Built in 1907 on land leased from the Selden Grandy Estate, the Monticello Arcade is the historic shopping arcade you now face in Norfolk. This three-story, Beaux Arts style, steel frame building is faced in molded and polychromed terra cotta. Both facades stretch seven bays and present a two-story Ionic order surmounted by an elaborate cornice, with an attic story above.
Step closer and the central bay of either facade serves as the entrance to the interior: a longitudinal mall open to the roof, lit by skylights, giving you a tunneled, sunlit view straight through. In the early 20th century business boomed here as downtown Norfolk’s commercial area expanded, but the Great Depression forced the Monticello Arcade Company, Inc. into bankruptcy and returned the building to the Grandy Estate. It survived the remainder of the Depression under new owners and went on to prosper in postwar Norfolk.
Then, as downtown businesses began to suffer in the early 1960s, the Arcade’s revenues decreased and the building deteriorated. By the 1970s only a few tenants remained and a threat of condemnation loomed until 1975. Your eye travels from the terra cotta facade and Ionic columns to the skylights that brighten the mall.