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Thomas Wolfe's House Thomas Wolfe, North Carolina's most acclaimed writer, was born in 1900 in Asheville. For Many years his mother, Julia, operated a boardinghouse called Old Kentucky Home at 48 Spruce Street, where the family lived. The boardinghouse became the setting for Wolfe's first and most famous novel, Look Homeward, Angel, published in 1929. The autobiographical novel infuriated many people in Asheville. Wolfe published only one more novel, a sequel, Of Time and the River, before his death from tuberculosis of the brain in 1938, but his editor, Maxwell Perkins, later gleaned two more books from his voluminous writings. Wolfe, who was scorned by Asheville for many years, is now acclaimed in his hometown, where many things are named for him. The boardinghouse on Spruce Street, a state historic site, burned in the summer of 1998 and is being rebuilt. (Thomas Wolfe is said to have hated the place.) Each year on Wolfe's birthday, October 3, a celebration had been held at the boardinghouse, featuring readings of his works and other events.
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