N.C. Representative Bruce Goforth Donates to the Future of the YMI Cultural Center

Executive Director, Harry Harrison and Rep. Bruce Goforth.  Photo: Urban News

By Michael Ackley

Some of the most memorable passages in Thomas Wolfe’s 1929 novel, Look Homeward Angel, detail the beauty of Asheville’s buildings. Eighty years later, Asheville’s buildings are still standing, giving us a glimpse into the grand design of the past.

Asheville, however, is not a museum; we do not just look up at the elegant stones and move on as we would in looking at a painting. These buildings are living; people come in and out of their doors, work in them, live in them, learn in them. It might be taken for granted that with old buildings and with old beauty, it is necessary to renovate, for as Oscar Wilde showed the world with A Portrait of Dorian Gray, beauty often shows its first cracks from within. 

The YMI building is no exception. It is a building of immense beauty,
of history. More importantly, it is now and has always been, a building
of service to the community. Harry Harrison, Executive Director of the
YMI Cultural Center, takes pride in this history.

“It was built in 1892, by African Americans for African Americans. It
is an exception in this case,” Harrison said. “These were the people
who built the Vanderbilt Estate and many other places around town. It
was used as a school, a cool-down place for after work, it basically
served every function for those people. It has always been a building
that serves others. It was made with that purpose.”

The YMI was saved from the wrecking ball in the early 1980s, and it has
undergone several stages of renovation since. Nevertheless it has begun
to show a century’s worth of wear and tear. Harrison saw this as an
opportunity to become ambitious, to give the building new life. “The
goal is to make the building more accessible. I want kids in our
classrooms, after school mentoring programs,” Harrison said. “I want
our building to be used to its maximum potential.”

Bruce Goforth, a Buncombe County member of the N.C. House of
Representatives, stepped in a few years to offer the YMI a hand.
Goforth donated $8,000 left over from his 2006 campaign. “I recognized
the importance of this building to the community,” Goforth said. “I
wanted to protect it. I wanted to see it grow.” Since Goforth has
gotten involved with the YMI, the Cultural Center has raised about
$50,000 for renovations.

“The money went straight into the building,” said Goforth. Local
prisoners were contracted to renovate the basement. “They moved tons
and tons of dirt out of the basement in buckets and cemented it. The
idea is to turn the basement into a state-of-the-art facility for the
community.”

Harrison and Goforth walked around the newly cemented basement and
began to speak of a big future for the building with dreams that are
being realized before their eyes. “There’s going to be a computer
classroom in this basement,” said Harrison. “There is going to be an
after-school program. This basement is going to make a difference in
people’s lives.”

Not only has Goforth been instrumental in helping to actualize the
potential of the YMI building, he has helped to give the building the
honor of being a State Historic Site in Asheville. The YMI building
will be given this honor on March 26 2010.

“This building needs to be
recognized for what it is. It has a legacy that deserves our
admiration. The building’s past and the building’s future are together
woven into what it currently does, which is to serve Asheville,” said
Goforth. “This has always been the plan for this building and always
will be.”