In late
September…actually at the very end of September…we decided to drive over to
Asheville North Carolina to explore the city itself. We’d been to Biltmore, just outside
Asheville, but we’d never taken a good look at the center of town.
Laurie’s
sister, Bonnie, found a deal at The Loft Hotel in downtown Asheville North
Carolina and she booked the rooms for both couples. This is a Marriot property that, as the
website states, “Different. By design”.
The Loft Hotel is located at 51 Biltmore Avenue, a great spot for anyone
wanting to explore downtown Asheville.
As you can see from the photos, the building is hardly traditional, nor
is the lobby area. There is even a snack
bar/coffee bar available for guests.
As with
most hotels, room rates bounce all over the place depending on what’s happening
around town. When I wrote this I checked
and room rates went from a low of $141.00 a night on 2/26 and 2/27 up to a high
of $$379.00 for 3/4/23. Website: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/avlal-aloft-asheville-downtown/overview/.
This
double decker bus is a popular local landmark in Asheville. Located at 41 Biltmore Avenue, it is very
close to The Loft Hotel where we stayed.
Double D’s Coffee and Desserts definitely stands out on its corner…and
they had plenty of business too.
Double
D’s offers coffees, tea, iced drinks, smoothies, milkshakes, special drinks and
locally baked goods and desserts. You
can check out their website at https://www.doubledscoffee.com/#.
Let me
start with the fact that the Downtown Asheville Historic District is listed in
the National Register of Historic Places.
Asheville’s historic district is extensive…encompassing about 280
contributing structures. Commercial,
governmental and residential buildings in the district include several
architectural styles including Colonial Revival, Queen Anne and Art Deco.
By way of
example, the Fine Arts Theatre began life in 1947 as a mainstream, first-run
movie house. During the 1960’s it
declined significantly, becoming an “Adult XXX Theater”. VHS tapes killed off that business and by
1986, the theater was closed. The
theatre was reopened in its current reincarnation in 1996, by the same local
entrepreneur that opened the Blue Spiral 1, shown above on the right side of
the theater. The old theatre is now a
venue for first-run art and independent films as well as special events. The “colored entrance” box office window has
been restored and is not used for group ticketing. In the early days, nonwhite patrons could
only sit in the theater’s balcony. To
learn more about the theatre, go to http://www.fineartstheatre.com/.
The Blue
Spiral 1 fine art gallery opened on New Year’s Eve of 1990. The vision was to create a home for the many
artists who’d settled in the area in the latter portion of the 1900s. At the time that Blue Spiral 1 opened,
Asheville had been in a serious decline…partially due to the post-industry
depression that impacted so many southern cities. The founder of both the revamped theatre and the
fine art gallery replaced an adult theater, a closed radio supply shop and a
plumbing supply store with 2 anchors upon which Asheville could reinvent
itself.
Blue
Spiral 1 presents more than 25 shows/artist’s exhibits every year and its upper
level features works for sale by over 100 artists. To learn more about this art gallery, go to https://bluespiral1.com/.
While
Asheville is home to many artists and expert craftsmen, it is also the enemy of
anyone who doesn’t like to shop…myself and Bill included. The ladies were as happy as clams though, a
plus for us guys, given truth that ‘Happy Wives mean Happy Lives’ for the men
in their orbit.
I’ve
included this little store packed with goodies as an example of the plethora of
stores and shops available for the addicted shoppers out there. Modern Home Goods and Accessories promotes
itself as a place to find carefully curated gifts and goods/accessories for a
“Peaceful Home”. Learn more at https://www.handlmoderngoods.com/.
This is
the Kress Building in downtown Asheville.
Samuel Henry Kress (1863 – 1955) opened his first store in 1887. His company grew quickly and his chain of
retail stores, known as the S.H. Kress Company, was a type of ‘dollar store’
that, in the early 1900s were also called “Five and Dime” stores. FYI, Kress stores and Kmart stores are not
related in any way. Kress built his
stores in smaller cities which didn’t have big retail outlets. The fact that Kress stores provided customers
with variety and quality at the lowest possible price made for a winning
combination. Kress expanded his chain
nationwide with over 200 stores in 29 states.
In the end, the advent of shopping malls brought about the end of
downtown stores, with the last Kress store being closed when their new owner,
McCrory Stores, another five and dime retailer went out of business in 2001.
Enough
background… What made the Kress stores stand out was their eye-catching
architecture. Samuel Kress had his own
in-house architectural division. E.J.T.
Hoffman designed Asheville’s neoclassical Kress Building in 1927. The glazed terra cotta on the front façade
combined with the orange and blue rosettes around the window bays…plus the
curved Kress emblem at the parapet all combined to make this structure really
stand out.
Today,
the Kress Emporium Gift Shop occupies this handsome building along with
condominiums in the upper levels. The
main floor is packed with individual booths or small stores full of objects of
every kind. Even I found it interesting
as there was so much to look at and it wasn’t all “the usual” stuff found in
gift shops. To learn more, just go to https://www.thekressemporium.com/.
I took
this photo of the old S&W Cafeteria in the Downtown Asheville Historic
District. This 3-story brick building is
a stunning example of the Art Deco style.
The polychrome ornamentation and exotic motifs really make it stand
out! After undergoing renovation for
about 2 years, the S and W Market, a food hall, taproom and event center opened
here in 2021.
