Collections

• Related Oral Interviews, UNCA
• E.M. Ball Photo Collection, UNCA
• Correspondence, AAM
• Watercolors, Drawings and Blueprints, AAM, ABLS

Biographical Information

Charles Newton Parker (October 29, 1885 -July 30, 1961), was an active architect practicing in Asheville. Parker was born in Hillsboro, Ohio, the son of John Milton Parker and Carolyn Holmes Parker. He and his brother had moved to Asheville around 1900 with the ambition to get into the construction and architecture trades. He married Julia Maynard of Georgia in 1928 and constructed a home at 54 Ridgewood Place where the couple lived and raised a family. Professionally Parker worked as a surveyor and draftsman for the first two decades of his Asheville career. During this time he made the acquaintance of Richard Sharpe Smith the architect employed by William Vanderbilt to design the Biltmore Estate. He incorporated much of Smith's architectural vocabulary in his own work and had a special affinity Tudor-esque houses throughout his career. Interestingly Parker learned most of his skills on site and does not seems to have had any formal training in his discipline, a rarity among architects even in the early twentieth century. Despite this Parker was a prominent architect during his lifetime, and was a founding member of the  Architect's Association of Western North Carolina.

During the teens and twenties Parker cultivated an important professional connection with Edwin Grove, the developer and financial of two famous structures that bear his name the Grove Arcade and the Grove Park Inn. Parker was involved in the design of many of the houses in the surrounding Grove Park neighborhood. Sadly Parkers greatest and most complex project, the Grove Arcade was never finished. The death of the projects patron Edwin Grove coupled with the onset of the great depression doomed the project to only partial completion. This greatly embittered Parker both because he was not fully paid for his work and because the era of large scale building in Asheville came to an end at this point. After 1920, Parker like other architects in Asheville had to struggle to make a living in their trade. He was forced to reduce his firm to a one man operation that mostly dealt in small home design and construction. He and six associates did eventually become the main architecture practice in the city by acquiring government contracts related to the Second World War. Despite this professional disappointment Parker passionately loved the mountain landscape of Western North Carolina and remained in Asheville even after is retirement and until his death. He is Buried in Georgia in his wife s home town.

http://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000059

Related Oral Interviews

The Buildings

Arch of Triumph (1919)

Biltmore Forest Country Club Servants' House (1920s)

Biltmore Forest Municipal Buildings (Ca. 1927)

Charles A. Hoit Residence (1914)

Charles N. Parker House (Ca. 1928)

Charles Westall House (Late 1920s)

Clara and Caroline Parker House (1920s)

French Broad Avenue United Methodist Church (1928)

Gaston Motors Company Building (Ca. 1920)

Grove Arcade (1926-1929)

Harry Lewis Parker House (1920s)

Harry Westall House (Late 1920s)

Jack Westall House (1949)

Junius Adams House (1921)

Norburn House (Ca. 1927)

Piedmont Building (1925)

Robert W. Griffith House (Ca. 1920)

Sunset Terrace Cottages (1913-1920)

Thomas Wadley Raoul House (Ca. 1922)

Walter P. Taylor House (1925-1926)

William Redwood House (1926; 1948 [renovated])

Inventory of Architecture

Selected Correspondence

Typological Motifs in Parker's Work

Bibliography

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