Zealandia, Tudor Revival mansion on Beaucatcher Mountain, Asheville, United States.
Zealandia is a three-story, T-plan Tudor Revival dwelling on Beaucatcher Mountain, built in 1908. It has a three-story porte cochère, projecting masses, steep gables, heavy wrought iron entrance gates and massive chimneys. Its walls are pebbledash on brick, modelled after Haddon Hall in England.
John Evans Brown constructed the original house in 1889 after returning from New Zealand, naming it Zealandia to commemorate his experience there. The building was later added to the National Register of Historic Places, securing its status as an important example of the region's architectural heritage.
In 1919 Sir Phillip S. Henry commissioned a mural in the old dining room, painted in the style of the 15th-century Italian painter Benozzo Gozzoli. It shows family members and friends in classical robes, posed with hounds, horses and flowers. Henry, an Australian-born diplomat, had doubled the castle with a granite addition and filled it with ancient and sacred relics.
The property is located on Vance Gap Road and is not open to the public at this time. While the building itself is closed to visitors, its distinctive exterior architecture can be viewed from the street to appreciate its design and character.
The 1908 Tudor Revival house on the site is not the original castle: John Evans Brown's 1889 Zealandia stood on Beaucatcher Mountain, and after 1950 parts of it were dismantled. Interstate 240 later cut into the mountain and destroyed the old museum building in 1976.
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