Early Asheville Real Estate Developer: Julia E. Wolfe
“The town seemed to be an enormous blueprint to her: her head was stuffed uncannily with figures and estimates — who owned a lot, who sold it, the sale-price, the real value, the future value, first and second mortgages, and so on.” — Look Homeward, Angel
Born in February 1860, Thomas Wolfe’s mother Julia played a significant role in the development of early Asheville. She is well remembered as the model for the prominent character of Eliza Gant in her son’s book Look Homeward, Angel. Eliza was the proud owner and proprietress of the Dixieland boardinghouse in the small North Carolina town called Altamont. She became first and foremost a businesswoman, the woman of property. In Hayden Norwood’s book The Marble Man’s Wife, Julia Wolfe told the story of her first property acquisition in Asheville. “I bought this lot over on Chestnut Street” she said, from “Old Judge Aston” who was selling lots “one hundred and two hundred feet deep.” The judge, an honorary title, was Edward J. Aston (1826–1893) who had moved to Asheville from Tennessee in 1853. Aston became a prominent real estate and fire insurance salesman in the city and was twice elected Mayor.
Documented in the Buncombe County deed records in April 1883, before she was married, Julia E. Westall bought for $150 from Ephriam Clayton, in the Clayton Addition to Asheville, a tract of land adjoining the lots of her father Thomas Casey Westall and her brother James Manassas Westall. The property was basically described as 200 feet on Chestnut Street to the corner at Charlotte Street and ninety-four feet and six inches north along Charlotte. Colonel, another honorary title, Ephriam Clayton (1804–1892) owned the entire block bounded by Chestnut, Charlotte, Clayton and Central. He had purchased the land in 1869 from James Patton. A member of a prominent pioneering family in Buncombe County, Clayton became a carpenter and builder, and with numerous enslaved individuals developed one of the largest contracting businesses in the region. Julia’s father had purchased the second lot from the corner on Chestnut in 1881 where he built a home, later numbered 206 Chestnut. The Westall family had recently moved to Asheville about 1879 from further south near the Swannanoa River.
Julia recalled saving $125 from teaching in a rural school in Mitchell County. She sent her father the savings and told him “I want you to buy me that corner lot next to yours.” The lot turned out to be listed at $200. Upon receiving her offer, she said Judge Aston exclaimed ‘Any girl that will work and save up her money like that has to be favored.’ He sold it to her for $150. One year later she got her first tax bill for .48 cents. Julia built a house on the lot. She “planned it and ordered every piece of lumber that went into it,” hired the carpenters by the day, and supervised construction so that no materials were wasted. “I wanted a steep roof, and I built it with the idea that I could take the roof off and raise the house another story later on,” she said. She included “a broad hall down the front.” She placed a landscaped border of Boxwood bushes along the sidewalk to the gate. Her daughter Mabel Wolfe Wheaton remembered it to be an attractive four-room structure that was later moved behind the new home built by Julia’s brother, William Harrison Westall, numbered 232 E Chestnut. Thomas Westall’s home was also moved nearby on the block to face north on Broad Street. All were demolished in the early 1970s. Some readers will know Julia’s property today as the site of the recently sold Fuddruckers restaurant, the site slated again for redevelopment.
When Julia Westall married William Oliver Wolfe in 1885, he was still renting a small space for his business just east of the early courthouse and courthouse square. Julia believed “Patton Ave. was about to spring up.” She wanted him to be where people passed by. In 1886 she sold the house she had built on Chestnut Street for $1600 and in January 1887 for $1000 bought a corner lot just south of the courthouse later numbered 22 Pack Square. It was here that W.O. Wolfe built his new monument shop. In Look Homeward, Angel Wolfe notes “it was a two-story shack of brick, with wide wooden steps, leading down to the square from a marble porch. Upon this porch, flanking the wooden doors, he placed some marbles; by the door, he put the heavy simpering figure of an angel.” When he considered retiring from business Eliza Gant tells her husband “We could get $20,000 for your shop without any trouble — If I had that much money to work with, I’d show them a thing or two . . . I could turn it over two or three times within two years’ time. You’ve got to trade quick to keep the ball a-rolling. That’s the way it’s done.” Julia sold the property in 1920 for $25,000. The structure was demolished a few years later and the lot redeveloped with a modern office building.
Hayden Norwood, The Marble Man’s Wife (Charles Scribner’s Sons 1947)
