The Malvern Hills Development
1925_ad.pdf1925 Asheville Citizen Advertisement
In late 2015, Mrs. June Frye of Indianapolis, Indiana had her granddaughter search the internet to see if Malvern Hills still existed. She reached out to the Community Club president with the contact phone number on this website. Mrs. Frye was the Daughter-In-Law of the late Mr. Carl Frye and found some old papers while cleaning out some drawers. Included in the papers was a saved newspaper advertisement for Malvern Hills, which she thought we may be interested in.
This was not just any old newspaper ad. You see, Carl Frye was the Landscape Architect who originally designed Malvern Hills. The old newspaper was the original advertisement from The Sunday Citizen, June 21, 1925. The language describing the finest in Gilded Age living is a treat to read and enjoy.
We owe a debt to Mrs. Frye for taking the time to conserve and protect this piece of Asheville and Western North Carolina history.
Here is the second page of the 1925 advertisement for Malvern Hills. This describes the finer points of living here, including the amenities and golf course.
There is a brief history written here that confirms the original stories of the discovery of Sulphur Springs and the founding of the Hotel on the site.
Notice the rendering of the Clubhouse - the round portion in the center is the still-visible concrete enclosure around the springs that stands at the historic site off School Road.
1925_ad_back.pdfMrs. Frye sends update...
In March 2019, Mrs. Frye sent another package from Indianapolis with more "lost" history of Malvern Hills. These newspaper clippings are not from Asheville, though. When Carl Frye returned to Columbus, he tried to persuade the community that more careful planning should go into creating luxurious neighborhoods in their city, similar to what was under construction in Asheville, North Carolina.
Although the text is not complete and the edges are worn, it is plain to see that he was very proud of his pinnacle design. He wrote about the complete package that came along with each lot, including final landscaping and gardens that were included in the price of the lot. There were only a handful of homes built in Malvern Hills before the Great Depression, and as far as we know, these are the oldest photographs of the neighborhood. The exact date of these is unknown, but it is probably about 1927.
The first clipping is a view of what is now 161 School Road, taken from the hill top, probably near the intersection of Clarendon and Cranford.
The second clipping is a real gem because it depicts the final streetscape of Malvern Hills - complete with street lamps, underground utilities, and sidewalk. These amenities were ahead of their time, and the desperate years that followed allowed the copper to be stolen from the underground, and the street lamps melted down. The clubhouse is shown, still under construction, along with a picture of Carl Frye himself, the designer of Malvern Hills.
columbus_newspaper_1.pdfcolumbus_newspaper_2.pdf