Biltmore Church history

When George Vanderbilt bought the land for his mountain home in the late 1880’s he moved the entire community, including Shiloh Church and the church cemetery to its current location.

George Vanderbilt, grandson of famed shipping entrepreneur and industrialist Cornelius “the Commodore” Vanderbilt, first visited Asheville, North Carolina, in 1888.

Biltmore House officially opened to family and friends on Christmas Eve, 1895.

That all changed on April 28, 1898, when he proposed to Edith Stuyvesant Dresser.

In 1899 Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church was established in a small log building on Rock Hill Road.

The happy couple added to their family on August 22, 1900, with the birth of their daughter Cornelia.

John Nicholas Brown (son of Edith Vanderbilt’s sister Natalie Dresser Brown) having tea with his cousin Cornelia Vanderbilt, circa 1906

When Cornelia was 13, tragedy struck when her father George unexpectedly died following an emergency appendectomy in Washington, D.C. in March 1914.

Edith Vanderbilt and daughter Cornelia with their horses and beloved St Bernard dog near Library Terrace, circa 1916

In 1923, the property on which the church is located was deeded to the trustees of Brooklyn Mission and First Baptist Holiness Church by Major Henry and his wife, Dixie.

A decade later, wedding bells rang as Cornelia married the Honorable John Francis Amherst Cecil at All Souls Church in Biltmore Village on April 27, 1924.

In 1925, in order to accommodate the Church’s increasing membership, Rock Hill Baptist was relocated in the Shiloh community on Caribou Road, known then as Possum Ridge.

In 1927, a new, six-room elementary school was erected on a 5-acre site on Shiloh Road next to Shiloh Church.

Sons of Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and John Francis Amherst Cecil (and grandsons of George Vanderbilt), William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil and George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, circa 1930

The 1950 addition is still in use, but a decade after the school closed the city demolished the original Rosenwald building and replaced it with a structure that is now part of the Linwood Crump Shiloh Recreation Complex.

Shiloh graduated its last class in 1969.

In 2004, the Shiloh Community Association partnered with Neighborhood Housing Service (NHS) to address concerns about the quality of life in the community.

After several decades of use, the building burned and was later demolished but the land continued to be owned by the League until 2005, when the sole surviving trustee of the League, Lawrence Wilson, donated the land to the Shiloh Community Association for the development of a community garden.

In July 2006, by declaration of the Asheville City Council, the previously named Shiloh Recreation Center was renamed the Linwood Crump Shiloh Recreation Complex to honor Mr.