Grove Park Historic District

Laid out from 1908 in Asheville, the Grove Park district is a planned suburb of detached single-family houses on curving streets, with large lots of one-third to one-half acre and stone retaining walls. Edwin Wiley Grove, a St. Louis pharmaceutical manufacturer, developed it with landscape designer Chauncey Beadle, who had worked for the Olmsted firm and the Biltmore Estate. The layout broke with Asheville's earlier grid pattern and was planned around the automobile, with rear alleys serving garages. The district holds 156 principal buildings, most of them dating from 1908 to 1938, in a range of revival and eclectic styles. Architects represented include Richard Sharp Smith, Ronald Greene, Henry I. Gaines and James Gamble Rogers. Its significance rests on its planning and landscape, and on the architecture of its houses, which the nomination describes as an intact example of early twentieth-century suburban design.