Look up at the Grove Arcade's two stacked blocks, its steel frame built to carry a skyscraper that never came. Built from 1926 to 1929, this Tudor Revival and Late Gothic Revival structure reads like two stacked blocks: the lower rectangular slab with rounded corners, capped by a second two-tier set-back story. Its steel frame and reinforced concrete were intended to serve as a base for an unbuilt skyscraper.
As you walk closer you can see the molded terra cotta pilasters and the ziggurat-like arrangement of huge ramps that rise to a roof deck, where a bronze semi-elliptical balcony anchors the skyline. The building occupies a full city block and once housed one of America's first indoor shopping malls. In 1943 it was sold to the federal government and later housed the National Climatic Data Center until 1995.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In 1997 the City of Asheville acquired the title under the National Monument Act and signed a 198-year lease with the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation, a group founded to preserve the building. Notice the terra cotta pilasters below, and the bronze balcony crowning the roof deck above them.