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In Rural Appalachia, the Multidisciplinary Firm Stewart Helps to Steer a Small City with a Historic Opportunity on Its Hands

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In Rural Appalachia, the Multidisciplinary Firm Stewart Helps to Steer a Small City with a Historic Opportunity on Its Hands 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 North Carolina 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 Broughton Hospital, 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 psychiatric hospital 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 Kirkbride Plan building was designed to complement the Dorothea Dix 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 Philadelphia 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 master plan. The study, published in 2016 as [Re] blanket the hills surrounding the hospital. Hunt- dicating that Olmsted or his firm ever worked in opened. The state hired the Development Fi- imagining Broughton, took a wide-angle view of 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- the site’s potential. More than just a massive, his- 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 toric hospital building, according to the study the ister of Historic Places, where it was listed in 1987. of Government that helps local governments area 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 of 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 consultants and provide design services for a new 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 Fonta Flora State Trail, 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 Pisgah National Forest. [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.
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