Albemarle Inn

"Best in the South" - Arrington's Inn Traveler

Minutes to Biltmore Estate and downtown Asheville

Quiet, park-like setting in the historic Grove Park District

Experience the Graciousness of the Old South

The Albemarle Inn located on 3/4 of an acre, is within walking distance of the Grove Park Inn and minutes to restaurants, galleries and the Biltmore Estate. The Inn was built in 1907 as a private residence by a prominent North Carolina physician. The Inn is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was featured in Travel Holiday Magazine and National Geographic Traveler.

Check Availability/Make A Reservation

The Albemarle Inn, a magnificently restored 1907 Greek Revival mansion, tops every list of Asheville, North Carolina inns. Located in park-like grounds in the famed Grove Park district, the Asheville bed and breakfast offers ten elegant rooms and a spacious two-room suite with an enclosed sun porch. On the National Register of Historic Places, the inn once hosted the renowned composer, Bela Bartok.

Each room pampers guests in the luxurious comfort of period furnishings, fine linens, goosedown quilts, and a private bath with a clawfoot tub and shower combination. The formal parlor includes a blazing fireplace, fine antiques and carpets surrounded by original oak wainscoting, and a sweeping staircase leading to guest rooms. Gourmet breakfasts graced with crisp linen and gleaming silver are served each morning in the candlelit dining room or the warm, light-filled sun porch overlooking an English garden.

Cable TV, telephone, internet-access, and individual climate control in each room
Fireplace, balcony or whirlpool tub in some rooms
Breakfast seating for two or four
Special dietary needs accommodated with prior notice
Light refreshments served each evening
Free on-site parking

The Albemarle Inn is nationally recognized for excellence
"Southern comfort in the Blue Ridge mountains" - National Geographic Traveler
The only Asheville bed & breakfast holding the coveted AAA Four-Diamond rating, the Albemarle Inn ranks with the world-famous Grove Park Inn and the Inn on Biltmore Estate for quality, service, and hospitality

An Asheville, NC bed and breakfast dedicated to comfort, quality, and gracious relaxation, Cathy and Larry Sklar, innkeepers of the Albemarle Inn, have recreated for their guests a life of gracious comfort rarely found today. Sip morning coffee, tea, or hot chocolate in the privacy of the Sunrise Suite's enclosed porch. Take an evening stroll through the beautifully landscaped gardens. Relax in the quiet elegance of the downstairs parlor, and return to the quiet calm of Bartok's Retreat after visiting the area's superb attractions. Whatever your dream, you'll find the perfect setting for a romantic getaway, relaxed vacation, or retreat from a busy schedule with these Asheville bed and breakfast inkeepers.

Candlelight and soft music greet Albemarle guests as they come down the grand staircase for breakfast. Larry's fresh brewed coffee, tea and hot chocolate are available for early risers. Guests delight in a cup with the newspaper by the fire or on the veranda. Our chef, Tracie, prepares a gourmet breakfast served amid sunlight and plants on the sun porch or by cozy warmth of the fireplace in the dining room. Individual tables for two or four let guests choose between privacy or the opportunity to chat with fellow guests. Guests choosing to sleep in may request an in-room continental breakfast.

Our gourmet bed and breakfast menu varies daily, featuring an assortment of chilled juices, seasonal fruit dishes, gourmet entrees and great teas and our own special blend of coffee (the beans are roasted for us here in Asheville). In addition to serving fresh fruit salad with lime yogurt topped with pecans and grapefruit ambrosia, we feature a number of warm or baked fruit dishes which bring raves from our guests, including poached cinnamon pears and strawberry soup.

Among our guests' favorite entrees are stuffed French toast (topped with orange sauce), homemade ruffled crepes with roasted red bell pepper sauce (featured on the cover of Marquee magazine) and eggs florentine topped with a tomato-basil vinaigrette, made with basil fresh from our own herb garden. And save a little room, we delight in surprising our guests on occasion with a dessert course. Guests love our homemade just-out-of-the-oven lemon tea bread, sour cream raisin muffins and biscotti.

