This Historic Hotel Is Asheville’s Coolest New Luxury Getaway
Intimate, immaculate, and packed with surprises, North Carolina’s Flat Iron Hotel is the perfect pied-à-terre for discovering Asheville.
If you’re looking for luxury hotels in Asheville, North Carolina, you’ll probably recognize names like Grove Park Inn and Biltmore Estate. But the coolest new luxury hotel in Asheville is The Flat Iron. The boutique property resides in a fully restored 1926 Beaux-Arts office building in the heart of Downtown that just opened in the summer of 2024 after an artful makeover. Intimate, immaculate, and packed with surprises and shared spaces to explore, it is the perfect pied-à-terre for discovering what’s new in walkable urban Asheville.
Stay
In this new incarnation, the angular, eight-story limestone building boasts 71 guest rooms, three bars, and one very fine restaurant. Step into the lobby off the bustling street and you immediately feel the coexisting layers of old and new—like the bright red Steinway upright piano against vibrant muraled walls juxtaposed with old elevator doors and a polished brass post office box.
In the upstairs hallways, the windows of old offices have vintage-looking logos painted over them—architecture firms and detective agencies—creating the feeling of a Noir movie set. The guest rooms have captivating city and mountain views, and the interior design nods to the original Beaux-Arts aesthetic of the building while still feeling like a fresh and colorful boutique hotel conceived a century later.
Drink & Dine
I had dinner with my family at the hotel’s restaurant, Luminosa, shortly after its grand opening. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at any restaurant so new that was already so dialed-in. Even after accounting for the fact that I was there on a media visit, I know by now how to spot the goods that can’t be faked. The staff was lovely, the cocktails conceived by bar manager Sarah Charles were all spot on, and the food from the collective talents of Executive Chef Graham House, Chef de Cuisine Sean McMullen, and their back-of-house team is a marriage of Appalachian and Italian fare (with dishes like ham hock Agnolotti) that is as unexpected as it is delicious.
For further cocktailing on property, there’s a jewel box of an Art Deco bar in a former basement boiler room called Red Ribbon Society and a rooftop bar where you can sip among the echoes of American Musical history.
A Legacy Of Sound
For the first two decades in the life of the Flat Iron Building, there were two massive radio towers mounted on the roof. This was where Asheville’s first major radio station, WWNC, was headquartered. In February of 1927, music history was made here when Jimmie Rodgers, aka “The Father of Country Music,” got his big break when he broadcast his first live performance from the station’s top-floor studio.
Creating a sound no one had quite heard before, Rodgers mixed the vocal range of Appalachian yodeling with the blues he had picked up from Black musicians in the Deep South while working as a railroad brakeman. This uniquely American blend evolved into Country Music as we know it. The old radio studio is now a rooftop bar, where you can enjoy a martini overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains and imagine the broadcasts of early 20th-century America being beamed out on that same path—from the music of Rodgers and Bill Monroe to the speeches of FDR and Orson Welles’ infamous narration of War of The Worlds.
While You’re Here
Be sure to book a meal around the corner at Asheville Proper—a live fire restaurant with standout steaks. I tried a Wagyu Zabuton cut that was sublime. Further afield, snag some picnic wine at Crocodile Wine or a quick meal at a food court in an Art Deco former S&W Cafeteria—the S&W Market.
Read This Next
