We Built This: Profiles of Black Architects and Builders in North Carolina
The stories of more than two dozen individuals who constructed and designed many of North Carolina’s most treasured historic sites.
Exhibit on display at Pack Memorial Library in downtown Asheville.
We Built This presents us with the stories of an array of craftspeople, from bricklayers to stonemasons to plasterers. The men profiled include enslaved peoples and freedmen — some alongside their families or apprentices.
The traveling exhibit profiles more than two dozen individuals who constructed and designed many of North Carolina’s most treasured historic sites over more than three centuries. Profiles include nationally-known brick maker George H. Black; master mason James Vester Miller; Gaston Alonzo Edwards, the first Black architect licensed in North Carolina; Stewart Ellison, an enslaved carpenter who helped construct the North Carolina Hospital for the Insane (now Dorothea Dix Hospital); and William B. Gould, an enslaved plasterer in Wilmington, NC.
We Built This also provides historic context on key topics including slavery and Reconstruction; the founding of HBCUs and Black churches; Jim Crow and segregation; and the rise of Black civic leaders and professionals.
On Saturday, October 8, 2022, beginning at 11 a.m. in Pack Memorial Library’s Lord Auditorium, Andrea Clark will speak about her grandfather, James Vester Miller.
We Built This: Profiles of Black Architects and Builders in North Carolina is open to the public through October 10, 2022. Pack Memorial Library is located at 67 Haywood Street in Asheville. Visit Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
