Asheville chock full of historic properties; the Becker and Hornaday homes are among the six featured.
Located near the Omni Grove Park Inn, where parent event the National Arts & Crafts Conference takes place, it’s a neighborhood that abounds with, well, neighborliness. “This is the house and the neighborhood we wanted to raise our kids in,” says Christina Becker. “There’s a chili cookoff, Christmas party, a women’s book club on our street, and a monthly Man-B-Cue. The kids all play together. It is ideal for young families.”
And empty nesters, says Hornaday. “I’ve never lived in a more congenial neighborhood. There are young families and seniors and we all know each other. We are all good neighbors.”
The Annual Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County’s Arts & Crafts Home Tour happens Saturday, Feb. 22 and Sunday, Feb. 23, 1-5 pm both days, as an auxiliary event of the 33rd National Arts & Crafts Conference at the Omni Grove Park Inn (Feb. 21-23, arts-craftsconference.com). Tickets for the home tour are $35 and can be purchased in advance at psabc.org.