IN RURAL APPALACHIA, THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIRM STEWART HELPS TO STEER A SMALL CITY WITH A HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY ON ITS HANDS.

BY JARED BREY

TEVE BAKER HAS NEVER FOUND ANY S OFFICIAL RECORDS, BUT HE TELLS THE STORY THE WAY IT WAS TOLD TO HIM.

IN THE LATE 1870s, when Frederick Law Olmsted was laying out the landscape for the Western THE BIG Insane Asylum, he asked every county in the state to send a locally significant tree species to plant on the grounds so that patients ABOVE and visitors could experience the breadth of North , Carolina’s arboreal patrimony. At the time there originally the Western were around 90 counties in North Carolina. They North Carolina Insane sent ginkgoes, magnolias, catalpas, and hemlocks. Asylum, was designed to give patients access A handful sent pin oaks, which were planted care- to manicured grounds fully around the grounds. and daily exercise.

“And they are monsters,” Baker says. “Still thriving.” OPPOSITE North Carolina has commissioned a plan Baker grew up a few miles from what was later re- to develop 800 acres DEAL named Broughton Hospital, in Morganton, North surrounding a historic Carolina. His father worked there in maintenance

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, TOP RIGHT; JARED BREY, OPPOSITE BREY, JARED RIGHT; TOP CAROLINA, NORTH OF STATE his whole life, and Baker himself was a psychiatric in Morganton.

78 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 79 LEFT The hospital’s original building was designed to complement the Hospital in Raleigh.

BELOW Patients worked in on-site farms to grow their own food.

aide at the hospital before he joined improvements and public amenities to unlock the Air Force as a medic. He ran the area’s development potential. a cell phone store in town for 20 years and then returned to the hos- “The majority of the 800 acres, the heart of it pital, training new employees there really, needs to be preserved for its cultural heri- for another decade before retiring tage,” says Michael Batts, ASLA, a vice president eight years ago. When he gives at Stewart who led the master plan. “But within tours of the old hospital, where that, there’s an incredible amount of [potential for] patients were treated until 2019, economic development.” Baker makes sure visitors see the original chapel with its cathedral I met with Batts and Eric Thomas, a senior proj- ceilings—the work of “craftsmen,” ect manager for DFI, in the parking lot behind unlike the new facility nearby. He talks about people who have kept it alive, as anything you could the Avery Building, the original hospital building how mental health treatment has changed. And find in an archive. designed by the architect Samuel he tells the story about Olmsted designing the Sloan. It was a rainy day in November. Fog pooled hospital grounds, a precursor to his work at the In 2014, the North Carolina General Assembly up between the hills around Morganton, changing Biltmore in Asheville, an hour west. commissioned a study of potential reuses for the colors through the rolling elevations. Groves of ma- historic hospital property, which was scheduled ture trees punctuate the neatly mowed lawns that It doesn’t quite add up. There are no records in- to go vacant when the new Broughton Hospital area. The study, published in 2016 as [Re]imag- blanket the hills surrounding the hospital. Hunt- dicating that Olmsted or his firm ever worked in opened. The state hired the Development Fi- ining Broughton, took a wide-angle view of the ing Creek, flooded and inaccessible on the day we Morganton, and his name doesn’t appear in the nance Initiative (DFI)—a program of the Uni- site’s potential. More than just a massive, historic visited, flows across the bottom of the range. hospital complex’s nomination to the National Reg- versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School hospital building, according to the study the area ister of Historic Places, where it was listed in 1987. of Government that helps local governments had the “makings of a district”: 800 acres of The new district, such as it is, is sprawling and But the story has seeped into the local lore, and with planning and development challenges—to publicly owned land in the foothills of the Blue disjointed. To trace the entire perimeter of the study people repeat it with a kind of provisional pride, al- complete the study. DFI in turn hired Stewart, Ridge Mountains, with dramatic views in every area, we had to drive to four different entrances (car- ways attributing it to someone else. The landscape the North Carolina-based engineering, planning, direction. The team, which included Belk Archi- avan style to maintain social distance) and merge has qualities that are plausibly Olmstedian, which and landscape architecture firm, to lead a team tecture and Gensler as architectural consultants, onto Interstate 40 to get to the next site. Thomas

says as much about where it came from, and the of consultants and create a master plan for the CAROLINA NORTH OF STATE STEWART recommended a strategy that led with landscape peeled off for a few minutes to refill his gas tank.

80 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 81 LEFT The hospital complex was closed in 2014, giving rise to a variety of adaptive reuse proposals.

the emigration of the Waldensians, a religious sect in Europe, from the Alps of Italy to the North Carolina Piedmont. The North Carolina State Parks system is at work on the , connect- ing Morganton to Asheville. Outside Morganton City Hall, an iron bench is cast in the shape of Table Rock Mountain, an iconic peak on the rim of Linville Gorge in the .

