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stories. “Business convention traffic, traveling salesmen,
overnight members of barnstorming baseball teams,
vaudeville performers, circus performers—it gave Thomas
Wolfe a colorful cast of characters to write about,” he says.
A tour of the dimly lit yet enlightening memorial reveals
much about the source of the writer’s material. Built in
1883 as a seven-room abode with no electricity and no
plumbing, the edifice had expanded to an 18-room
boardinghouse with running water by the time Thomas’s
mother bought it in 1906. Julia quickly realized that to
operate the establishment properly, she would have to live
there, moving out of the home two blocks away where her
husband, a stonecutter, lived with their children. She
brought with her only Thomas, the youngest of eight
offspring. The oldest, Leslie, had died as an infant.
Although their relationship was somewhat discordant,
W.O. and Julia never divorced, and she sought to earnrespect by running her own business. “It’s evident she was
willing to give up her own comfort to make money,” says
Tom, noting that Julia did not think people died frequently
enough to make carving headstones a solid business. Yet
W.O. was moderately successful with the family’s
monument shop, which used carved angels on the porch
that later appear in Thomas’s writing.
Ten years into her ownership, Julia’s hard work and
success allowed her to add 11 rooms. She paid little
attention to quality or craftsmanship but increased the
capacity of Old Kentucky Home to 40 patrons. The
residence, described in Look Homeward, Angel as painted
“dirty yellow,” has strange angular halls upstairs and
uneven wood floors that creak with age. Although well
maintained by the state of North Carolina since 1974, it is
old and was cheaply constructed. “It has probably outlived
its normal lifetime,” says Tom.Thomas, the youngest child, lived at his
mother Julia’s boardinghouse, Old Kentucky
Home, while the rest of the family mostly
stayed with his father at another home two
blocks away. The oldest child, Leslie (below),
died of cholera as an infant. (Right) Thomas’s
father, W.O., spent his fi nal days in a brass bed
at the boardinghouse, where Julia could nurse
him. (Opposite) The kitchen at the Thomas
Wolfe Memorial was a hub of activity where
deliveries were accepted and meals prepared
for boarders each day.