The men who built the Biltmore Estate had no place to gather until George Vanderbilt funded one for them. That building, completed in 1892 at 39 S. Market Street, became the YMI Cultural Center — and eventually the anchor of The Block, Asheville's Black business district, where Louis Armstrong played the juke joints in their heyday. Urban renewal took most of it. At Stephens-Lee, the main structure was demolished overnight by urban renewal with no public notice; alumni saved the gym wing, now a community center at 30 George Washington Carver Avenue with a heritage museum inside. The Burton Street neighborhood was carved through twice — by I-240 in the 1960s, then by I-26 connector planning — though local tradition holds E.W. Pearson founded the WNC Colored Agricultural Fair there before the highways came. Every September, the Goombay Festival returns to Market Street. What endured, endured because people fought to keep it.
