News

A stroll down Main Street 100 years ago

By CAREY O'CAIN, Published: September 22, 2026

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Part 1 of Carey O’Cain’s two-part account of his mother’s remembrance of Main Street in 1925.

This is part of a story that my mother, Lib, presented to the Women’s Group at the Opportunity House in 1990. It is Mom’s recollection of a walk down Main Street Hendersonville in 1925 when she was only 9. Her story is 10 pages long. I’ll only provide a synopsis here and venture into other details in subsequent episodes.

Mom begins her walk up Main Street from Five Points where Main and Church Street converge. As she walks south on Main there is the hill to the left where Bruce Drysdale stands today. In 1925 there stood a lovely 20-room house owned by the McAdoos, who was the brother of the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson and spent part of the year in Flat Rock, probably visiting General King. In the late ’30s the house was sold to the Elks Club. It was a delightful place for parties, looking down on the lights of town from the wide verandah.

Next door to the McAdoo house was the Carolina Terrace Hotel, which in the 1920s was the Wheeler Hotel. Adjoining the hotel was the Terrace Pavilion, where many big-name bands performed in the ’20s. Mom attended one of the dances there, because her mother was asked to chaperone as her older brothers were attending. It was so exciting, as she was only 10 years old. The Terrace Hotel was decorated with colored lights, and a red carpet extended from the front door to the dining room. We had dinner there and then went to the pavilion. They had a 10- or 15-piece orchestra. The girls wore very short dresses in their ’20s style, and the boys wore white pants and dark jackets. To her it was so glamorous. She couldn’t wait until she got home to badger her brothers into teaching her the Charleston and the Black-Bottom. Unfortunately, the Pavilion burned to the ground two years later with all of Hal Kemp’s instruments in the building. His band had played there that evening and shortly after 2:30 in the morning, the whole place was ablaze.

We continued our walk past the Waverly Inn and St. James church. On the next block is an arcade building and the A&P Store where First Bank stands today. A&P, which stands for Atlantic and Pacific, was the main supermarket in town. On 6th Avenue we encounter the Skyland Hotel, which had recently opened. Mom had beautiful memories of many private parties here. The girls wore long dresses, with the boys in their best suits, entering the hotel as the doorman in livery opened the door. The lobby had marble columns, walnut paneling and Persian rugs. The tall windows had dark red velvet drapes lined in cream satin. The ballroom had beautiful windows and crystal chandeliers. This is a few years later during the Prohibition, so the boys that drank had to go upstairs to one of the rooms, which the hotel usually furnished for coats. The elevator operator doubled as a bootlegger.

Across the street from the Skyland Hotel we see the Barber Buildings. This is where the First Citizens Bank stands today. On the corner is the camera and photography studio. Armatage Farrington Barber, known as “Farry,” created his photography sitting area on the north side of the building to have indirect light. Later his shop was run by Don Barber. There were three Barber stores. The second store was a gift card shop with cameras run by Jody and the third was the office supply store run by the oldest brother, Unc.

Next door to the Barbers was the Carolina Theater. In its youth it was a lovely place to go. It was designed by Erle Stillwell of Hendersonville, a well-known architect that specialized in design of theaters throughout the Southeast. (My Dad worked with Erle before branching out on his own after WWII. Dad and Mr. Stillwell will return in future episodes.) The theater was used for movies, stage shows, vaudeville and follies. The first décor at The Carolina was Italianate. After a fire, it was redecorated in Art Deco with twinkling lights that seemed to move around the dark ceiling like stars and then seemed to become soft clouds floating around the ceiling when the main lights went up in the theater.

I’ll pause here on our walk for an aside. As children, Lutrelle and I would be dropped off by our parents at the theater frequently. My parents didn’t care where the movie was when they dropped us off. It may be at the very end of the movie. We just knew that they would pick us up in 2 hours. Lutrelle, with her sisters, would sometimes take a jar of lightning bugs into the theater and sit on the back row. Once everything was quiet and dark, they would unscrew the cap and roll the jar down the floor towards the screen. The jar would clank into chairs and feet releasing the lightning bugs. I wonder if Mom was really seeing the twinkling light or if Lutrelle’s aunts were there playing the same prank.

In the ’20s there were two theaters on Main Street — the Carolina and the Rex. Both theaters were still here in the 1960s but the Rex had become The Fox. The Fox Theater is where Rudi’s Jewelry Store is now. Next time you are downtown, look at Rudi’s storefront and see if you can’t see the ticket booth of the Fox Theater.

There were several auction houses on Main Street. Many evenings in the summer, auctions would be moved onto the street and sidewalks. Most evenings the stores would remain open until 10 during the summer. Until GE arrived in the early 50s, there was very little industry in town. People made a living from tourism, much like today.

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Carey O’Cain, Hendersonville native, Hendersonville High School and Clemson graduate and Laurel Park mayor, has an insatiable thirst for southern Appalachian history. WTZQ began airing Carey’s “Broadly Speaking” feature — about the people, places and history of the French Broad River Valley — in March 2025. New episodes air at 8:15 a.m. Thursdays then at 12:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.