Main Street Historic District

Brevard's central business district grew around the courthouse square, and this thirteen-acre district preserves that core. Its thirty-two contributing buildings date from 1874 to the early 1950s and are mostly one- to three-story brick or stucco commercial buildings with flat roofs and parapet walls. Landmarks include the 1874 Transylvania County Courthouse, a Second Empire brick building with a mansard-roofed tower, and the 1899 McMinn Building, the first brick commercial building completed downtown. Others include the Lowe Auto Company, with herringbone brickwork and cast car medallions, and the 1924 Neoclassical Revival Brevard Banking Company. Over the decades the buildings housed department stores, drugstores, hardware stores, auto dealerships, a theater, a post office, a fire station and law offices. The district was recognized for its importance to local commerce and for its architecture across the period from 1874 to 1952. Two buildings were already individually listed, and some storefronts have been altered.