A&P Grocery / Crary Hotel

Historic downtown Brevard, like many other towns, needed to be accessible to both locals and vistors. On East Main Street, the two buildings that comprised A&P Grocery and the Crary Hotel are the perfect example of catering to this blend of home and destination.

A&P Grocery was a chain of grocery stores that was very popular, with 16,000 stores nationwide by 1930. Whitey York ran the Brevard chain from 1933-1943. This structure is next to the historic Aethelwold Hotel and the current resident is a real estate office.

T.B Crary owned the Crary Hotel. Along with his role as a businessman, he served as alderman and superintendent of the street and water departments. The Crary Hotel had eleven guest rooms and a covered second floor deck over the sidewalk, which was removed after 1941. In 1917, Ida Bryant closed The Bryant, another hotel in the area, and assumed management of the Crary Hotel. A few years later in 1921, the Crary Hotel was sold to John Glenn. He planned for the dining room to be refurbished into a “moving picture palace” called the Sapphire Theatre. 

These buildings have housed a wide variety of businesses. Brevard Hardware, Western Auto, Austin Studio, Uptown Athletics, and Brevard Real Estate are just a few. In 1923, the first Chamber of Commerce opened in the previous Crary Hotel. One current resident of the ground floor of the old Crary Hotel is Wine Down on Main.