1924 Stoddart-Designed Hotel Tied to the 1936 Clevenger Case
1 Battle Square, Asheville, NC 28801
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The exterior is publicly visible from Battle Square in downtown Asheville. The interior is closed to the public as the building now operates as senior apartments.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved downtown sidewalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1924 · Downtown Asheville Historic District · Edwin W. Grove Property · 1936 Helen Clevenger Murder Site · William Lee Stoddart Design
The first Battery Park Hotel opened in 1886, built by Frank Coxe and designed by Philadelphia architect Edward Hazlehurst in the Queen Anne style. It sat atop a hill known as Battery Park, the site of a Confederate battery during the Civil War. In 1921, Edwin W. Grove, the patent-medicine entrepreneur behind the Grove Park Inn, purchased the property. Grove had the hill levelled and the original wooden hotel demolished to make way for downtown development.
The current 14-story Battery Park Hotel opened in 1924, designed by New York architect William Lee Stoddart. The building features a brick and terra-cotta exterior in the Renaissance Revival style and rises to roughly 175 feet, making it one of Asheville's tallest buildings of the period. The hotel hosted F. Scott Fitzgerald among many other notable guests during its first decades.
On July 16, 1936, 19-year-old New York University student Helen Clevenger was found shot to death in room 224. She had been visiting Asheville with her uncle William, a professor at North Carolina State College. The case drew national press attention. After a 10-day investigation, Asheville police arrested Martin Moore, a 22-year-old African-American hotel night janitor. Moore signed a confession that he later said had been beaten out of him by detectives. He was tried, convicted, and executed in North Carolina's gas chamber on December 11, 1936. Historians and the Asheville Museum of History have since described the case as a likely miscarriage of justice driven by Jim Crow-era policing.
The hotel closed in 1972 and was converted into subsidized senior apartments, which still occupy the building today as Battery Park Apartments. The exterior is largely intact and contributes to Asheville's downtown National Register Historic District.
Sources
Local lore at the Battery Park has clustered around the room where Helen Clevenger was killed. According to Asheville paranormal guides and former staff accounts, a red interior glow has been observed in the window of the former hotel room near the July anniversary of her death. The room reportedly remains unleased by the building's current management.
The building's service elevator is the subject of a second persistent account. Residents have described the car running between floors during the night without a passenger, prompting repeated maintenance calls. Older staff identified the elevator as the one operated by Martin Moore during his tenure as the hotel's night janitor in 1936.
Walking-tour operators in downtown Asheville also describe shadowed figures reported in the building's lobby and reports of voices in the upper stories, though these accounts are less specifically attributed than the room and elevator phenomena. Researchers at the Asheville Museum of History have framed the persistent interest in the building primarily through the lens of the documented Clevenger case and the contested conviction of Martin Moore, rather than as a confirmed paranormal site.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the 14-story 1924 hotel from the public sidewalk along Battle Square in downtown Asheville. The building is now Battery Park Apartments, a private senior housing complex, and the interior is not open to visitors.
Several operators include the Battery Park Hotel in evening walking tours of downtown Asheville, where guides discuss the 1936 Helen Clevenger murder and the controversial conviction of Martin Moore.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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