Chestnut Hill Historic District

Chestnut Hill is a compact residential neighborhood on a knoll about 500 yards north of Asheville's center in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Its roughly 200 buildings were mostly built as houses between the 1880s and the early 1900s, after the railroad reached the city in 1880 and brought tourists and investors. The houses range from simple vernacular frame and brick dwellings to Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and Shingle-style designs. Architect R. S. Smith, formerly resident architect for George W. Vanderbilt at Biltmore House, designed a number of the houses, and J. A. Tennent, who designed Asheville's late nineteenth-century municipal buildings, built a home here. Several residents held state or national posts, including Senator Jeter C. Pritchard, and tuberculosis specialist Dr. Carl Von Ruck ran his sanatorium from his home in the district. The neighborhood is listed for its architecture and for its association with the city's turn-of-the-century development.