Category: Swannanoa

Silence Is Olden

11/3/2018

From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request).

I love exploring the past by photographing vacant and abandoned buildings. I've published several posts in the past with photos and poems. Check them out by clicking on "Abandoned Places" in our plog (poetry blog) archive. Our site also includes a page of abandoned places we visited in Alabama -- click HERE.

Today I visited the grounds of Swannanoa Palace again, and below are photos from an abandoned home (for servants?) on the property.

There is no Silence in the Earth – so silent
As that endured
Which uttered, would discourage Nature
And haunt the World.

~ Emily Dickinson

Below: The was also an abandoned tower on the property. Some there said it was a bell tower. Others there said it was a water tower. There was evidence that it was both.

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Swan Song

6/13/2018

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From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request).

The past is such a curious creature to me. I suppose that’s one reason why I love to explore vacant and abandoned buildings. I wonder about that the day in the past when the building or home was brand new. What stories and what experiences occurred in the place? What ultimately brought the structure to its current state (often a state of disrepair)?

“Where a house has been abandoned, you can be sure there has been a sad story,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates (HERE). Perhaps. More often for me, though, a vacant building calls to mind Emily Dickinson’s poem “The past is such a curious creature” where the view of the past may reveal “reward” or “a disgrace.”

Recently, I posted information about some abandoned places I visited (HERE). This weekend I returned to one of them, Swannanoa Palace, the summer home of James and Sallie May Dooley at the start of the twentieth century. Information on Swannanoa (a Cherokee word meaning “beautiful river”) is HERE.

Below: Scenes from Swannanoa Palace atop Afton Mountain in Afton, Virginia:

Below: Swannanoa has the largest Tiffany window in any privately owned home (click image to enlarge):

Below: Signs of disrepair at Swannanoa.

By Emily Dickinson:

The Past is such a curious Creature
To look her in the Face
A Transport may reward us
Or a Disgrace –

Unarmed if any meet her
I charge him fly
Her faded Ammunition
Might yet reply.

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With Abandon

1/22/2018

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NEW PICTURES/INFO ADDED AT THE BOTTOM ON 1/23/18.

From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request):

Abandoned places hold a strange appeal. There is unexpected beauty in the quietude and mystery of the deserted.

Of course, at some point in the past, the vacant structure was brand spanking new. Who lived or visited there? What circumstances through time brought the property to its state of neglect and disrepair? Is there anything that the abandoned site can teach us about the past? Can the images of the forgotten and crumbling structures stand as works of art?

I visited a number of vacant and neglected properties this past weekend, and the decomposing structures called to mind various lines by Emily Dickinson. Below are photos from the various ruins, and selected stanzas from some of Dickinson’s work.

The Skyline Parkway Motor Court

"Welc ome" to the decaying Skyline Parkway Motor Court at the top of Afton Mountain in Nelson County, Virginia, where the Blue Ridge Parkway meets the southern entrance to the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park.

A chilly Peace infests the Grass
The Sun respectful lies –
Not any Trance of industry
These shadows scrutinize –

The Inn at Afton

When we moved to the area in the 1990s, The Inn at Afton was a Holiday Inn, and it included an Aberdeen Barn restaurant. I'm not sure if it was anything else in its past.

This property is not completely abandoned. The Inn still has electricity -- there were a few lights on around the perimeter -- and there was evidence that a handful of people lived in a few of the rooms..

Up Life's Hill with my little Bundle
If I prove it steep –
If a Discouragement withhold me –
If my newest step

Older feel than the Hope that prompted –
Spotless be from blame
Heart that proposed as Heart that accepted
Homelessness, for Home –

Swannanoa

Further up Afton Mountain is Swannanoa, an Italian Renaissance Revival villa built in 1912 by millionaire and philanthropist James H. Dooley and his wife Sallie.

The Dooley's main residence was Maymont, in Richmond, Virginia (below on the left). Swannanoa (below on the right) was their summer home.

I Years had been from Home
And now before the Door
I dared not enter, lest a Face
I never saw before

Stare solid into mine
And ask my Business there –
"My Business but a Life I left
Was such remaining there?"

ENCHANTED CASTLE

Located in Natural Bridge, Virginia, Mark Cline's "Enchanted Castle and Studio Tours" operated in the 1990s. From RoadsideAmerica.com: "That ended in April 2001, when the Castle was gutted by a mysterious fire. Mark believes -- with some credible evidence to support him -- that it was arson, set by local Christian zealots who were spooked by his fiberglass gargoyles and demons and perhaps none-too-pleased by the "Holy Cow" statue out by the mailbox

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust –

Ruin is formal – Devil's work
Consecutive and slow –
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping – is Crash's law.

Mark Cline was also the artist behind "Foamhenge," a full-scale styrofoam replica of Stonehenge. This roadside attraction used to be down the road from Cline's Enchanted Castle; however, it was relocated to Centreville, VA, in 2017

The DeJarnette State Sanitorium

Located near the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, the abandoned DeJarnette State Sanitorium, founded in 1932, was named after Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, a prominent Virginia psychiatrist and strong supporter of eugenics, particularly the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill.

One need not be a Chamber –
to be Haunted –
One need not be a House –
The Brain has Corridors – surpassing
Material Place –

In the photograph below on the right, Dr. Joseph DeJarnette is the man seated on the right.

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Silence Is Olden

Swan Song

With Abandon

The Skyline Parkway Motor Court

The Inn at Afton

Swannanoa

ENCHANTED CASTLE

The DeJarnette State Sanitorium

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