Afternoon Refreshments
In addition to our delicious gourmet breakfasts, we host a reception each evening. Hors d'oeuvres and seasonal beverages such as hot mulled cider or refreshing iced vanilla-berry tea are offered in our parlor in front of a warm and cozy fireplace. In the summer enjoy your refreshments on the veranda overlooking our beautifully landscaped grounds and award winning English gardens.

Hors d'oeuvres may include our toasty caramelized onion tartlets or eggplant crostini with goat cheese as well as a variety of cheese and crackers. In addition to enjoying these savory delights this time offers guests the opportunity to meet the innkeepers personally and become acquainted with other guests of the inn.

Our staff is happy to help with dinner reservations and we enjoy familiarizing guests with local events and activities. If you have special dietary needs, just let us know when you make your reservation and we'll do our best to accommodate you.

When Larry and Cathy purchased the Albemarle Inn, the grounds had been neglected for years and there were no gardens at all. Having been avid home gardeners in New York, they set about to transform the property. A dilapidated inground pool that filled the entire area in front of the entrance to the mansion was removed, the parking areas that occupied the long drive were moved up to where the pool had been and the current gardens were started. Guests love to sit on the veranda with a cool drink at social hour and enjoy the view of the extensive English/style borders that Cathy designed which now provide a mix of shrubs, bulbs and flowering plants offering color and interest for nearly 9 months each year. Larry selected the many evergreen shrubs and trees that provide a background for the plantings. He also planted nearly everything in the garden and is a one-man landscape team, maintaining all the grounds himself. Larry has the unofficial title of "Head Gardener" but he has no staff and as Cathy says, "he's very cheap since he's paid in food."

Near the foot of Sunset Mountain in north Asheville, Dr. Carl V. Reynolds (1872-1963) constructed a large Neoclassical Revival style house for his private residence. Reynolds, then city health officer, was a native of Asheville descended on both lines from prominent Buncombe County families. His father, John Daniel Reynolds, was an early Asheville medical practitioner. Although Carl Reynolds received his early education in Asheville, his medical schooling was at the City of New York Medical College, with a post-graduate course at Brompton Hospital in London. He returned to Asheville to set up a private medical practice around 1896 and specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis.

Reynolds shifted his interest into public health and was appointed city health officer from 1903-1910 and 1914-1923. Dr. Reynolds instituted a number of sanitation measures, including: the vaccination of school children, a campaign against the housefly, a milk ordinance, and the required wrapping of bread.

In 1924 Reynolds was elected president of the North Carolina Medical Society and in 1931 as president of the State Board of Health. He also was instrumental in founding the school of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in 1935 he served on its faculty.

The Albemarle’s life began in 1907 when Reynolds purchased some land holdings from the Pack family in Asheville and began construction of his house on Edgemont Road in “Proximity Park,â€Â so named because of his real estate corporation the Proximity Park Corporation comprised of local businessmen. The group purchased land from George Pack, a wealthy lumberman from Cleveland who invested money in Asheville land to donate to civic causes after moving to the city in 1880.

Dr. Reynolds and the Proximity Park Corporation provided a successful approach to managing this land, home to two trolley systems. Prior to the group's acquiring the land, George Pack had leased 130 acres of land he owned at the end of Charlotte Street to the Swannanoa Golf and Hunt Club. Richard Howland, who moved to Asheville in 1905 from Providence, Rhode Island, owned the lands adjacent to Pack and managed a steam dummy railroad (the Asheville and Craggy Mountain) which ran from the end of Charlotte Street up Sunset Mountain to a quarry and gravel pit. The railway ran along the current route of Macon Avenue and was later converted into an electric trolley system intended to transport passengers as far north as Weaverville. The Asheville Rapid Transit (a competing electric trolley) acquired right-of-way through George Pack’s property in 1906. At Charlotte Street, both of the existing trolley systems fed into a city trolley system.

