Pack Mansion Relics at Deal Buick Site, Asheville, NC

Architectural relics of Asheville philanthropist G.W. Pack's lost mansion, Manyoaks, which stood on the Deal Buick site on Merrimon Ave. A massive stone wall breached by a brick-paved carriage entrance; a pair of elegant stone pillars, strikingly similar to the Vance Monument, flanking a section of wrought-iron fence; a majestic old magnolia tree -- these are all that remains to memorialize the grand mansion, Manyoaks, that Asheville city father George Willis Pack built on what's now known as the Deal Buick site in the late 19th century.

I (Steve Rasmussen) took these photos in 2007 and donated them to the Special Collections section of the UNC-Asheville Library. It is my hope that the next developer of the site will not only preserve these architectural and natural relics, but help enhance them with the addition of a memorial plaque to G.W. Pack, Asheville's greatest philanthropist, who gave us Pack Square, the Vance Monument, Montford neighborhood, Montford Park, and more -- but to whose memory no monument in the city he did so much to create has ever been dedicated.

To find out more about G.W. Pack, as well as the history of Manyoaks, see the UNCA Library online exhibit <a href="http://toto.lib.unca.edu/web_exhibits/WNC_pack/pack_default.htm">"George Willis Pack: A Name That Will Endure"</a>.