A Visit With Mazie Jones Last Remaining Member of Historic Boone Family Reflects on Town’s Past By Jeff Eason Most art galleries are named for a person. Most of the time that person is someone who donated a large sum of money so the art gallery could be built and stocked with paintings and sculpture. Visitors to the Mazie Jones Art Gallery in downtown Boone might assume that Mazie Jones was some wealthy philanthropist who just happened to like art. The Jones House as it looks today. Photo by Jeff Eason Last Wednesday, Mazie Jones Levenson visited the historic Boone home where she was born. Photo by Jeff Eason Mattie Blackburn Jones. Photo courtesy Mazie Jones Mazie Jones during her teaching days in the 1960s. Photo courtesy Mazie Jones Mazie’s brother, John Walter “Jay” Jones Jr., during his boxing days in the U.S. Marines. Photo courtesy Mazie Jones What those visitors don’t realize is that they are standing in the room where Mazie Jones first entered this world. “I was born in Boone in 1914,” said Mazie Jean Jones Levenson during an interview with The Mountain Times at the Jones House Community Center last week. “My father was a doctor, Dr. John Walter Jones, and my mother was Mattie Blackburn Jones.” Mazie was born at home, not an unusual practice at the time, especially if you’re father was one of the few physicians in town. “I was born in this house, at least that’s what my mother said,” said Jones with a laugh. Now 91 years old and living in Arbor Acres, a retirement community in Winston-Salem, Jones stated that she visits Boone and the famous house where she spent the first two decades of her life at least once a year. The visits afford her an opportunity to reflect on how downtown Boone has changed and how it has remained the same. “My grandparents were Martha and Marley Blackburn who owned a hotel and grocery store across the street from the old courthouse,” said Jones. “It was still there in my early childhood. My Jones grandparents were from Alleghany County and I was named for my father’s mother. “Downtown is not so much different. Many of the buildings were here in my childhood. The Boone Drugstore and many of the others are the same. We had the Critcher Hotel here. But it was demolished to make way for Belk’s. And then Belk’s is where the Antique Mall is now.” One of the most imposing buildings in downtown Boone during Mazie’s youth was the Daniel Boone Hotel, an enormous wood-frame building that sat on King Street, just across Grand Boulevard from the Jones residence. “My father and some people in the 20s contributed to have that hotel here,” said Jones. “That’s how they built it—through subscriptions. It was a very popular place for people to come up from the hot regions. They had great food over there. The town people and the college people ate over there a lot.” One of the oldest running businesses in downtown Boone is the Appalachian Theater, across King Street from the Jones House. Jones recalled that before it was built, folks in Boone went to the courthouse to see movies. “We would all go once a week to the movies in the old courthouse. We saw animated features and Al Jolsen movies there.” Mazie’s father died in 1925 when she was ten years old. To make ends meet, her mother Mattie took in boarders and worked at Belk’s Department Store on King Street. Like many of the High Country’s ambitious young women of Jones’ generation, Mazie attended Appalachian Teachers College in Boone (it officially became Appalachian State University in 1967). After graduation, she left Boone and the only house she had ever lived in to start her teaching career. “I got a teaching job in a little community called Whitlett in Guilford County,” said Jones. “I taught fourth and fifth grade. They were all farm kids and they were taller than I was. I’ll always remember that.” Not long after Mazie left Boone, her younger brother, John Walter “Jay” Jones Jr., joined the military. “He probably got in the Marines when he has 19 years old. He was in the Marines when Japan was fighting China. So he was sent over to China. He came back to this country and died in California so we never got to see him after he got in the Marines. I think he was 23 when he died. He was a rough kid but a nice kid. But he was into boxing in China and he boxed with the Germans and the Russians and everything.” The Jones House Today The Jones House was built in 1908 by Mazie’s father and is now on the National Historic Register. Sold to the Town of Boone in the early 1980s, it is now home to the Watauga County Arts Council, the Mazie Jones Gallery and the Open Door Gallery. The front yard of the house is where the arts council holds its weekly outdoor concerts during the summer. The featured musicians play on the front porch and hundreds of music lovers bring their picnic blankets and lawn chairs to the front lawn each Friday afternoon from June through September. Mazie inherited the house and adjoining land when her mother died in October, 1978, at the age of 95. “I tried to hold onto the property until I thought that it had some possibilities,” said Mazie. “The deed to the house said that we wanted it to remain as a green space. Because when I sold it I didn’t have control on whether they would demolish the house or not. So it was after we got help from preservationists that the town said, ‘Yes, we will help because we have conservation now. It could add something positive to our town.’” Jones credits Boone Town planner, Dr. Douglas Carroll, with helping her with all of the details of preserving the Jones House. “He said, ‘Mazie, you’ve got to think about how to preserve it.’ He gave me a real talking to. So I’m indebted to Dr. Carroll for giving me a vision. He said, ‘It’s a pivotal part of the city. It could add to the city. But you don’t want it to become a parking lot.’” In 1982 the Town of Boone began the process of buying the property from Mazie Jones “for the purpose of providing a community and cultural center for the citizens of Boone.” Mazie and her husband Walter had no children of their own to bequeath it to, and today Mazie counts as her closest living relative “a distant cousin” she knows in Greensboro. “In 1983 the Town of Boone took an option on it, and they settled on it in 1984,” said Jones. “Then after conferences with historic preservation people in Raleigh, they decided it would qualify for historic preservation.” After a massive renovation project that included the installation of the house’s first modern heating and air conditioning system, the Jones House was ready for its second life as a public building in the Town of Boone. “The Jones House was then officially opened to the public in 1988,” said Jones. “There was a reception and a big affair. Hundreds of people came to that.” They are still coming. Thousands of people visit the Jones House Community Center each year for Appalachian music presentations, concerts on the lawn, art receptions and other events. In two years the historic building will celebrate the centennial of its original construction. Thanks to one woman’s foresight and generosity, the Jones House has become the centerpiece for Boone’s cultural activity.