Biltmore Village Cottage District

Fourteen cottages of pebbledash construction stand in the eastern part of Biltmore Village in Asheville, North Carolina, on Swan Street, All Souls Crescent and Boston Way. Richard Sharp Smith, an architect in Richard Morris Hunt's firm, designed them, and they date to about 1900. The one-and-one-half to two story houses have recessed porches, multiple gables, steeply pitched roofs and brick chimneys, and no two are exactly alike. Some have half-timbering, clipped gable dormers, shed dormers or gambrel roofs. The group is regarded as the largest surviving set of single-family cottages George W. Vanderbilt built in the village, and it reflects his plan for a manorial village near his Biltmore estate. Its association with Smith, who remained Vanderbilt's personal architect after Hunt's death in 1895, adds to its importance. The cottages are also valued as a large, consistent group of well-executed residential buildings within the village plan.