This entry is part of Park Views, an Asheville Parks & Recreation series that explores the history of the city’s public parks and community centers – and the mountain spirit that helped make them the unique spaces they are today. Read more from the series and follow APR on Facebook and Instagram for additional photos, upcoming events, and opportunities.
Nestled in the heart of a close-knit Asheville neighborhood, Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center stands as a testament to the enduring spirit of a community that has weathered significant change. Rooted in the historic Livingston Street School, the center continues to evolve, reflecting the dynamic history of Southside and its residents’ resilience and community spirit.
Livingston Street School
During government-mandated segregation, when racial barriers were firmly entrenched, Southside became a vital center of Black life in Asheville. Denied access to many establishments and services in the wider city, the Black community built its own vibrant world within Southside. Businesses thrived, churches provided spiritual sustenance, and a powerful sense of community flourished. This self-reliance, born of necessity, became a defining characteristic of Southside. It fostered a strong sense of identity and a determination to overcome adversity.
Education was a cornerstone of the neighborhood’s early identity. Livingston Street School began holding classes in a church on its namesake thoroughfare in 1905 until a free-standing building opened on the corner of Livingston and Gaston in 1920, joining other schools for the city’s Black families including Catholic Hill and Buffalo Street. Students dressed sharply and teachers focused on reading, geography, elocution, writing, and mathematics. Noting the community’s pride, The Asheville Citizen reported in 1945 that Livingston was eighth largest in terms of enrollment among city schools, but raised the most during a polio fund drive.
In 1953, a new facility replaced the original frame building, marking progress while retaining the school’s vital role. Following integration of local school systems, Livingston Street School was closed in 1970 even though it was a newer facility than the elementary schools to which former students were sent.
The building became offices for Community Action Opportunities while the neighborhood surrounding it experienced a dramatic transition when the East Riverside Redevelopment urban renewal project demolished houses considered substandard, regraded lots, widened and extended streets and sidewalks, and added public parks with the stated goal to transform the neighborhood into a more suburban and residential area. According to neighborhood leader Dr. Wesley Grant Sr., Southside lost more than 1,100 homes, six beauty parlors, five barber shops, five filling stations, fourteen grocery stores, three laundromats, eight apartment houses, seven churches, three shoe shops, two cabinet shops, two auto body shops, one hotel, five funeral homes, one hospital, and three doctor’s offices.
W.C. Reid Center
As the nation celebrated its bicentennial and local government paid off its final Depression-era debt in 1976, a number of projects heralded a new era for Asheville including a new Pack Memorial Library, WNC Farmers Market, Erwin High School, downtown parking garage, water and sewer lines, two fire stations, highway links, extension of the runway at Asheville Airport, and a community center in Montford, among other private and public community investments.
The former Livingston Street School also underwent a significant renovation in 1976, becoming Livingston Street Community Center. This renovation, partially funded by the Model Cities program, brought an air-conditioned gymnasium, auditorium, and game rooms, alongside the school’s cafeteria to be used as a congregate dining area for older adults. The building also housed Asheville Parks & Recreation (APR) programs and activities, a daycare program, employment counseling, and housing assistance, rent collection, and social services offices for Asheville Housing Authority.
In 1979, City Council unanimously approved renaming the campus to W.C. Reid Memorial Recreation Center, honoring its beloved director who passed away earlier that year. New leadership honored his vision for the center to remain a focal point for the community. Whenever the center was open, visitors were welcomed by a flurry of activities including amateur boxing, drill teams, tutoring, Brownie troops, talent shows, and clubs covering topics from cooking to weightlifting to musical education to gardening – and much more.
The center continued its legacy as a sanctuary for unity in 1997 when its auditorium served as a space for an alternative community event for a maximum capacity crowd during a Ku Klux Klan march in downtown Asheville. In 1998, 1.3 acres of the property was sold to former tenant Community Action Opportunities with the proceeds earmarked for a new park in the nearby WECAN neighborhood.
