Printer Friendly Text Only Version

Please note that this text-only version, provided for ease of printing and reading, includes approximately 45 pages and may take up to 15 minutes to print. By clicking on one of these links, you may go directly to a particular text-only section:

Welcome
Introduction
Essay on Early History
Essay on African American History
Essay on Suburbanization
Essay on Modernism
Essay on Preservation
List of Sites
Maps (must be printed separately)
Begin Tour
Learn More
Credits

Welcome

Dear Internet Visitor:

Welcome to Raleigh, North Carolina's capital.

Take a virtual trip-through-time of our city now, and when you are finished, start making plans to drop by for an in-person visit.

Raleigh is unique because it was planned from the beginning as a capital city. The state's General Assembly, tired of traveling all over the state for its law-making sessions, decided in 1792 that it was time for a permanent seat for state government. The assembly purchased a 1,000-acre site, hired a surveyor, and laid out a whole new town on a grid. Space was appropriated for a new state house, town squares, lots for homes to be built, and even a town cemetery.

Since then, Raleigh has grown considerably while holding on to its past. Today there are 19 National Register Historic Districts and more than 80 National Register historic sites in the city. Raleigh also has five local Historic Overlay Districts--Blount Street, Boylan Heights, Capitol Square, Oakwood, and Moore Square--and more than 125 local historic landmarks, including numerous fine examples of early modernist architecture.

Begin your trip through the history of the city in 1760 at the Joel Lane House, the gambrel-roofed house of the planter from whom the land to establish North Carolina's capital was purchased. Next, visit Mordecai Historic Park, where you can tour the 1795 (with 1826 additions) plantation house of Joel Lane descendants, furnished with more than 200 years of family heirlooms.

See the National Historic Landmark State Capitol (1832-1840), perhaps the finest Greek Revival statehouse in the Nation. Located in the heart of downtown, one can head in any direction from the Capitol and find rich components of the city's history.

Walk across the street to experience the ecclesiastical glory of Richard Upjohn's National Historic Landmark Christ Church (1854).

Marvel at the craftsmanship in stone and wood of the Chapel at St. Augustine 's College, constructed in 1895 by African American students at the historically black college.

Ride the restored 1912 Dentzel Carousel in Pullen Park, then shop and dine at the revitalized 1914 City Market complex at Moore Square.

Take a break from the city-scape and relax with a hike at the 4,900-acre 1932-1943 WPA--designed and built--Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area (now Umstead State Park).

And finish your day by taking in a special event at the world-famous J.S. Dorton Arena (1952, listed 1976), with its revolutionary hyperbolic paraboloid roof, fondly dubbed "The Cow Palace" when it was built in the 1950s.

After more than 200 years of time and circumstance, much of Raleigh 's rich history is still here for you to enjoy. So when you've finished your virtual tour, click onto your favorite on-line travel site and start making your plans. We've got the magic "time-travel" carpet out for you.

Sincerely,

 

Charles C. Meeker, Mayor
Raleigh, North Carolina

 

Introduction

The National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places in partnership with the City of Raleigh, the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission, the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, proudly invite you to explore Raleigh: A Capital City. The city of Raleigh was established as the capital of North Carolina in 1792 and grew from a small, one-square-mile town into a modern government, high-tech, education and social center. This travel itinerary highlights 48 historic places listed in the National Register of Historic Places--from the houses of early settlers to Modernist residences of architecture educators, from picturesque Victorian downtown neighborhoods to booming suburbs, from small scale commercial and utility buildings to early skyscrapers--places that shaped its history and now help to define this Southern capital.

In 1792, a thousand acres were purchased from Joel Lane on which to establish a permanent capital city, centrally located in the middle of the state, accessible to all North Carolinians. A brick state house was constructed in 1794, but after burning in 1831, it was replaced by the current State Capitol in 1833. As a result of a population surge in the early 20th century, suburbs emerged in Raleigh. Between 1906 and 1910, three suburban neighborhoods--Glenwood, Boylan Heights and Cameron Park--were platted to the northwest, southwest and west of Raleigh's city limits, respectively. The people who moved into these new suburbs were from the growing service and support professions for the state, the educational institutions of the city, and the growing commercial class, represented by such sites as: the Capital Area Historic District, the Federal Building, St. Mary's College and the State Bank of North Carolina. African Americans, however, were forbidden from buying lots in these suburbs by residential covenants.

Despite such restrictions as the housing covenants, African Americans were an important part of Raleigh's history. Education opportunities existed for African Americans at Shaw University and St. Augustine's College. Black neighborhoods grew up around these centers of learning, exemplified by the Moore Square Historic District and the Dr. M. T. Pope House. In 1948 Henry Kamphoefner became the dean of the School of Design at North Carolina State College and he brought Modernist architects to Raleigh to teach and design. Through the 1960s Raleigh was a proving ground of modernist designs. The results of these efforts can be seen in the Fadum House, Matsumoto House, Small Office Building and J.S. Dorton Arena. Today, Raleigh is a growing, vibrant city intent on maintaining its character through avid historic preservation. The Mordecai House and the Oakwood Historic District properties are just two examples illustrating Raleigh's dedication to preserving its past.

Raleigh: A Capital City offers several ways to discover the places that reflect this city's history. Each highlighted place features a brief description of its historic significance, color photographs and public accessibility information. At the bottom of each page the visitor will find a navigation bar containing links to five essays: Early History, African American History, Suburbanization, Modernism and Preservation. These essays provide historic background, or "contexts," for the places included in the itinerary. In the Learn More section, the itinerary links to regional and local websites that provide visitors with further information regarding cultural events, special activities, and lodging and dining possibilities. Visitors may be interested in Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, located in North Carolina. The itinerary can be viewed online, or printed out if you plan to visit Raleigh in person.

Raleigh: A Capital City is part of the Department of the Interior's strategy to promote public awareness of history and encourage visits to historic places throughout the Nation. The National Register of Historic Places partners with communities, regions and heritage areas throughout the United States to create online travel itineraries. Using places nominated by State, Federal and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the itineraries help potential visitors plan trips by highlighting the amazing diversity of this country's historic places and providing public accessibility information for each featured site. Raleigh: A Capital City is the 39th National Register travel itinerary in this ongoing series. The National Register of Historic Places hopes you enjoy this virtual tour of Raleigh. If you have any comments or questions, please just click on the provided e-mail address, "comments or questions" located at the bottom of each page.

Early History

Raleigh's population increased 79 percent from 1900 (13,643 people) to 1920 (24,418 people). With a utility infrastructure firmly entrenched, water, electricity and inexpensive transportation provided better living conditions. Proximity to utilities permitted industrial endeavors to locate in or near the city limits. The surface transportation and a centralized, semi-skilled urban labor force were additional incentives to attracting textile mills in the final decade of the 19th century. Professionals such as educators, attorneys, physicians and entrepreneurs were enticed to the city as growth in commerce, health care and education increased. Raleigh's educational institutions for blacks and whites, men and women, and facilities for the handicapped attracted families to the city from other parts of the state. This influx of people necessitated the development of new or existing residential areas, which lead to the growth of Raleigh's suburbs in the early to mid-20th century.

Essay primarily excerpted from Raleigh Comprehensive Architectural Survey Final Report, Helen Patricia Ross, Raleigh Historic Districts Commission, 1992.

 

African American History

Following the Civil War, Raleigh became a center of opportunity and advancement for African Americans. That significance is evident today in numerous landmarks, districts, and educational and cultural institutions.

Foremost are two institutes of higher education: Shaw University and Saint Augustine's College. From its founding in 1865, Shaw University, the oldest historically black college in the Southeast, quickly became a major center both for academic and technical training. The campus contains several buildings that date from its founding years, most prominently four-story Italianate style Estey Hall, built in 1873 to serve Shaw's female students, and recently rehabilitated.

In east Raleigh, Saint Augustine's College, founded in 1867 by the Episcopal Church to educate black teachers, offers a testament to the resourcefulness of its first students. The campus features several buildings built of stone quarried by students, including the Gothic Revival style St. Augustine's Chapel. Also located on the campus is St. Agnes Hospital and Training School for Nurses, built to provide care for and by African Americans. At the turn of the last century, Rev. Henry Delany supervised St. Agnes as the college's Vice Principal; decades later, his daughters Bessie and Sarah memorialized those early years in their autobiographical work, Having Our Say.

The presence of these institutions in turn prompted development of the land surrounding the schools into black neighborhoods. Idlewild and College Park, near Saint Augustine's College, and South Park, near Shaw, exhibit a large stock of vernacular building types, especially the Hall and Parlor House, Triple A House and Saddlebag House, and tell the story of the newfound opportunities for homeownership among African Americans.

Other black neighborhoods were established on the outskirts of town. The Oberlin community, founded in the late 1860s as a freedmen's village, is today represented by several late 19th- and early 20th-century dwellings: the Queen Anne style Rev. Plummer T. Hall house, Colonial-Revival style Willis Graves and John T. & Mary Turner houses and the imposing Rev. M. L. Latta house, sole surviving building of Latta University, a trade school which operated from 1892 to 1920.

By the turn of the 19th century, these educational and business prospects were creating a new black middle class. Simultaneously, the social and political barriers of segregation emerged. In this climate Dr. M. T. Pope, a prominent physician and businessman, erected a stylish two-story residence on Wilmington Street, at the edge of the mostly-black Fourth Ward. A Shaw alumnus, Dr. Pope went on to a bid for Mayor in 1919, at a time when Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation. In the years since, nearly all the adjacent residences--both white and black--have been demolished. Yet the Dr. M. T. Pope House stands, now being transformed into a museum that will tell the story of this extraordinary Raleigh citizen.

Just to the north, East Hargett Street became Raleigh's black "main street," location of the city's greatest concentration of black-owned businesses (including the medical practice of Dr. Pope). Immediately adjacent are Moore Square, one of the city's four original public squares, and beyond that, the 1914 City Market, gathering point for white and black residents alike. The surrounding area contains a varied collection of two- to three-story commercial establishments, many of which in recent years have found new life as offices, small shops and entertainment venues.

During the Great Depression, measures were taken to improve recreation options for black citizens. Just east of downtown is Chavis Park, which was opened in the summer of 1938. Today, this community facility serves as a city-wide resource, beckoning residents with its rolling natural landscape and one of Raleigh's two antique carousels, this one designed by the Allan Herschell Company in the 1920s.

Far to the west, a portion of Umstead State Park traces a similar history. Established in 1937 as the Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area, the 6,000-acre federal Civilian Conservation Corps land reclamation project was turned over to the state in the 1940s. The adjacent Reedy Creek State Park was created for African Americans in 1950. The Crabtree Creek section, renamed for conservationist governor William B. Umstead in 1955, was united with the Reedy Creek section as Umstead State Park in 1966. Today the reforested land forms a unique nature preserve, almost wholly surrounded by the growing city of Raleigh.

These educational, cultural and recreational institutions helped confirm Raleigh as a hub of black opportunity. In the process, they underscored the city's development as a center of government, education and commerce in North Carolina's Piedmont. Through the efforts of historic preservation advocates, many of these historic places have been renovated and restored, and will continue to tell the stories of African Americans in Raleigh.

Suburbanization

In overall design, the neighborhoods embraced natural features--creeks, valleys, richly forested areas of deciduous and evergreen trees--giving them a sylvan appearance, yet each was directly linked to downtown via thoroughfares or new streetcar lines. Beyond them, amusement or city parks came to be developed, offering a recreational transition from town life to the surrounding countryside.

Smaller lot sizes echoed the changes being wrought by growth, industrialization and urbanization. Families no longer needed large tracts for sustenance; utilities and trade eliminated the need for numerous outbuildings. People could literally confine all activity to a single dwelling and still have a yard and garden on a small plot.

The people attracted to the neighborhoods were, for the most part, not the old wealthy families of Blount or Hillsborough streets, but those newly ascended to the middle class. They were from the growing service and support professions for the state, the educational institutions of the city and the growing commercial class. And, in an age when restrictive covenants prevented African Americans from buying lots, the ownership of these neighborhoods was exclusively white.

As a response, South Park became a black suburb by virtue of its location near Shaw University. South Park originated out of the Moses Bledsoe estate south of the old city limits, an area virtually uninhabited prior to 1865. By the time of its development between 1905 and 1910, the area had streetcar service connecting South Raleigh to downtown Raleigh and the rest of the city, which made its development desirable.

The idea of suburbs, as it had emerged in America after 1850, and especially as propagated by Town and Davis, and by Olmstead and Vaux, was based on the desire to remove people from unpleasant urban life to a picturesque, sometimes romantic, rural-like setting. These amenities were achieved by controlled density, heavy planting, parks, walks, natural features of great beauty and an architecture commensurate with those features which emphasize the rustic, romantic and evocative.

This pattern of development continued in 1912, when the streetcar was extended north from the western edge of downtown along Glenwood Avenue through farmland and woods to Bloomsbury Amusement Park, further from what was quickly becoming a crowded city. The Five Points neighborhoods (Bloomsbury, Georgetown, Hayes Barton, Roanoke Park and Vanguard Park) display a variety of architectural styles. The diversity in style is unified by the curvilinear streets and naturalistic settings established in Raleigh in the earlier suburbs, and exemplified in the Hayes Barton neighborhood, designed by Earle Sumner Draper, a preeminent New South landscape architect.

Despite continued changes in modes of transportation and architectural styles, the development patterns exemplified in these early suburban neighborhoods are reflected in much of the subsequent development in Raleigh.

Modernism

From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Raleigh was a proving ground for the architectural movement known as Modernism. Modernist design, characterized by simplicity of form, minimal ornamentation and innovative use of materials, drew from the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and noted European designers. The number of architecturally significant residences and offices built in the city attest to the movement's impressive local impact.

The source of the city's new status was the School of Design at North Carolina State College (later North Carolina State University). Established in 1948 under the deanship of Henry Kamphoefner (1908-1990), the School of Design quickly became a conduit for new European and South American ideas, as well as those of their chief American proponent, Frank Lloyd Wright, whose influence on North Carolina architecture to that point had been negligible. Dean Henry Kamphoefner recruited several modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. He also brought internationally-known architects to the school to lecture and to lead studio workshops.

The School's architecture instructors, while few in number, did much to consolidate Modernism as a new architectural force, leavening the training of student designers with on-the-ground experimentation. Faculty members manifested their concepts in a series of residences designed for themselves, for other faculty members, or for a small group of clients interested in new ideas in architecture. Built for the most part on relatively ample, wooded suburban lots, located on what then were the outskirts of the city, a key element in most of the designs is a careful integration of the house with its site.

The first of these houses were strongly influenced by the work of Wright, most notably the Kamphoefner, Fadum and Ritcher houses, all of which evoke the flat roof, large windows and open living spaces of Wright's Usonian Houses. Wright's Usonian concepts dovetailed well with the School of Design architects' interest in modular design, in passive solar climate control and the integration of buildings into their sites, in the use of low-cost mass-produced industrial materials and techniques for constructing housing, as well as in a wealth of aesthetic issues having to do with creating an architecture that was expressive both of structure and of the conditions of the modern age.

In the early 1950s the design concepts of Mies van der Rohe became increasingly apparent, as witnessed in the Matsumoto and Small houses. Both exhibit a Miesian concern for articulating space by horizontal and vertical planes; for exposed framework; for a classical definition of base, body and roof; and for the integration of outdoors and indoors through large expanses of glazing. Like the Wrightian houses, these residences were well-received in architectural circles, and were widely published in the architectural press.

It was the faculty's institutional and commercial buildings, however, that attracted the widest attention. Easily the most celebrated is the 1952 J. S. Dorton Arena, located on the North Carolina State Fair Grounds. Originally intended as a facility for livestock judging, the revolutionary design by émigré Polish architect Matthew Nowicki consists of two opposing parabolic arches of concrete balanced by a network of crosswise cables suspended between them, creating the unique saddle-shaped hyperbolic parabaloid roof form and a totally column-free interior. The building earned international acclaim, and confirmed Raleigh's reputation as a proving ground for modernist architectural innovation.

Preservation

The Raleigh City Council has supported historic preservation activities in the city through an appointed citizen commission since 1961, five years before the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act. At that time the council formed the Historic Sites Commission--the first such body in the state--and allowed it limited powers to further preservation objectives within the municipal limits. The Commission incorporated in 1962 and gained its 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in 1965. Its first efforts were directed toward public education to raise awareness among citizens about the values of the community's historic places and the threats they faced.

By 1967, the Historic Sites Commission had gained enough experience to be instrumental in obtaining local legislation from the North Carolina General Assembly that allowed it broader powers. Among these powers was the right "to hold, manage, preserve, restore, improve and operate [historic properties]." This legislation was central to the success of the Commission's first major preservation initiative: securing the future of the threatened Mordecai House, which was acquired by the city in June of that year and turned over to the Commission to develop and supervise as a historic park. Again, the Historic Sites Commission had accomplished a pioneering preservation feat in North Carolina: the acquisition and restoration of a historic property by a municipality for the express purpose of preventing its demolition had never before occurred in North Carolina.

From 1967 to 1969, the Commission worked with the City Council to develop a plan for Mordecai Square and to submit a grant application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the restoration of Mordecai House. In May 1970, the city was awarded $29,750 which, along with funds raised locally, was used to restore the house. In April 1972 it was opened to the public. It was noted at the time that the Mordecai House had been in the possession of the descendants of its builder for 182 years until it was acquired by the City of Raleigh for the pleasure and enrichment of present and future generations.

To acquire the original Mordecai family furnishings and artifacts for the restored house, the Commission formed the Mordecai Square Historical Society, Inc. (now Capital Area Preservation, Inc.) in March 1972. The formation of the society was important for a number of reasons: municipalities cannot acquire and maintain antiques and artifacts; an organization was needed to provide volunteer docents and a means of broad citizen participation for the park; and a public-private partnership was needed to realize the potential of Mordecai Historic Park as an educational and preservation planning center for the city. As the park continued to develop, the scope of activities for both organizations broadened. The city's first historic sites as recommended by the Commission were designated by the City Council in 1969.

State government reorganization in 1973 engendered the reorganization of the Historic Sites Commission into the Raleigh Historic Properties and Districts Commission. The actions of the old Historic Sites Commission were ratified and the responsibilities of the new body were expanded again. Further changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s lead to two separate commissions, the Raleigh Historic Properties Commission and the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission. In 1976, the city designated its first local historic overlay district, Oakwood. This was followed the next year by two more districts.

In January 1988, the City of Raleigh was designated a Certified Local Government, allowing the city to participate directly in the federal historic preservation program. In January 1993, the most recent reorganization of the city's historic preservation program took place. All powers and duties allowed under state enabling legislation (revised in 1989 and 1991) were consolidated into one commission, renamed the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission. The 1993 ordinance revisions included the first application in the state of powers authorized by the general assembly in 1989 to prevent demolition by neglect of locally-designated historic resources.

The first comprehensive architectural survey of the city was completed in 1978 and updated and greatly expanded between 1988 and 1992. This latter effort included the pioneering African American Studies Project that combined oral history and architectural survey to more fully identify and document Raleigh's eight traditionally black communities. The survey also took note of the city's national role in the Modern architectural movement through the North Carolina State School of Design, and several "recent past" properties were listed in the National Register and as local landmarks. The city's first historic preservation plan was completed in 1991 under the guidance of the Commission, when its mission statement was adopted: to serve as City Council's official historic preservation advisory body to identify, preserve, protect and educate the public about Raleigh's historic resources.

Today, the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission administers ordinances involving five locally designated historic districts and more than 125 Raleigh Historic Landmarks. There are 19 National Register historic districts and more than 80 individual listings in the city, including three National Historic Landmarks.

List of Sites

Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area	Masonic Temple Building
	Briggs Hardware Building
J. S. Dorton Arena	Federal Building
North Carolina State Fair Commercial & Education Buildings	Moore Square Historic District
	Dr. M. T. Pope House
G. Milton Small and Associates Office Building	Estey Hall
Ritcher House	Leonard Hall
Small House	Dodd-Hinsdale House
Matsumoto House	St. Paul AME Church
Henry L. Kamphoefner House	Carolina Power and Light Company Car Barn and Automobile Garage
Fadum House
Five Points Neighborhoods, MPS	Raleigh Electric Company Power House
Josephus Daniels House	Tucker Carriage House
Mordecai House	St. Mary's College
St. Augustine's College Campus	Grosvenor Gardens Apartments
Oakwood Historic District	Joel Lane House
Tucker House	Pullen Park Carousel
Peace College Main Building	Boylan Heights
Capehart House	Montfort Hall
Hawkins-Hartness House	Raleigh Water Works and E. B. Bain Water Treatment Plant
Heck-Andrews House
North Carolina Executive Mansion	Oak View
Capitol Area Historic District	Yates Mill
North Carolina State Capitol
Christ Episcopal Church
State Bank of North Carolina
Haywood Hall
Raleigh Water Tower

 

Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area, now William B. Umstead State Park, is located on the northwest side of Raleigh, between I-40 and U.S. Rt. 70. It is open to day visitors from 8:00am to dusk, with overnight camping available in designated areas. For further information call 919-571-4170 or visit the park's website.

J. S. Dorton Arena

The J. S. Dorton Arena is one of North Carolina's foremost contributions to modern architecture. Part of the state fairgrounds complex, it was built as a livestock-judging pavilion, but today serves as a year-round exhibition and performance center. Since its completion in 1952, the building has been acclaimed internationally for its innovative fusion of architecture and engineering. The arena's bold parabolic design was conceived by Matthew Norwicki, a Polish architect who helped lay out the rebuilding of Warsaw following World War II. Norwicki assisted in designing the United Nations complex in New York before coming to Raleigh, where he served as acting head of the School of Design at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University).

When local architect William H. Deitrick was commissioned to design the expansion of the fairgrounds complex, he engaged Norwicki as a consulting architect, giving Norwicki full charge of designing the livestock pavilion. Norwicki executed approximately 100 conceptual drawings for the building, but perished in a plane crash in Egypt before construction began. Deitrick completed the pavilion's design closely following Norwicki's plans.

The building's pioneering form garnered numerous international design awards. In 1957, the American Institute of Architects declared it one of the 10 20th-century buildings most expected to influence the future of American architecture. In 1961, to honor a long-time state fair manager, the name of the building was changed to the J. S. Dorton Arena. The arena is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

J. S. Dorton Arena is located at 1026 Blue Ridge Rd., in the North Carolina state fairgrounds complex. It is open regularly for public events. For more information call 919-821-7400 or visit the state fairground's website.

North Carolina State Fair Commercial & Education Buildings

This distinctive pair of buildings occupies a notable place in the agricultural and architectural history of North Carolina. They represent the oldest permanent buildings associated with the North Carolina State Fair, one of the state's premier annual events. Agriculture has long been a mainstay of the North Carolina economy. In celebration of that tradition, the North Carolina Agricultural Society began sponsoring annual fairs in 1853 at a site in east Raleigh. In 1873, the fair was moved to a location west of town. There it remained until 1925 when the agricultural society, faced with debts and site overcrowding, passed control of the event to the state. The following year, the state legislature authorized the purchase of 200 acres west of the second fair site for development as the new fairgrounds. Both the 1926 and 1927 fairs were canceled to accommodate construction.

The exhibit halls, designed by the Durham firm of Atwood and Weeks, were executed in the Spanish Mission Revival style, an architectural form rare in North Carolina. Plans originally called for the buildings to include swine and cattle exhibit areas, but instead barns were built on the opposite side of the grounds. The exhibit halls opened to record crowds in October 1928. The local paper found the new complex a "beautiful structure gaily decorated with flags and hundreds of electric lights."

The two buildings have remained in nearly continuous use since their completion. Over the past half-century, the state fair grounds have undergone considerable expansion, with many new buildings constructed to accommodate event activities. The Commercial and Education Buildings have nonetheless maintained their importance as exhibition facilities, the former annually housing service and product displays and the latter displaying exhibits by non-profit organizations, youth groups and the North Carolina University Extension. Since the 1960s, the buildings have been in use year-round on weekends as the home of a large and popular flea market. In the late 1990s, the buildings received a thorough renovation, renewing the historic look now familiar to three generations of fairgoers. North Carolina State Fair Commercial and Education Buildings are a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The North Carolina State Fair Commercial and Education Buildings are located at the northwest corner of Hillsborough St. and Blue Ridge Blvd. The buildings are open weekends throughout the year, daily during the state fair and at other times of the year for special events. For more information call 919-821-7400 or visit the state fairground's website, for information specifically about the weekly flea markets visit the flea market's website.

G. Milton Small and Associates Office Building

The Small Office Building is one of the best examples of the work of architect G. Milton Small. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the City of Raleigh was a proving ground for the architectural movement known as Modernism. Dean Henry Kamphoefner of the School of Design, established in 1948 at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University) recruited several Modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other Modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. One of the most influential architects that Kamphoefner helped bring to North Carolina was G. Milton Small, who moved to Raleigh in 1948 after studying with Mies Van der Rohe in Chicago. Over the next several decades, Small produced a body of work that distinguished him as the most accomplished proponent of Miesian modernism in the area.

Small's own office building, completed in 1966, summarizes key elements of his work over the previous 20 years. To make the best use of a tiny site, the occupied space of the building is raised a story on steel columns, allowing for parking and a fountain-lined entrance walkway underneath. The building seems to hover behind the trees next to the street. In the Miesian tradition, the building is a rectangular box of glass and metal panels with aluminum mullions and an overhanging roof slab. A close examination of the facade and elevations, however, reveals subtle differences in the window and panel configurations, depending on the type of space behind the wall in each area. The entrance to the building is by way of a stairway that rises up into an outer lobby area. From that point, the plan of the building has a clear hierarchy of spaces, with rich finishes for the reception and conference room/principal's office and frankly exposed framework in the long drafting room. Throughout, the black-painted steel columns are exposed in Miesian fashion, and the wall panels are painted in the De Stijl movement colors of black, white, and primary red, blue and yellow. The Small Office Building is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The G. Milton Small and Associates Office Building is located at 105 Brooks Ave. It is now home to HR Associates PA and is open during regular office hours.

Ritcher House

The Ritcher House is perhaps the best North Carolina example of the Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian mode of design. It is one of several Modernist houses built in Raleigh from the 1940s to the 1960s. These houses were the manifestation of architectural concepts embraced by the faculty of the School of Design, established in 1948 at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University). Dean Henry Kamphoefner recruited several Modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other Modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. He also brought internationally known architects to the school to lecture and to lead studio workshops. The faculty designed several residences for themselves, other faculty members, or for a small group of clients interested in new ideas in architecture. Built for the most part on relatively ample, wooded suburban lots, located on what then were the outskirts of the city, a key element in most of the designs is a careful integration of the house with its site.

The Ritcher House was designed in 1951 by George Matsumoto. An experiment in low-cost, modular construction, the one-story building with intersecting flat and shed roofs is designed and crafted with the care given to a piece of cabinetry. The house is built with heavy-timber, post-and-beam framing using a three-foot module that is scribed into a Cherokee-red concrete floor. Integrated carefully into a sloping, wooded site, the Ritcher House presents a mostly closed facade to the street and opens up into a terrace and landscaped yard at the rear. This south-faced glazing is balanced with a deep overhang, so that the living spaces are shaded in the summer and warmed by the sun in the winter, while the north side of the house contains mostly windowless bathroom, kitchen and utility spaces. With operable windows, the house could be naturally ventilated from side to side in the summer, while being radiantly heated in the winter by water pipes buried in the concrete floors. In a jaunty note, the round chimney flues are painted a bright orange. The Ritcher House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Ritcher House is located at 3039 Churchill Rd. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.

