Sunnicrest
Ca. 1895
394 Victoria Rd., Asheville, NC
Standing
Residential
S. J. Fisher [and Richard Sharp Smith], My Sketchbook (1901), copy in Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, North Carolina.
Douglas Swaim, ed., Cabins and Castles: The History and Architecture of Buncombe County, North Carolina (1981).
During the late 1890s George W. Vanderbilt built five Richard Sharp Smith-designed “model cottages” on Vernon Hill in what was then the town of Victoria. Vanderbilt then rented the houses, “completely furnished, except. . . silver, linen, blankets” for rates from $200 monthly for Hillcote, the smallest, to $350 monthly for Ridgelawn and Sunnicrest, the largest. Vanderbilt eventually sold the buildings to individuals for permanent residences. Of the five only Sunnicrest survives, the others having burned or been demolished. Sunnicrest was converted into offices for Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in the early 1990s. The other four structures were Hillcote, Ridgelawn, Spurwood, and Westlake, all lost.