48 South Spruce Street
Asheville, NC, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Thomas Wolfe House

Statement of Significance:

Thomas Wolfe's short period of productivity included both the late 1920's and the 1930's, and he is remembered as one of the major writers of both of those dissimilar decades. While he was highly individual, the shift of his artistic outlook from romantic individualism to social aware- ness typified the intellectual progression of his time. He became "perhaps the central spokesman for the artistic beliefs of the 1930's." But the real value of Wolfe's writing lies in its more intrinsic qualities, particularly its great scope and energy, its lyricism, and its full-bodied characterization. These assets have gained for his books a wide and continuous readership. Wolfe is sometimes compared with Whitman as an interpreter of our national spirit and promise.3 As Herbert J. Muller has remarked, "his life work was perhaps as close as we can expect to come to an American epic."

Of all this country's major novelists, Wolfe was probably the most overtly autobiographical, and his own family and boyhood provided the material for many of his memorable passages and characters. As the scene of this boyhood, "The Old Kentucky Home" bears an intimate relationship to his career. Preserved as a memorial since the death of the writer's mother, the house retains its integrity to an unusual degree. It stands as a striking monument to Thomas Wolfe and to the environment in which his character was formed.