About
1847 Blake House Inn Bed & Breakfast, originally called Newington, was built circa 1847 by Joseph B. Pyatt. It eventually passed to Dr. Frederick Blake, a medical officer in the Confederate Army. Dr. Blake’s father, Daniel Blake, Sr., a wealthy rice plantation owner from Charleston, S.C., first purchased the property that the Inn sits on as well as over 500 acres. He used the house as a summer retreat from the hot, humid Charleston heat. During the Civil War, the house was used as a Confederate Field Hospital, but the nurses also cared for injured Union soldiers, hiding them, it is said, in the crawlspaces under the house.
This Asheville bed and breakfast is an example of Italianate architecture with Gothic Revival influence. Its original native stone walls are 22″ thick and are held together with lime and clay mortar. Both levels of the house boast of 12′ – 14′ ceilings and the dining rooms still contain some of their original ornamental plaster decorations.
The spacious first floor boasts two large dining rooms, capable of holding up to 60 people, a Parlor with seating for 10, Breakfast Room with guest refrigerator, commercial kitchen and wheelchair accessible bathrooms. The second floor contains five guest bedrooms, all with private bathrooms, three that are original to the house, and two that were added in the early 1900s. There are five gas fireplaces on the first floor and three gas fireplaces on the second floor, enough to keep everyone warm on cold winter nights. Most of the flooring throughout the house is the original heart pine floors.
The house was converted to a bed and breakfast in the early 1990’s and has gone through many renovations since then. At one time, the B&B had an operating restaurant and bar. Since Ms. Kimball purchased the Inn in January 2006, she has converted the bar/lounge area into a gift shop, then into a first floor wheelchair accessible guestroom in 2008. She has added central air conditioning to the upstairs guestrooms and made many other cosmetic and functional changes to make the Inn feel more comfortable and welcoming to guests, their children, and pets.
Leslie has also made great strides in becoming a “green” property by recycling, installing a tankless water heater in the Carriage House, asking guests to conserve water by reusing their towels more than once, setting up a rain barrel and doing away with bottled water in favor of a water cooler. In 2010, she became a proud partner with Clean the World, a non-profit that distributes recycled soap products, along with appropriate educational materials, to impoverished countries worldwide, and to domestic homeless shelters. Leslie sends unused soap and bottles amenities to the organization for their recycling program. If you would like to support other B&Bs that have partnered with Clean the World, please visit their B&B Partner Page. It is also her goal to build a small garden outside the kitchen to grow vegetables and fruits for use in breakfast cooking.
