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| Foundy Street, River Arts District, Asheville, North Carolina. |
Asheville is the largest city in western North Carolina. The site was first settled in 1784, and the town has a long pioneer and minor Civil War history. Being in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the beautiful setting attracted wealthy tourists during the Gilded Age of the 1880s. George Washington Vanderbilt II, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, fell in love with the mountains and began construction of his monumental mansion, the Biltmore House, on the Biltmore Estate in 1889. Many visitors associate Asheville with the Biltmore, but the town also has an industrial past and some magnificent Art Deco architecture. Many of the warehouses and factories (including a tannery) were concentrated along the railroad line and the French Broad River.
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| Foundy Street, River Arts District, Asheville, North Carolina. |
Today, the old warehouses have become the nexus of the River Arts District. From the official web page:
"The River Arts District consists of a vast array of artists and working studios in 22 former industrial and historical buildings spread out along a one mile stretch of the French Broad River. This eclectic area is an exciting exploration of arts, food and exercise. Plan on spending a day or more visiting artists working in their studios, grabbing a bite of local cuisine or a brew and taking time to find art that's perfect for your world. "
I spent a few days in Asheville while attending The Vintage car rally and show. The weather had been variable, with some terrific downpours. One afternoon, a scavenger hunt was scheduled to start and end in the River Arts District, whose existence was totally new to me. I was too late to participate on the hunt, but the old warehouses and studios were too tempting to resist.
Normally, I prefer black and white when I am around old industrial infrastructure, but the brilliant paint work on the walls, the darkening skies, and pockets of sunlight spoke to me in color. I tested another roll of long-expired film that had been in my freezer, this time Fujicolor NPS160. It must have been in my film box 20 years but had been frozen all these years. I used my Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens, tripod-mounted, and added a polarizer for many frames. I exposed at EI = 120 and scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner.
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| Electrical junction building, Old Lyman Street, Asheville. |
Norfolk Southern runs freight trains regularly along the tracks and shunts cars in the rail yard. The active lines are fenced off from the art district.
There was once a paper recycling operation on Old Lyman Street. All I saw was wet bales of paper and cardboard.
Numerous 18-wheeler trailers were parked at a warehouse near the paper bales. The artists had been at work, so it looks like there trailers had not moved in a long time.
This old factory building was at one time used by the paper recycling operation, but I do not know its original industrial purpose.
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| Too late for the scavenger hunt. Photograph from a Moto G5 phone. |
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| Checking out the scene. Moto G5 photograph. |