[Re]imagining Broughton conclud- ed that through a combination of public investment in amenities and green space, selective preservation of historic buildings, and the sale of some public land, the 800-acre district could attract more than $150 The Avery Building was built at the top of a high Parking lots and service buildings have sprung up new Broughton Hospital—and agrarian, with million in private development. That compre- hill, with its 140-year-old cupola jutting into the around the original hospital in the century and hayfields in the middle distance. The Blue Ridge hensive approach to redevelopment would cost sky. The prominent site suggests that when the a half since it was built, but its immediate sur- Mountains frame the area, geographically and $140 million in public investment, according to state commissioned the hospital, it wanted to roundings are still defined by rolling lawns and culturally. “Welcome to Morganton—Nature’s the plan, while a narrower focus on the hospital show it off. But it may not have had many op- tall trees. The broader landscape is institutional Playground,” says the sign at the edge of town. campus would cost $95 million and generate just tions anyway, Thomas said. “It is what you get —home to the North Carolina School for the The neighboring town of Valdese is home to a $25 million in private investment. And the public out here,” he said. “It’s hard to find flat land that Deaf, which opened in 1894; Western Piedmont Foothills Temporary Employment agency and a would pay millions even if no improvements were

isn’t floodplain.” Community College; Burke County Jail; and the STEWART Foothills Thrift Store, and a mural that depicts made at all.

82 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 83 TOPOGRAPHY AND ELEVATION HYDROLOGY AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY HISTORIC GROUNDS BROUGHTON VISION PLAN

ABOVE The state of North Carolina is one of the largest for juniors and seniors, was established in Dur- The 800-acre district landholders in Burke County, and for the City of ham in 1980. The state hadn’t officially selected is crossed by Hunting Morganton, 19 square miles with a population Morganton for the new campus by the time the Creek, and constrained of 16,577, the stakes for redevelopment are high. 2016 Broughton master plan was completed, but by steep elevations and historic protections The Avery Building is visible from the interstate it was clear it would be in Burke County, so the on some buildings. and two gateways into downtown Morganton, and new campus was incorporated into the master 40,000 drivers pass by it every day. Its presence plan. The school is now under construction. OPPSOSITE has an impact on how people perceive the city, Rather than plan for says Sally Sandy, who has served as city manager As of the end of 2020, Homes Urban, a developer the hospital grounds since 1998. Morganton is part of the Main Street based in Greenville, South Carolina, was finaliz- in a vacuum, the team zoomed out to America network, and the city has spent a lot of ing the purchase of 29 acres owned by the com- consider development effort to revitalize its downtown, even moving its munity college and Burke County to build 200 opportunities on city hall offices into an old hosiery mill that was new luxury apartments and convert a few historic surrounding converted into a mixed-use apartment building on silos into office and amenity space. The presence public lands. Union Street in the center of town. Morganton’s of the state hospital and the development of the growth will be shaped by the redevelopment of new school eased the risk of the project, Blake

the Broughton campus, and by the potential of Muldrow, a development manager at Homes STEWART getting land that has been long held by public Urban, told me. entities onto the tax rolls.

“When the plans for the new hospital were com- ing, I was like, okay, folks, we’ve got some beau- tiful buildings over here, we’ve got some not-so- beautiful buildings, we’ve got some history, but what we can’t do is vacate it, build a fence around it, and watch it rot,” Sandy says.

Two projects are under way. In 2017, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics N (NCSSM) completed a master plan for its new campus, placed along a ridge on property for- merly owned by the School for the Deaf. The school, a selective-enrollment public high school

84 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 85 13 12 “THE MAJORITY OF THE 800 ACRES, THE HEART 11 OF IT REALLY, NEEDS TO

BE PRESERVED FOR ITS 10

CULTURAL HERITAGE.” 8 —MICHAEL BATTS, ASLA 1 7 6

For the planning process, DFI produced a Devel- oper Deal Book, illustrating development potential 2 at a few sites within the district. Among the oppor- 9 tunities it showcased were a mixed-use complex on “Silo Ridge,” where the Homes Urban project is now planned, a hotel along Interstate 40 next 2020 DISTRICT PLAN to the community college, and various residential 5 development sites. The designers also planned for a stormwater pond in the center of the district, im- 1 RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL 14 proved greenway trails along Hunting Creek, and a 2 MULTIFAMILY RESIDENTIAL public “gateway park” at the entrance to downtown 14 Morganton. The hospital would be moved out of 3 HOTEL + SPA the old building but stay within the district, keep- ing a critical mass of jobs and people in place. 4 WESTERN PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE 4 “It’s not like developers are chomping at the bit 5 GREENWAY to get in there, although we are seeing a lot of interest because the land is beautiful,” Thomas 6 SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY says. “But we determined that it’s going to take 3 7 SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF public investment in amenities, and relocating certain facilities that were active, in order to make 8 STORMWATER POND it attractive for a private developer to come in and develop the projects that the stakeholder group 9 PARK AND ATHLETIC FIELDS wanted to see.” 10 NEW BROUGHTON HOSPITAL

