Mirrors

I had a small bucket list of institutional facilities to check out around Black Mountain on the way to Asheville, but they all turned out to be a bust. Black Mountain State Hospital - totally in use, Mountain Orphanage - in use by DOC, Fellowship Sanatorium - renovated. Ah well, at least the mountainous scenery was enjoyable.

Driving into town, I stumbled across an incredibly dreary and forlorn looking structure on the edge of a VA hospital campus. Finding a way inside, I was greeted with many small rooms with their own baths, and figured it was some kind of staff dormitory since there were no wards or communal areas other than the large porches on either end. It was pretty empty, but it's still neat to glimpse into that distant past; structures left abandoned since the 1970s are often left unmarred from unsightly renovations typically done in the 1980s and 1990s, and retain a sort of "truth" to them that I find appealing.