The Proximity Park Corporation developed building lots out of the approximately 130 acres served by the two trolley systems. Most of Reynolds' land holdings (excluding his residence on Edgemont) were sold to Edwin Wiley Grove, soon to be Asheville's real estate giant of the twentieth century. E.W. Grove converted Macon Avenue into an autoway in anticipation of the construction of the Grove Park Inn (built in 1913), which halted this portion of the trolley system. The Asheville Rapid Transit System ran between Macon Avenue and Edgemont Road until the 1920s. Reynolds is thought to have influenced Mr. Grove’s decision to invest in Asheville's Proximity Park.

By 1917, 40 residences were constructed in Proximity Park. Between 1917 and 1925, another 20 houses were built. A number of prominent citizens were drawn to the area due to its mountain ambiance, neighboring Country Club, and the trolley system connecting the northern portion of the city with downtown. Along with Dr. Carl V. Reynolds, a number of other well-known individuals made the neighborhood their home: Walter A. Hildebrand (owner and editor of the Asheville Gazette), Dr. George Tayloe Winston (retired president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of the University of Texas), Frank R. Hewett (civil engineer and mining entrepreneur), Samuel Lightfoot Forbes (realtor, banker, and coal entrepreneur), Duncan C. Waddell (son of the Asheville Street Railway Company developer), and George Stephens (developer of Myers Park in Charlotte and well-known newspaper publisher).

In September of 1920, Carl and Edith Reynolds built the first house in the new town of Biltmore Forest. Reynolds then sold the house on Edgemont to the Grove Park School, a prestigious private institution founded in 1900 as the Asheville School for Girls. E.W. Grove and Thomas A. Cosgrove, the chief executive officer and headmaster, were the principal owners of the school. In the autumn of 1920 the house suffered damage in a fire, but was repaired by the school. Adjacent to the house, a two-story frame classroom building was added in the 1920s.

The Plonk sisters, educators in the arts, leased the school in 1929. In 1938, the name of the school changed to the Plonk School of Creative Arts. The Misses Plonk operated the school in the building until 1941, and the school was to continue to operate until the 1960s under the credo of teaching the “total person-mind, body, voice, and spirit.â€Â

The Plonk School moved to a new location in 1941, and in the following year Thomas and Mary Cosgrove (the sole owners) sold the house to T. Avery and Marie L. Taylor. Under the Taylor ownership, the house became the “Albemarle Inn,â€Â a rooming house. In 1980 the property was purchased by the Mellins of Florida who converted the rooming house into a bed and breakfast. The inn changed hands several times until Cathy and Larry Sklar, the present owners, purchased it in 1998. Thus, the house has retained its name and function over the last four decades and through five separate owners.

The most famous guest at the Inn was the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945), who lived here during the rooming house days for approximately 9 months in 1943. While residing in the Inn, Bartok composed his Third Concerto for Piano, also known as the “Asheville Concerto.â€Â It is thought that the work was inspired by the “concert of birdsâ€Â that he heard singing in the gardens and trees surrounding the house.

Today, one may see the remains of ashlar culverts and bridge footings from the days of the dummy steam railway along Macon Avenue. Proximity Park has become an upper middle class neighborhood of preserved homes and quiet streets. Mature oaks and pines and a number of Norway spruces (the favorite evergreen of landscapers during the time) still abound.

We invite you to walk the neighborhood and enjoy the wonderful variety of architectural styles. We have created a self-guided walking tour for our guests to use. Please ask anyone in the staff, if you would like a copy.

Traveling East on I-40 or north on I-26
Take I-240 east to Charlotte Street in Asheville (Exit 5B),
Turn left and go 0.9 miles to Edgemont Road.
Turn right and go 0.2 miles to the Inn.

Traveling West on I-40,
Take I-240 west to Charlotte Street in Asheville (Exit 5B),
Turn right and go 0.9 miles to Edgement Road.
Turn right and go 0.2 miles to the Inn.