Maxwell Apartments
Contributing, ca. 1920.
Four-story Neo-Classical Revival apartment building, built in two wings, with a courtyard between. Added onto a two-story Classical Revival brick house at the rear. Front portion has a front gable roof with a flat roof behind. High hip roof on the older portion at the rear. Rear wing with a flat roof added at rear of original house portion. Brick veneer walls, with limestone details on the front section, including "Maxwell Apartments" carved over the front entry quoins, and garland swags. Front arched entry into the courtyard has been enclosed. Storefronts modernized. Windows are six-over-one, four-over-one, and one-over-one.
According to the current owner, this was the first apartment building in town. It was built by Sylvester Maxwell, a realtor who developed other sections of the neighborhood. The front portion of the building was added onto an already existing boarding house known as the Dickinson, which was built ca. 1920. The front was added ca. 1927. City directories by the 1930s indicate there were fourteen apartments, most of them occupied through the 1930s and 1940s. There were also three stores on the street level.
From 1937 to 1938, 629 Fifth Avenue West was occupied by Great A & P Company, grocers. In the early to mid-1940s, Jax Pax Store, grocers, occupied 629-631 Fifth Avenue West. 625 Fifth Avenue West remained vacant in the late 1930s to early 1940s, with Lawrence Inc. radios occupying this space from 1945 to 1949. L. B. Price Mercantile Company occupied 623 Fifth Avenue West beginning in 1941, with City Electric Company occupying this space from 1945 to 1946. 627 Fifth Avenue West apparently was the apartment entrance, known in the late 1940s as the Jackson Apartments. Hendersonville architect Erle Stillwell designed several apartment buildings in town, and this may have been one of his designs.
(Sanborn maps, city directories, owner)