Pueblo Arcade, Royal Park Arcade and the Maher Building — Vero Beach, Florida

Three small commercial buildings in downtown Vero Beach carry National Register listings for the same reason: they survive from the decade when Vero grew from a farm-colony town into the seat of Indian River County. The Maher Building on 20th Street was finished in 1920. The Pueblo Arcade on 14th Avenue and the Royal Park Arcade on 21st Street, also known as Parkway Plaza, both date to 1926. The City of Vero Beach National Register page lists all three among the city's thirteen National Register properties.

Each represents a different storefront type. The Maher Building is a plain masonry store block of one and two stories. The Pueblo Arcade is a two-story masonry arcade in the Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival style. The Royal Park Arcade is a two-story wood frame Mediterranean Revival building with shops opening onto an arcaded loggia and apartments above. The Florida Division of Historical Resources describes all three as private properties.

The Town of Vero was laid out on paper before it had a business district. The City of Vero Beach history page records that the Indian River Farms Company bought 44,000 acres in 1912 and that the final plat of the original Town of Vero was adopted in 1913. The Maher Building stands inside that 1913 plat, according to the state survey.

A fire at the end of 1919 reset the commercial blocks. The state survey says that in 1917 William J. and Katie Maher built a dry goods store that burned down in late 1919, and that the Pueblo Arcade was constructed in Vero's commercial center as part of the rapid development that took place following the fire of 1919. A 2007 Florida Heritage catalog record for the Pueblo Arcade puts it more starkly, describing the reconstruction of the commercial district after a fire destroyed a major part of the buildings in 1919. The rebuilding coincided with Vero's incorporation that same year and the land boom of the early 1920s.

The three listed storefronts belong to a wider Vero building wave that the same state survey documents. The Old Palmetto Hotel off Old Dixie Highway went up in 1921 and was enlarged in 1926, the same year the Royal Park Arcade and the Pueblo Arcade were built, and the Vero Theatre opened on 14th Avenue in 1924. Federal recognition came in a cluster seven decades later: the Maher Building was listed in 1994, the Pueblo Arcade in 1997 and the Royal Park Arcade in 1998, part of a decade in which much of downtown Vero Beach entered the National Register.

The Maher Building is the replacement for the Mahers' burned store. The state survey records that the existing masonry structure was completed in 1920 and over the years served as a grocery, a drug store and a rooming house. It is Masonry Vernacular, one and two stories, and one of the few remaining commercial buildings in Vero Beach from the 1920s Florida Land Boom era.

The 2007 Florida Heritage catalog record for the Maher Building went further, stating that when it was built the property was one of many similar commercial buildings in the hub of what was then downtown Vero Beach, and that the Maher Building is the only remaining example of those original commercial buildings. The National Park Service NPGallery record for the Maher Building, published October 28, 1994, lists commerce as its area of significance, 1920 as its significant year and the architect as unknown, and gives its location on 20th Street in Vero Beach.

The state survey calls the Pueblo Arcade the only local example of a commercial arcade in Vero Beach. Built in 1926 by the local contractors Blackford and Davis, it is two stories of masonry construction in the Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival style. The survey places it in a decade when visitors and residents to Vero Beach increased as the area became a nationally renowned citrus growing region, which created demand for downtown shop space.

The NPGallery record for the Pueblo Arcade lists architecture and commerce as areas of significance, Blackford and Davis as builders and 1926 as the significant year, with the listing published on March 8, 1997. The 2007 Florida Heritage catalog noted that since its completion the Pueblo Arcade has remained a significant part of the Vero Beach commercial district, and it placed the building on the Vero Beach Historical Trail. The arcade faces 14th Avenue a short walk from the Vero Theatre, which predates it by two years.

The Royal Park Arcade on 21st Street was designed by the Fort Pierce architects William W. Hatcher and Lawrence S. Funke, who worked on a number of projects for the Vero Beach Construction Company, the building's original owners, according to the state survey. The first floor is divided into commercial units with storefronts, most of which open onto the arcaded loggia, while the second floor consists of apartments. The same survey credits Hatcher and Funke with the 1926 design of the Sebastian Grammar and Junior High School, now Sebastian City Hall, which places the Vero arcade within their Indian River County work of that boom year.

The second name dates to 1938, when Parkway, Inc. of Vero Beach acquired the building and renamed it the Parkway Hotel, from which the current name, Parkway Plaza, was derived. The NPGallery record for the Royal Park Arcade, published July 31, 1998, lists Hatcher and Funke with the Vero Beach Construction Co., community planning and development and architecture as areas of significance, and 1926 and 1939 as significant years.

Local rules add a second layer of protection. The City of Vero Beach Local Register page explains that Ordinance 2008-08, adopted July 15, 2008, automatically placed existing National Register properties on the city's Local Register of Historic Places unless the property owner declined, and it lists Parkway Plaza by name under that ordinance. The Historic Preservation Commission maintains the Local Register and reviews National Register nominations within Vero Beach.

The three buildings stand within a few blocks of other listed downtown properties, including the Vero Theatre and the Indian River County Courthouse on 14th Avenue and the Vero Beach Diesel Power Plant beside the railroad, all named on the city's National Register list. The 2007 heritage catalog described both the Maher Building and the Pueblo Arcade as private, restricted-access properties, so their interiors are business premises rather than public sites in Vero Beach.