As W.C. Reid Center entered the new millennium, APR added new murals to the exterior walls and mounted the Raise the Roof campaign to replace the building’s roof. City leaders determined it would be more practical and a greater benefit to the neighborhood to build a new community center down the street rather than continue to patch the 50-year-old building.
Livingston Street Park
The East Riverside Redevelopment project removed the southern portion of Southside Avenue, the neighborhood’s namesake. Death Alley and Louie Street were entirely eliminated, Livingston and Depot streets regraded, and steep hills removed to create a new park. Well-known businesses that were once located on the property include James-Key Hotel and Allen-Birchette Funeral Home.
Developing a park on this parcel along the Nasty Branch waterway was named a priority project by Model Cities leaders, though it took some time to become reality as plans for neighborhood redevelopment changed and federal funding programs changed with administrations. A new Asheville Fire Department Station No. 2 was built on the edge of the park property in 1976 to replace a substation on Bartlett Street and Choctaw Park was developed several blocks away.
A lighted ballfield for baseball, softball, and football was dedicated at the park in 1977, joined a few months later by tennis courts, swings, play areas, and restrooms. Initially called East Riverside Park, the name soon changed to Livingston Street Park. Over the next thirty years, the park remained a hotbed of athletic activity, but saw minimal investment as Asheville’s park system grew rapidly without a substantial increase to its budget.
APR staff developed a renovation plan for the center in 2007 that included more than a year of extensive community input and focus group sessions. The final plan was estimated to cost around $8.4 million, deemed too costly as the nation experienced an economic downtown. After exploring options to renovate only a portion of the existing building or demolish the existing facility and construct a new center on the same site that were estimated to cost $4.7 million each, APR was tasked with finding a solution using $2 million of available funding.
At the same time, City Council began investigating development of municipally-owned property for workforce housing starting with the East Riverside Redevelopment area. At a meeting, Mayor Terry Bellamy said that many of these parcels were not the “highest and best use for our land,” ticking off a list that also included the transit center, bus depot on Coxe Avenue, and the APR maintenance facility next to Aston Park. Combined with W.C. Reid Center’s challenges, the APR Recreation Board, Reid Center Advisory Board, and City Council decided the best option was to build a new community center on the site of Livingston Street Park.
Grant Southside Center
Following site selection, the new center was designed to be constructed in phases. The first phase opened in 2011 and was designated as the Cultural Phase and included a theater auditorium, three classrooms, office space, parking, storage, and flexible outdoor space. A naming contest was held prior to the ribbon cutting with Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center emerging as the winner by combining the neighborhood’s desire to honor a community leader and include Southside in the name.
When it opened, it was only the second community center ever built by APR, rather than repurposing a building originally designed for other uses. Tempie Avery Montford Community Center is the other purpose built facility and opened in 1974. It was also the first facility constructed by the City of Asheville to be LEED-certified for features including a green roof with active vegetation, geo-thermal heating and cooling, stormwater runoff management, and natural interior lighting. During construction, more than 75% of all construction waste was diverted from the landfill and recycled.
Asheville Housing Authority took ownership of W.C. Reid Center, renovating and renaming it the Arthur R. Edington Education and Career Center in honor of Livingston Street School’s former principal. With the Edington Center predominantly focused on career services for public housing residents, neighborhood voices prioritized an indoor gymnasium, flexible meeting space, and outdoor areas emphasizing wellness, active living, and exercise in the Grant Southside Center’s next phase, the Recreation Phase.
Dr. Wesley Grant Sr.
Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. founded Worldwide Missionary Baptist Tabernacle Church in 1959 and served for nearly 50 years until his death in 2007. Dr. Grant was a prominent leader in Asheville’s African American community during the time of the civil rights movement and the period of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s.
