The people who bought lots and built in the Montford area in its building prime were for the most part middle class individuals who carried out the day-to-day activities of the city—businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and a few architects.

Early city directories indicate a mixed population of working class citizens and highly paid professionals, both whites and blacks.

The homes in the neighborhood represent an amalgam of architectural styles including Victorian, Queen Anne, Arts and Crafts, Neoclassical, and Colonial Revival.

While some of these architectural features do abound in Montford, the term does not do full justice to the neighborhood's complex overall character, which is that of a late and post-Victorian suburb.

The architects and builders of Montford were strongly influenced by a variety of progressive styles and design ideas that were emerging nationally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Artistic influences in the town, including details from national architectural trendsetters like Bruce Price, Bernard Maybeck, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others exist in Montford houses, but were relatively unknown in other parts of the state.

The Rankin House at 192 Elizabeth Street is Montford's oldest home, a Greek Revival style residence built around 1846 with Italianate embellishments.

When Montford's development began full force in 1889, the dominant building fashion around the country was what is generally called the Queen Anne style.

This was a building mode with many variations, but one generally characterized by irregular, complex massing and rooflines, corner turrets or towers, a mixture of surface textures, and a lavish use of ornamental devices.

The arrival of English architect Richard Sharp Smith to Asheville in the late nineteenth century profoundly affected the city's subsequent architectural development.

His favorite motifs were gambrel roofs, hipped gables, pebbledash or stucco walls, heavy porch brackets and simple Colonial Revival details.