Stewart is also working on the landscape for the 11 GATEWAY PARK new NCSSM campus. The school wanted the campus to be a contrast to its urban site in Dur- 12 FUTURE INTERSECTION DESIGN ham. Batts is working a series of wellness retreats 13 DOWNTOWN MORGANTON N into the school’s grounds, areas that give students space to socialize outdoors or frame views to 14 ACTIVE AGRICULTURE

the pond, the farmlands, and the surrounding STEWART mountains. ↘

86 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 87 BROUGHTON HOSPITAL SUITABILITY ANALYSIS WEIGHTED OVERLAY–BALANCED

SLOPE ANALYSIS CANOPY ANALYSIS

EXISTING CONDITIONS ACCESSIBILITY AND CONNECTIVITY

WEIGHTED OVERLAY–SLOPE FOCUS WEIGHTED OVERLAY–CANOPY FOCUS

ELEVATION ANALYSIS HILLSHADE ANALYSIS HYDROLOGY ANALYSIS WEIGHTED OVERLAY–HYDROLOGY FOCUS SOILS ANALYSIS WEIGHTED OVERLAY–SOIL FOCUS STEWART

88 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 89 CURRENT | HISTORIC BROUGHTON CAMPUS PROPOSED | RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL PROPOSED RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL CAMPUS

CURRENT | UNDERUSED SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF PROPERTY PROPOSED | SENIOR LIVING

CURRENT | UNDERUSED COLLEGE AND COUNTY PROPERTY PROPOSED | HOSPITALITY VILLAGE

with long wings stretching out from the central who resided there “that their relatives were wards structure, wide internal corridors, thick walls, and of a beneficent state-appointed family,” Yanni small, individual rooms with good ventilation. writes in her book. The buildings also signaled → In November, Kevin Baxter, the vice chancellor without going outside? And we said, absolutely ABOVE AND OPPOSITE Patients in Kirkbride asylums were meant to the legitimacy of psychiatrists, who were known and chief campus officer for the school’s western not,” Baxter said. “Force them outside.” Projections from a have daily exercise in manicured landscapes and at the time as asylum doctors, Yanni says. campus, walked us through the construction site. development guide to cultivate food in on-site farms. are intended to The school is fund-raising for future development The biggest challenge by far, and likely the last entice developers to “Their building, how well it was built, how well while completing the core academic buildings piece to be finished, even if everything goes bet- invest in housing and Kirkbride buildings proliferated in the latter half it was maintained, how the heat worked, how the and expecting to open in the fall of 2022. It hopes ter than hoped for, is the adaptation of the Avery other amenities in of the 19th century. While there’s little evidence landscape garden progressed—all of that added to adapt a historic barn that was once used by the Building. The hospital building was designed Morganton. that the architecture helped cure patients, it did to their professional prestige,” Yanni says. “Their School for the Deaf for assembly space. And it according to the Kirkbride Plan, named for the serve other social purposes, according to Carla profession didn’t exist 50 years earlier. They were is placing its new buildings along the ridge east Philadelphia doctor , who Yanni, an architectural historian and professor of creating an architecture that in every way legiti- of the barn, with views down to the pond and believed that architecture and other environmen- art history at Rutgers University and author of the mized and amplified their importance in society.” morning light coming into what will one day be tal factors could be part of the treatment, or even book The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums the library. “One of the early questions was, do the cure, for patients with mental illnesses. Kirk- in the United States. The grandeur of Kirkbride The Western North Carolina Insane Asylum was

we give kids a chance to go in between buildings bride buildings were designed in a linear fashion STEWART STEWART institutes was a signal to the families of patients among the last wave of Kirkbride buildings to be

90 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 91 HOTEL AVERY PROPOSAL WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM

LEFT Two ideas for STEM PLANT redeveloping the historic steam plant.

BELOW Private developers are planning new housing projects, and the state and county are hoping some historic agricultural structures will be redeveloped.

