Built circa 1847 by Joseph B. Pyatt, the Blake House Inn, with its 22" thick native stone walls laid in lime and clay mortar and its original 14' high ornamental plaster ceilings, is one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture with Gothic influence in the Asheville area. The house originally served as the summer home of Dr. Frederick Blake, a wealthy rice plantation owner from Charleston, South Carolina. However, during the closing days of the Civil War, the house also served as a Confederate Field Hospital. The Confederate soldiers were cared for in the bedrooms upstairs. Some of the nurses took pity on the injured Union soldiers and cared for them in the crawlspace under the Inn.