Born in South Carolina in 1915, Dr. Grant moved to Asheville in the 1930s and began his ministry preaching in Pritchard Park before serving as pastor at New Bethel Missionary Baptist and Pleasant Hill Baptist. He lived in Asheville for 75 years and worked to achieve strides such as the election of Ruben Daley as the first Black member of Asheville City Council in 1969. In addition to his tremendous local impact, Dr. Grant was also well-known through Count on Me, originating on Billy Graham’s radio network in 1962 and transitioning to WLOS from 1968 to 1984.
During tensions following school desegregation, Dr. Grant sat on the steps of Asheville High School every morning and afternoon to provide a calming influence. He punctuated many of his sermons with a catchphrase, “I like that.”
Grant Southside Center Grows
Planning for the Recreation Phase began almost immediately after Grant Southside Center opened, but moved slowly until voters approved a general obligation (GO) bond referendum for parks and recreation improvements throughout the city in 2016. Between bonds, grants, and the City of Asheville’s general fund, a number of exciting community investments were planned for Southside including Nasty Branch Greenway, Livingston Street sidewalk enhancements and traffic calming, updates to Walton Street Park, and the anticipated expansion of the community center.
Following multiple consecutive years of significant repairs, a 2016 professional assessment of the nearby pool in Walton Street Park found its infrastructure failing with major leaks and deficient underground pipes. The investigation concluded repairs and renovations will no longer extend the useful life of the facility. Located less than a quarter-mile walk away (but on a sometimes-busy road), the pool opened in 1947 as the only swimming pool for the city’s Black residents.
Recognizing the importance of services like swim lessons for kids and water aerobics for older adults, City Council unanimously approved building a new pool at Grant Southside Center. To preserve the original pool’s legacy as a symbol of African American culture, Walton Street Park was designated as a local historic landmark.
Completed in 2023, Grant Southside Center’s Recreation Phase expansion was an $8.3 million investment with new indoor features including a multi-purpose gym and additional community meeting rooms. Outdoor enhancements included new sidewalks, solar panels, basketball court, rain garden, additional lighting, picnic tables, and neighborhood swimming pool with toddler play zone, lounge deck, picnic area, restrooms, and changing rooms to ensure a truly multi-generational space to be enjoyed by all.
Do you have photos or stories to share about Grant Southside Center? Please send them to cbubenik@ashevillenc.gov so APR can be inspired by the past as we plan our future.
Photo and Image Credits
- Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center is located at the intersection of Depot and Livingston streets.
- Livingston Street School students take a picture in front of the original building. When the new facility opened, it replaced the last frame school building used by Asheville City Schools.
- Sixth grade students in Mrs. Gladys C. Kennedy’s class learning about China in the 1960s shortly before Livingston Street School closed. Courtesy of Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, University of North Carolina Asheville Special Collections.
- The program from the grand opening of Livingston Street Center includes a list of programs offered.
- W.C. Reid Center served as an APR Afterschool site and hosted summer camps.
- The simultaneous forces of urban renewal and integration disrupted almost all of the physical and institutional foundations of Black life in Asheville. Urban renewal radically transformed the landscape of Southside by adding apartments and parks and regrading and extending streets, removing the southern portion of Southside Avenue, and eliminating Herrman, Beech, Black, Louie, Tiernan, and Nelson streets.
- Livingston Street Park was a hotbed of athletic activity throughout warmer months with baseball, softball, kickball, flag football, basketball, and tennis.
- City leaders broke ground for Grant Southside Center on April 9, 2010.
- Ballots supporting naming the center after Dr. Wesley Grant Sr.
- Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. with the Worldwide Missionary Baptist Tabernacle Church choir. Courtesy of Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, University of North Carolina Asheville Special Collections.
- Community members participate in a hand-on planning activity during a community engagement session regarding Walton Street Park and Grant Southside Center.
- Community members and city leaders celebrate the Recreation Phase expansion of Grant Southside Center with a ribbon cutting ceremony.