SILO BARNS REDEVELOPMENT

completed in the United States. By the end of “grabbing little pieces of the corridor,” Shull says. ABOVE the 19th century it was clear that asylum patients But the floor plan is part of the building’s historic The Avery Building, were not being “cured” at any appreciable rate, value, and it’s not clear whether altering it would with wide corridors and thick walls, is a and many of the asylums became an embarrass- jeopardize the potential for historic tax credits. challenge to adapt. ment to the communities that had erected them, Another Kirkbride Yanni says. But they were built to last, and the Included in the Developer Deal Book are sketches hospital in Buffalo, hospital in Morganton, renamed Broughton Hos- showing the Avery Building adapted as “Hotel New York, was pital in 1959, was also among the last to house Avery.” The idea was inspired by Hotel Henry, converted to a hotel. patients in the original building. built inside the old Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, which is now part of the Richardson Kirkbride plans such as the Avery Building are no- Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York. That toriously tough to preserve. Andy Shull, a senior project is considered one of the most successful project manager with Belk Architecture, the adap- Kirkbride adaptations in the country, but it has tive reuse consultant for the Broughton district taken decades to get off the ground. The Buffalo master plan and the new NCSSM campus, says asylum stopped housing patients in the 1970s. the Avery Building would require a lot of modi- In 2013, Andropogon completed a redesign of the fications to be used for a new purpose. The floor South Lawn, which was meant to reconnect the plan, with 12-foot corridors and thick masonry campus to the city and generate private develop- walls, is particularly unforgiving. Adapting the old ment (see “When Henry Met Frederick,” LAM,

rooms for hotel or apartment units would require April 2015). STEWART STEWART

92 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAR 2021 / 93 “WE’VE GOT SOME BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS, WE’VE GOT SOME NOT-SO-BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS.... WHAT WE CAN’T DO IS BUILD A FENCE AROUND IT AND WATCH IT ROT.” —SALLY SANDY

ABOVE Kirkbride’s plan was developed at the same time scaled spaces. It almost gave the landscape a ceil- recently worked on a series of stairways at Chim- Project Credits Planners hope that OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE/CLIENT FOR MASTER PLAN DEVEL- that Olmsted was working out his theories about ing,” Batts says. “It gave [patients] a foreground view preserving the ney Rock State Park, centered around a 315-foot the curative powers of nature in parks around the and immediate connection to nature from their granite spire, an hour southwest of Morganton. OPMENT FINANCE INITIATIVE, CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA. landscape around the PROJECT LEAD, MASTER PLANNER, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, country. “[Olmsted] believed, as did many, that rooms, but it also framed their view to the broader hospital will reinforce The stairways were a technical feat, he said, “but CIVIL ENGINEER, BIKE/PED/MOBILITY PLANNING STEWART, the workings of the sane mind and the insane context of nature, the connection to the mountains. the area’s rural identity that wasn’t the real story.” RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA. ADAPTIVE REUSE ARCHITECTURAL mind were not so different...” Yanni writes inThe and connection to the PLANNING BELK ARCHITECTURE, DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA. Architecture of Madness. “The subtle, positive influ- “Everyone has agreed,” Batts says, that preserving Blue Ridge Mountains. “The real story was, look at the lengths that we go NEW ARCHITECTURAL PLANNING GENSLER, RALEIGH, NORTH ence of nature on healthy people could be applied the landscape at the heart of the Broughton dis- through, and our state goes through, to invest in CAROLINA. TRANSPORTATION PLANNING VHB, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA. ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING HART & HICKMAN, to sick people, and what was an enhancement for trict is essential to connecting the existing public giving the public access to these moments that are RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA. COST ESTIMATING AND PRECON- the healthy might be an out-and-out cure for the institutions and potential private developments. grounded in wellness,” Batts said. “Whether it’s in- STRUCTION PLANNING CT WILSON CONSTRUCTION, DURHAM, sick.” Olmsted may not have designed the Brough- More than that, he says, the experience of the creasing your heart rate to get up to the top or get- NORTH CAROLINA. OWNER/CLIENT FOR NCSSM CAMPUS NORTH ton landscape, but he did design other asylum landscape, from the oak allées at the old hospital ting you connected with nature, it all comes down CAROLINA SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS, MOR- GANTON, NORTH CAROLINA. NCSSM ARCHITECTS DUDA|PAINE grounds, and it’s not hard to see the influence of to the expansive Blue Ridge views, is the primary to somebody being bold and saying it’s worth this ARCHITECTS, DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA. his ideas here. quality of the space. The public has an interest investment. And that’s what’s happening here.” in nurturing that experience and making it more “Dotting the landscape with oaks and magnolias, accessible. Standing in the parking lot behind the JARED BREY IS A FREELANCE REPORTER IN PHILADELPHIA AND

what it began to do was create rooms and human- Avery Building, Batts told me that his firm had STEWART A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR AT THE MAGAZINE.

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