Cashiers Village Heritage Award

Issue: October 2024

Each year, the Cashiers Historical Society awards a local business or organization the Village Heritage Award.

The award recognizes the thoughtful preservation or adaptive reuse of a commercial building in Cashiers’ business district.

Preservation is a key tenet of CHS’s mission. In 1996, a group of dedicated citizens came together to restore and preserve the Zachary-Tolbert House, a rare example of Greek-Revival architecture in Western North Carolina. It has since become a historic house museum and an iconic landmark in Cashiers. Preserving the Zachary-Tolbert House started the Cashiers Historical Society, an organization dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the Cashiers Valley.

The Village Heritage Award celebrates a local business that preserves a historic structure or incorporates design elements that reflect the village’s history and character. CHS awarded Alexander Gardens the first Village Heritage Award in 2003. The cluster buildings on 64 exemplified the historic Cashiers aesthetic.

This year’s winner, the Hawkins-Menninger House, which is currently The Orchard restaurant, is a prime example of thoughtful re-use of a historic structure. In the early 20th century, it was home to the Hawkins family, though additions, including the dining room and commercial kitchen, surround the original structure. Reverend William Thomas Hawkins, known as the “Shepherd of the Hills,” was a circuit-riding Methodist minister who preached to people in the Cashiers area. One afternoon in 1930, Hawkins left home to search for one of his missing cows. The 72-year-old never returned home, and an extensive search party failed to find him. Eighteen years later, his remains were located near Fowler Creek, though the circumstances of his death were never determined.

In the 1940s, Edwin Arnold Menninger bought the property. Menninger’s brother, Karl, was a renowned psychiatrist. Unlike his brother, Menninger wasn’t interested in medicine and instead became a journalist. He worked at the Herald

Tribune in New York before buying a newspaper in Florida. From the 1940s to the 1980s, Menninger and his family spent their summers in Cashiers.

Today, the Hawkins-Menninger House is now The Orchard Restaurant. Only the front of the original house remains visible: a one-story, vernacular building with a side-gabled roof, ivy-covered stone chimney, and an inviting front porch. The wood-shingle siding, gable roof, narrow-board oak flooring, and bead-board ceiling are all elements of the original home.

CHS is thrilled to award the Hawkins-Menninger House the Village Heritage Award! We are grateful to the Orchard for stewarding this property into the 21st century by adaptively re-using it as a restaurant, now a beloved
Cashiers institution.