Celebrating 20 years of Black Mountain Center for the Arts

First of a four-part series documents the evolution of the Center in celebration of the milestone

Jessica Klarp
The Valley Echo
Aug. 5, 2020

The Black Mountain Center for the Arts, located in the town’s former city hall, is celebrating its 20th year with a historical display and a series on the history of of the nonprofit organization. Photo courtesy of BMCA

From the outside, the Black Mountain Center for the Arts building at 225 West State Street bears its original purpose carved into the limestone lintel above the front doors: City Hall.

Constructed in 1927, according to Ann Chesky Smith’s book “Then and Now: Black Mountain,” this multi-purpose building was joined to the fire house next door (which was designed by renowned architect Richard Sharp Smith) and soon housed the town offices, the Black Mountain Police Department, a two-bed jail, the library and, by 1937, the Chamber of Commerce. The building had an entry into the fire station on the upper level where the fire fighters slept. By the 1940s the facility also housed the Western Union Telegraph office and the Red Cross.

Wendell Begley, president of Black Mountain Savings Bank and former chairman of the Swannanoa Valley History Museum board, grew up with the building since his father Marcus was on the town council and a magistrate.

“It was really the hub of the town,” Begley said. “It was where all the public meetings, the board meetings, the alderman meetings and all the business took place. The library was upstairs. With the fire department and the police, everything that happened in town went through those doors.”

In the 1950s, the boardoom on the main level relocated to a new City Hall building (behind the current fire station on Montreat Road) and the Western Union moved as well. By 1968, the library moved to its current location on North Dougherty Street after years of fundraising by the Friends of the Library. In 1971, the police department moved out of the aging building and the town garage, which maintained their fleet out of an adjacent building off the back parking lot was also abandoned around this time. Records show that by 1990 the building was vacant.

In 1995 Betty Tyson purchased the building to save it from demolition. Tyson, along with a motivated group of art-loving community-minded citizens, started the process of fundraising and applying for nonprofit status to create the Black Mountain Center for the Arts. Years of effort provided the funding to hire architects and engineers and renovate the building and hire staff. For the past 20 years, BMCA has grown to become what its founders had only dreamed of creating.

Today, in honor of its 20th anniversary, the BMCA—open from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Friday—is in the process of creating a historical display that will include a timeline of the building’s evolution, expanded information about the permanent art collection and our donors and supporters over the years and images dating back to the 1920s. BMCA received a grant from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina’s Black Mountain-Swannanoa Valley Endowment Fund to fund the display now located in the lower level off the back parking lot.

Part two of this series will detail the fundraising process and renovation of the old City Hall into the Black Mountain Center for the Arts. For more information call 828-669-0930 or visit blackmountainarts.org