Grove Arcade

The Grove Arcade is one of downtown Asheville's architectural treasures and one of its best free indoor wanders. E.W. Grove — the patent-medicine millionaire who also built the Grove Park Inn — commissioned it in the 1920s as one of the country's first enclosed shopping arcades, a full city block of ivory terra-cotta with Venetian Gothic arches, carved grotesques, spiraling wrought-iron staircases and a peaked glass ceiling over a central corridor lined with shops. Grove died before it was finished, and history was hard on the building: during World War II the federal government evicted every tenant on less than a month's notice and took it over, and for decades it housed the National Climatic Data Center. A nonprofit restoration reopened it in 2002 with shops, restaurants and apartments above, and it has been a downtown anchor since. Inside today you will find locally owned shops, food stalls and restaurants, and — new in 2026 — a craft gallery run by the Southern Highland Craft Guild (the organization behind the Folk Art Center), which moved here after Hurricane Helene flooded its long-running Biltmore Village shop; it sells pottery, glass, textiles, wood and jewelry by Guild makers from across the region. Outside, the sidewalks along the arcade host outdoor tables and, on many days, street performers. It is free to enter, easy to combine with any downtown walk, and a smart plan for rain. Fit: first-timers getting their bearings downtown, couples browsing before dinner, families looking for a dry hour, and craft lovers who want Guild-quality work without the drive to the Parkway.

Grove envisioned the arcade as the base of a much larger tower, a plan abandoned after his death; even at its built height the building is among the finest examples of 1920s commercial architecture in the South, and details like the winged griffins and the ornate entrances reward a slow look. The Explore Asheville architecture trail includes it as a key stop, alongside the Art Deco buildings that make downtown one of the best-preserved interwar cityscapes in the Southeast.