The Gospel According to Jerry

Rock solid: Fred Seely— son-in-law to E.W. Grove of Grove Park Inn and Grove Arcade fame — built Overlook Castle in 1914-15 with rock quarried nearby. Today, we know the 20,000-square-foot structure as Seely’s Castle. photo courtesy of the E.M. Ball Collection at UNCA’s Ramsey Library

Everybody dreams of being king for a day, but I became a king for several years. Not really, though I did get to live in a real castle, which was certainly a very special life experience.

High above Asheville, right off Town Mountain Road, sits an imposing stone castle offering spectacular panoramic views. The 20,000-square-foot structure has no real architectural peer in our area. Sure, it’s smaller than Biltmore House and entirely different in style, but as we used to say, we were No. 2, so we had to try harder.

Fred Seely built the castle on a promontory known as Overlook Park, so he named his home Overlook Castle. Locals, however, call it Seely’s Castle.

Seely and his father-in-law, the patent-medicine tycoon E.W. Grove, built the Grove Park Inn and developed the adjacent residential neighborhood. In designing the inn, Seely used granite from a quarry just north of where the castle is now, specifying that big boulders be used so no mortar joints would show.

After the inn was completed in 1913, however, he had a huge amount of small stone left over. So the next year, he began building the castle, hiring Italian masons who’d worked on Biltmore Estate. The stone walls they crafted looked like a magnificent tapestry.

Seely actually never finished the building: To this day, there’s an incomplete stone observatory on the top. This may have been because no property taxes were levied on an unfinished building. Seely’s family moved in around 1915 and lived there until his death in 1942.

His wife, Evelyn Grove Seely, then moved to the Battery Park Hotel — which her father and husband had also built, along with the Vanderbilt Hotel and the Grove Arcade. She sold the castle at a reduced price to Asheville-Biltmore College, which began operations there in 1949.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed hearing from former students at this uniquely situated institution of higher learning, who’ve shared their fond memories of that unusual experience.

In 1961, the college moved to a new campus on Weaver Boulevard, becoming the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The castle and 29 acres were then sold to two of the owners of the Holiday Inn chain. They built the Tiara Apartments on the north end of the tract. If those apartments (now known as the 647 Town Mountain Road Condominiums) look like a Holiday Inn to you, it’s because they used the same design.

They had no use for the castle, however, so they put it on the market. I will address my ascendency to “king of the castle” status later in this saga. First, I want to share some of the many legends I’ve heard concerning life at the castle during the Seely family’s tenure.

The caretaker’s son, who grew up in a house on the property, told me that a dozen employees tended to the house and grounds. The men walked up the mountain every day, carrying their own lunch and working 12-hour shifts for $2 a day. He said Seely was allergic to poison ivy, and in the summertime, one man was assigned full time to pulling up the noxious weed.

Mrs. Seely grew exotic roses and had a prize-winning rose garden. There’s also a large greenhouse on the property, which the university used as a chemistry lab.

Mr. Seely wanted a tennis court built and supposedly badgered the contractor to lower the price. In response, the contractor reduced the size of the court, and Seely didn’t realize it till after he’d paid the contractor. The outline of the tennis court remains to this day.

The family apparently used the castle as their summer home, spending much of the winter in the Far East buying quinine, the main ingredient in Grove’s Chill Tonic, a popular patent medicine that claimed to cure colds and prevent malaria.

Seely entertained many famous and important people at the castle. He was friendly with Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison, who would visit Asheville and camp on the castle grounds.

Edison is said to have had a hand in designing the electrical system, which included such advanced features as a built-in switch that turned on the light on when one opened the closet door.

Seely attended Princeton as a grown man, studying architecture. During this period, he became friendly with Woodrow Wilson, who was then the university’s president.

Seely later became a significant fundraiser for Wilson’s presidential campaigns. During his second term in office, Wilson suffered a stroke, and legend has it that the government was secretly being run by his wife and “Colonel” Edward House, the president’s longtime adviser. Every day, to fool the public, they would pretend to wheel Wilson out onto a porch at the White House to enjoy the afternoon sun, but this was just a stand-in: Supposedly, Wilson was actually being kept out of sight in the castle’s master bedroom.

It’s also said that papers related to the Teapot Dome scandal, having to do with oil leases during the Harding administration, were locked in the enormous safe in the counting house in the castle’s west wing. It is not known what connection, if any, Seely had with all that.

I hope this whets your appetite. In future installments, I’ll explain how I acquired this unique architectural wonder and share tales of my life as a monarch.

— Asheville native Jerry Sternberg, a longtime observer of the local scene, can be reached at gospeljerry@aol.com.

SHARE

Thanks for reading through to the end…

We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.

We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

One thought on “The Gospel According to Jerry

  1. Longtime Reader

    Jerry Sternberg’s recollections of local history are gems, well written and full of information and insight.

Leave a Reply

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.