The
revamped cafeteria building features the Highland Brewing Company’s downtown
taproom and it showcases Asheville’s local independent restaurants. With 10,000 square feet, 5 food stalls and
the taproom, plus 170 seats inside plus an outdoor patio, it looks like a great
gathering place. To learn more, go to https://swmarketavl.com/.
How many
of us remember Woolworth Stores? The
last Woolworth stores were closed in July of 1997. However, the old Woolworth building in
downtown Asheville North Carolina is alive and well. Now called “Woolworth Walk”, it was built in
1938 and the store was closed in 1989. (That first photo was 'borrowed' from the Internet)
In 2001
the building was restored to showcase a piece of the past…and it has received
awards for the historic accuracy of the restoration. The Woolworth Walk includes a unique art
gallery/shops and a fully operational old time soda fountain built to resemble
the original Woolworth Luncheonette. The
luncheonette serves many of the items from the original menu including egg
creams, club sandwiches and old fashioned ice cream sodas. The building has been restored to feature the
original colors and floors and today if supports the work of more than 170
local artisans. The 20,000 square foot
space features 2 floors full of their works.
To learn
more, just go to https://www.woolworthwalk.com/.
The Minor
Basilica of St. Lawrence the Deacon and Martyr is a major and very impressive
structure despite it ‘just’ being a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic
Church. This ornate church was designed
and built by a Spanish architect in the Spanish Renaissance style, along with
an American architect and the Roman Catholic community of Asheville. It was completed in 1909.
Pope John
Paul II elevated the status of this parish church to minor basilica in
1993. The church’s dome was inspired by
the Basilica do los Desampardos of Valencia Spain. With a span of 58 feet by 82 feet, it is
reputed to be the largest freestanding elliptical dome in North America.
Located
at 97 Haywood Street, the basilica is open for visits on a daily visits on
weekdays from 7:30 AM until 5 PM. If you
visit the basilica’s website, you can take an on-line self-guided tour of this
impressive and beautiful church. Go to https://www.romanticasheville.com/basilica.htm.
This very
large structure is known as the Grove Arcade, the Arcade Building or the
Asheville Federal Building. It was
completed in 1929 in the Tudor Revival and Late Gothic Revival style…basically
consisting of 2 stacked blocks. It was
designed to serve as a base for a skyscraper that was never built. The Grove Arcade occupies a full city block,
269,000 square feet, and it housed one of America’s first indoor shopping
malls. It was home for candy and cigar
stores, a haberdashery, a public stenography office, fruit stands, millinery
shops, beauty and barber shops, a photography center, bookstalls and specialty
grocers.
As part
of the war effort in WWII, the Grove Arcade was closed by the Federal
Government and it was used by the military for the duration of the war. It was chosen because it was large and it was
located in a relatively safe area away from the Atlantic coast. At some point after the war, the building
became the headquarters for the National Weather Records Center…housing
millions of paper records or punch cards in filing cabinets.
So…who
built what is now referred to as the Grove Arcade? In the 1800s malaria struck residents of the
southern USA with deadly effect. There
wasn’t any cure at the time. E.W. Grove,
who had a little drug business in Paris Tennessee, lost his youngest daughter
and his wife to the disease. He became
determined to find a remedy for malaria.
It was well known that quinine would reduce the symptoms of the disease
although it would never be a cure. In
1878, Grove came up with a method of creating a tonic that contained quinine…that
was called Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic.
He became a self-made millionaire.
When he permanently moved to Asheville in 1910, he built a resort and began
construction of the Grove Arcade, but he died 2 years before the skyscraper
portion of the structure was built...
The
National Weather Service moved out of the building in 1995 and in 1997, the
city of Asheville became the new owner.
The building was restored and reopened in 2002. Today, the Grove Arcade features shops and no
less than 11 restaurants/places to dine on the first floor, offices on the
second and residential apartments above that.
For more information, go to https://grovearcade.com/.
Two other buildings
in downtown Asheville are so dominant on the skyline that I couldn’t avoid
checking them out. The 17-story steel
frame skyscraper that is The Buncombe County Courthouse was completed in 1928. This 17-story brick sheathed steel frame
skyscraper with its Neo-Classical Revival ornamentation was designed by Frank
Pierce Milburn. Milburn was a prolific
architect, involved in the design and construction of at least 24 courthouses
and 9 railroad depots along with a number of other structures. The interior of the courthouse features a
sweeping marble staircase, a coffered ceiling and a mosaic tile floor. It was added to the National Register of
Historic Places in 1979.
This
striking structure also occupies the City-County Plaza in Asheville North
Carolina. This historic Art Deco brick
and stone governmental office building is Asheville’s City Hall. The structure’s unique shape and colorful
exterior have made it into an iconic Asheville landmark, as well as a symbol for
the city. It is featured on the city’s
seal… This city hall has been part of the National Register of Historic Places
since 1976.
This Art
Deco masterpiece was the result of the architect’s imagination and his desire
to reflect the contours and textures of the city’s mountain backdrop. That ziggurat roof is covered with red tiles
that are split into layers by the use of interrupting green and gold feather
motifs. Originally intended to be a twin
to the Courthouse, the latter was built in a more conservative and classic
style. A wing connecting the 2 buildings
was planned but never built.
FYI…The
city of Asheville North Carolina has 94,589 residents while the greater
Asheville Metropolitan area has a population of 469,000 plus.
Note: The 2012 movie, “The Hunger Games”, was
filmed near Asheville as was a 2017 film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,
Missouri”.
Just
click on any of the photographs to enlarge them…
Thanks
for stopping by for a visit!
Take
Care, Big Daddy Dave
