I created this booklet because many visitors to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site were unwilling or unable to visit the upstairs portion of the boarding house (OKH). Although it’s admittedly a low tech interpretive tool, booklets such as this one can provide a type of access when resources are limited.
Upstairs at the Old Kentucky Home
Upstairs hallway
“The Sleeping Porch at the Head of the Stairs”
For the season of 1916 Julia Wolfe added a number of rooms, including two sleeping porches. These allowed her summer guests to take advantage of the mountain air that had become so fashionable by the early 1900s. The porch added “at the head of the stairs” played a special role in Look Homeward Angel and tells us something about the relationship of life to literature.
In the summer of 1917, when Tom was home after his first year of college, a young woman from eastern North Carolina stayed at the OKH with her younger brother. She was in her early twenties and engaged, but that did not prevent Tom from developing a crush on her. At the end of the summer, she returned home, married her fiancé, and settled in Norfolk.
In LHA, readers meet a young woman named Laura James with whom Eugene Gant has a romance. They court on the porch swing, go on a picnic, and one night, when Eugene was sleeping in “the porch at the head of the stairs” he climbed out this window onto the roof and into the window of the room where Laura James was staying (the brother is conveniently absent from the novel) and stays much of the night with her. Fact or fiction?…
This photograph shows the sleeping porch as it appeared in 1949. At that time it was used to display W.O. Wolfe’s tools and deathbed.
We know of a few people who probably stayed in this boarder’s bedroom. Wolfe wrote of a “spinster” teacher from New York who visited in 1913, and according to Julia, spent some time tutoring an African American man. A more famous guest occupied the room in 1943. In that year Zelda Fitzgerald had tired of living with her mother in Montgomery and wrote her solicitor that she could take a room in the Old Kentucky Home for about $3.50 a week. We have her name listed in the guest register for that year, and one of her letters indicated that she stayed in this front bedroom.
Until the additions of 1916, the OKH had only one bathroom, which was downstairs. Covered “slop jars” like this one supplemented the facilities.
Ben’s Sickroom
In the summer of 1918, Tom’s brother Ben, to whom he felt closest of any family member, stayed in this small room. Julia Wolfe may have given Ben this room in order to maximize space available for her summer boarders. During that summer Ben caught the Spanish flue that was decimating the United States at the time. His flue developed into pneumonia and the family moved him into the room next door, which provided more light and air.
This photograph shows the small bedroom’s appearance in 1949. Notice Tom’s baby dress hanging on the wall. Although the room was associated with Ben and not Tom, the presence of the baby dress underscores the focus of the house in its early years as a shrine to Tom.
The Room Where Ben Died
The family moved the very sick Ben into the room pictured here. In 1918, however, the room looked a bit different; it held two beds and no upholstered furniture. Tom came home in time to watch his brother’s slow and difficult death, which he ultimately immortalized in one of the last chapters of Look Homeward Angel. Afterwards, this room became known as “Ben’s room.”
In Look Homeward Angel Tom described the room where Ben died as the one with “its ugly Victorian bay-window.” Perhaps he was influenced by the room’s association with death, or was simply expressing a modernist dislike of Victorian architecture.
“Birthing Bed Room” and Sleeping Porch
This is the second of the two sleeping porches that Julia Wolfe added in 1916. It was built off of an existing bedroom, also pictured here.
This bed, currently in the room adjoining the sleeping porch, came from the Woodfin Street House when Julia sold it in 1920. It had served as the “birthing bed” in which all of the Wolfe children, including Tom, were born.
Off of the center hallway you can see one of the boarder’s bedrooms that existed prior to Julia’s expansions of 1916.
The change in width of the floorboards as you go down the back upstairs hallway reveals where Julia made additions to this area of the house. You can also see the odd angles that resulted.
More “Modern” Additions
In 1916 Julia added this bathroom at the end of the back hallway. She also added an entire section to the other side of the house that included two rooms for bathtubs and one room for a toilet. By 1916 consumers could order matching bathroom sets from Montgomery Ward and Sears, although most homes in Western North Carolina did not get indoor plumbing until several decades later.
Next to the bathroom, Julia added this small bedroom. A guest who stayed in the OKH in the 1940s remarked that Julia rented out this room quite frequently, even when she had few boarders and could have rented out one of the larger rooms.
This is the room where Tom stayed when he came back to the OKH in 1937. That year he wanted to spend the summer in the Asheville area working on his third novel. Because of the hostility he had experienced from the locals after the publication of Look Homeward Angel he decided to test the waters before committing to a long-term stay. Therefore in May he spent a week in his mother’s boarding house.
This visit turned out to be a great success. Tom wrote an article about it for the Asheville Citizen Times called “Return.” He also arranged to rent a cabin in nearby Oteen in which he spent much of that summer. Unfortunately, his death in September of 1938 prevented his return to the Old Kentucky Home.
W.O. Wolfe’s Bed
The bed in “Tom’s room” may have belonged to W.O. Wolfe when he lived in the Woodfin Street house. In 1975 Bob Conway conducted a recorded interview with Tom’s brother Fred Wolfe as they toured the house. When they came to this bedroom Fred observed that “this bed was my father’s bed at 92 Woodfin Street. And Tom used to love to sleep in that bed.”
The Museum Doctor 