The Vance Monument Association formed in the 1890s with a clear goal: a memorial in the form of a single granite shaft, fashioned after the Washington Monument, on the public square in downtown Asheville. They raised $3,326 - about $130,000 in today's dollars - mostly from George Willis Pack, a wealthy New Yorker who'd moved to Asheville and donated $2,000 on the condition that Buncombe County dedicate the site in perpetuity. Other money came from Jewish organizations grateful for Vance's defense of religious tolerance, and from businessmen in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Richard Sharp Smith - the English architect best known for supervising Vanderbilt's Biltmore House - donated his design services. Contractor James G. Colvin of Asheville built the obelisk for $2,758. Cornerstone laid December 22, 1897. Dedication on May 10, 1898.

The ground the obelisk stood on had another history, less visible but more painful. The land had once held the county jail. The square nearby had hosted slave auctions, where enslaved people were sold and their bills of sale recorded in the courthouse. No marker acknowledged any of this. *The Colored Enterprise*, an Asheville newspaper of the 1890s, covered the monument's construction with a mix of irony and resignation. African American residents lived and worked in the shadow of a tribute to a man who had publicly insisted on their continued enslavement. The monument's planning committee had ordered 1,000 club buttons in 1897 featuring Vance's portrait alongside the words "white supremacy." The obelisk's official inscription was just the single word VANCE, engraved on each of the pedestal's four polished panels.

By the early 2000s the question of the monument's place was openly contested. The North Carolina General Assembly created an African American Heritage Commission in 2008. A coalition of Asheville activists - the Center for Diversity Education, Carolina Jews for Justice, the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, Masonic Lodge Venus No. 62 - asked the Public Art Board to commission a new work nearby that would acknowledge the site's role in the slave trade. A petition circulated. The city took no action. On June 23, 2015, somebody painted "Black Lives Matter" across the monument's nameplate. The paint was cleaned off. Nobody was arrested. The argument continued.

In June 2020, after George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis triggered nationwide demonstrations against police violence and Confederate iconography, Asheville and Buncombe County passed a joint resolution. The United Daughters of the Confederacy had 90 days to remove their plaques. A twelve-member task force would decide the monument's fate. On July 8 city workers began shrouding the obelisk in fabric to reduce its visibility. That night someone set off what the bomb squad described as a pipe-bomb-style improvised explosive device at the base; a drone captured the explosion and a person spray-painting the pedestal. A Civil War re-enactment group from Rutherfordton sued to halt demolition, citing the $140,000 they'd raised toward restoration. The case wound through state courts. In March 2024 the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in Asheville's favor.

Demolition began May 17, 2021. The granite obelisk was completely removed by the next day. Work stopped for wind. By May 30, only the pedestal remained, with plans to remove it in stages. A second court order paused work briefly. The total cost was about $115,000 - roughly what restoration would have cost a decade earlier. The stone blocks are still in storage; contract terms restrict their sale or reuse. The city plans an inclusive square on the site, something that names the history of the place rather than monumentalizing one man's version of it. Pack Square, where the obelisk stood, remains the geographic center of downtown Asheville. What's missing now is conspicuous. So is what was missing before.