Jones House Cultural Center

The Jones House is the Town of Boone's cultural and community center, sitting on a lawn in the middle of downtown on West King Street. It's a historic home, and these days it's where a good bit of the music in Boone happens.

Every Thursday from 7 to 10 PM, local and visiting musicians circle up for an old-time acoustic jam. On warm evenings they gather on the lawn and porch. On cooler evenings things move indoors to the parlor and galleries. Bring a banjo, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, or whatever old-time acoustic instrument you play, and come whatever your skill level. If you'd rather sit and listen, you're welcome to. Jams don't run on holidays and may be cancelled for bad weather.

From June through August, free concerts run weekly on the lawn, rain or shine, with local and regional acts playing bluegrass, old-time, jazz, folk, and songwriter sets. Every August, Doc Watson Day honors the late local legend with a free outdoor show and a ticketed concert at the Appalachian Theatre. The rest of the year brings music lessons, indoor concerts, art in the Mazie Jones Gallery, and most of the town's parades and festivals.

It all comes down to the same thing: a place to make music together, and a place to come hear it.

History

The house was built in 1908 by Dr. John Walter Jones, one of the first physicians in the area, who kept his first office in it. His wife Mattie was the daughter of Manly Blackburn, a Boone merchant. Sited on a big open lot in what became the middle of the commercial district, it is one of the few buildings left in downtown Boone from before the First World War.Their daughter Mazie inherited the home, and in 1983 it passed to the Town of Boone with the understanding that it be used only as a cultural and community center. It has been used that way ever since.

The rotating art gallery downstairs carries her name, and two permanent galleries upstairs hold exhibits on the history of Boone and of the house itself. The Jones House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.