Small House

The Small House is one of several Modernist houses built in Raleigh from the 1940s to the 1960s. These houses were the manifestation of architectural concepts embraced by the faculty of the School of Design, established in 1948 at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University). Dean Henry Kamphoefner recruited several Modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other Modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. He also brought internationally known architects to the school to lecture and to lead studio workshops. The faculty designed several residences for themselves, other faculty members, or for a small group of clients interested in new ideas in architecture. Built for the most part on relatively ample, wooded suburban lots, located on what then were the outskirts of the city, a key element in most of the designs is a careful integration of the house with its site.

One of the most influential architects that Kamphoefner helped bring to North Carolina was G. Milton Small, who moved to Raleigh in 1948 after studying with Mies Van der Rohe in Chicago. Over the next several decades, Small produced a body of work that distinguished him as the most accomplished proponent of Miesian modernism in the area. Among Small's interesting early works in Raleigh is the house he built for himself and his family. In its original 1951 form, the Small House was a compact, T-shaped, flat-roofed frame box. Except for a small entrance hall, the public living spaces of the house were combined in one long, carefully proportioned rectangular room that opened with sliding doors onto a full-width, screened porch. This porch was cantilevered over a brick retaining wall and was oriented to provide the best view over the hillside to the east. Exposed beams and columns provided the framework for both floor and roof and the outside was covered with plywood paneling. Although the house was built at a very low cost, the interior incorporated veneer plywoods of a variety of exotic woods. This use of exotic materials, the definition of space as roof and floor separated by exposed posts, and the large public area that opens onto semi-outdoor spaces are typical Miesian details. In 1961, additions designed by Small were made to the sides of the house to provide additional space for bedrooms, and for separate living and dining rooms. A raised, paved terrace with trees was added along one side of the house to serve as an entrance court. The Small House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Small House is located at 310 Lake Boone Trail. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.

Matsumoto House

The Matsumoto House is one of several Modernist houses built in Raleigh from the 1940s to the 1960s. These houses were the manifestation of architectural concepts embraced by the faculty of the School of Design, established in 1948 at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University). Dean Henry Kamphoefner recruited several Modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other Modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. He also brought internationally known architects to the school to lecture and to lead studio workshops. The faculty designed several residences for themselves, other faculty members, or for a small group of clients interested in new ideas in architecture. Built for the most part on relatively ample, wooded suburban lots, located on what then were the outskirts of the city, a key element in most of the designs is a careful integration of the house with its site.

In 1952, faculty member George Matsumoto began construction of his own house on a steeply sloping tract adjacent to a small stream. Its design shows the same attention to economical, post-and-beam modular construction and careful detailing as is seen in his earlier Richter House design. However, the young Japanese American architect was also strongly influenced by the work of Mies Van der Rohe, and the Matsumoto House demonstrates a Miesian concern with exposed structure and a sense of suspension generated by the use of lightweight wall, floor and ceiling planes to articulate its internal space. The sloping site allowed Matsumoto to put a lower level built of concrete block under the house, a space which contained his studio and which forms a base for the frame box cantilevered above it. The rectangular, flat-roofed mass of the main living areas is reached by a small bridge rising from a Japanese-influenced outdoor court. While the street side of the house presents a mostly-blank facade divided into panels, all of the rooms along the back of the house open with glass doors and windows onto a cantilevered, screened rear porch, extending the living space visually into the wooded hillside beyond. The Matsumoto House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Matsumoto House is located at 821 Runnymede Rd. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.

Henry L. Kamphoefner House

Fadum House

The Fadum House is one of several Modernist houses built in Raleigh from the 1940s to the 1960s. These houses were the manifestation of architectural concepts embraced by the faculty of the School of Design, established in 1948 at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University). