By Norm Powers
Photos By Rimas Zailskas
Among the many attractions of downtown Asheville is its architectural heritage, a cornucopia of styles from neo-Gothic to international, with roots in the city’s rapid rise from rural market town with the coming of the railroad in 1880. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Asheville’s hilly center was ripe for development, and one of the first to see the potential was Edwin Wiley Grove, a Tennessee native and pharmaceutical millionaire whose doctors had recommended Asheville as a curative environment for his chronic bronchitis.
While his most well-known creation, the Grove Park Inn, has undergone extensive growth and change since it opened in 1913, downtown’s Grove Arcade atop Battery Hill has survived in all its original glory. It’s a stunning example of Asheville’s economic and architectural golden age, when visitors like F. Scott Fitzgerald spoke of it in the same breath as Palm Beach, and well-heeled tourists came to shop and be seen at the Arcade, strolling across Battle Square from Grove’s Battery Park Hotel.
The Arcade opened to the public in 1929 and remained downtown’s center of social and cultural life despite the ensuing Depression. "Ironically, much of downtown survived because of the Depression," says Ruth Summers, the executive director of the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation, the nonprofit organization responsible for maintaining and promoting the Arcade. "The city chose to pay off its debts, instead of seeking bankruptcy protection, and that took until the 1980s." While city administrators focused on debt service during those 60 years, little was left for new construction, much less demolition of old buildings.
Downtown became, in effect, a butterfly preserved in amber. The Arcade was in government hands from 1942, as a center for wartime postal operations and, later, for the National Climatic Data Center, which still maintains a weather station on the roof. In the late 1980s, a mayoral task force struck a deal with the federal government, which transferred ownership of the Arcade to the city for one dollar, and renovation plans were drawn up to restore the building to E. W. Grove’s original purpose.
The Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation, incorporated in 1991, still counts two former Asheville mayors on its board of directors. When the bricked-up street windows were opened, nearly all of the structure’s meticulous and elaborate design was found to have survived virtually intact, revealing an arcade in the grand European tradition with 269,000 square feet of retail and office space, one of the few remaining such arcades in the country.
Grove hired architect Charles Parker to create his "palace of commerce" where, Grove boasted, "a lady can park her car anywhere...and can let it remain just as long as she pleases, and do all of her trading in that one vicinity." Grove also planned a 14-story tower atop the building housing offices and a private men’s club, but his death in 1927 and the stock market’s implosion two years later intervened. Forty-two apartments now occupy the supporting base for the missing tower.
Parker’s eclectic design rests on a five-story Palladian exterior at ground level, which blossoms upward into a neo-Gothic fantasia, encrusted with terracotta decorative elements drawn from Gothic and Tudor traditions. Two winged lions reminiscent of the ancient Middle East guard the building’s north entrance, facing the old hotel, which was converted to apartments for the elderly in 1987. The north facade’s ramps leading up to the Arcade’s arched Romanesque entryway echo Biltmore’s chateau-inspired Rampe Douce (a gentle incline).
Remaining exuberantly free from stylistic restrictions, Parker added a Renaissance-style panel over the north entrance with depictions in low relief of the various trades involved in construction, including an architect brandishing a compass and scroll. Other figures around the exterior include familiar Gothic grotesques, although the one with a pig’s nose and a protruding tongue is said to be Grove’s revenge against a local merchant who passed him bad checks.
The interior is a bit more subdued—almost ecclesiastical. Pointed Gothic arches frame its four wide passageways, overseen by Tudor shields and escutcheons and flooded with light from the glass canopies overhead. Nearly all of it, from floor to roof, is original to the building. "Even the canopy glass is original," Ruth Summers pointed out during a tour on a day that bathed the Arcade’s interior in abundant fall sunshine. "The metal parts of the pendant lights on the columns are original, although the glass had to be re-blown. And almost all the wooden storefronts are original."
The hallways converge on a central elevator block in which elevators carry visitors and workers to the upper floors’ offices and apartments. A sublimely graceful addition to the interior is Parker’s use of spiral stairways in each arm of the Arcade, which swoop out and curl upward between the ground and first floors, although they are no longer in use. "The original treads aren’t up to modern codes, but it was decided to leave them intact," Ruth explains. "I get to use them once a year when we decorate the passageways for Christmas."
Grove and Parker’s vision of a social and retail nexus for downtown has survived along with the building’s many decorative grace notes. Of the 35 retail spaces in the building, 18 are occupied by tenants who have been there since the building’s post-renovation opening in 2002. Among them is Michael Forde of Four Corners Home, a home decor shop that moved through several spaces in the Arcade before settling into its present space near the Arcade’s east entrance, originally planned as a food court. "The ambience here is totally unlike a shopping mall," Michael says. "It encourages people to slow down and really enjoy shopping. And the management really encourages that ambience. Our business wouldn’t have grown so much without that support."
Just inside the north entrance is Mission At The Grove, another original tenant offering Mission-style furniture and accessories, where co-owner Craig Washabaugh also notes the effect the soaring arches and wide passageways have on shoppers. "A lot of them ask about the history of the building, and some of them are really surprised it was built as a shopping arcade. Some people think it must have originally been a train station."
The Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation maintains the Grove Arcade Arts & Heritage Gallery, offering an array of regional arts and crafts, including one of the largest selections of authentic Cherokee craft items outside of the tribe’s home base. Visitors to the Gallery can also learn about the area’s natural and cultural history through the Foundation’s interactive Mountain Stories Laser Map, with video segments tied to a three-dimensional map of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.
From the roof of the Arcade, one can peer over Parker’s fortress-like parapet to glimpse the Grove Park Inn nestled on a nearby hilltop. Farther in the distance, the blue haze of Mount Pisgah floats against the horizon. Looming overhead is the ornate facing of the Arcade’s main chimney, decorated with German-inspired double-heart designs. "Chimney swifts roost there, and I love to watch them flock at dusk," Ruth says. "It’s one of my favorite things about the building."
Located at One Page Avenue, the Grove Arcade is within easy walking distance of most downtown Asheville locations. Boutique shops are open Monday through Saturday 10am to 6pm. For more information about the Arcade, call 828-252-7799 or visit grovearcade.com.
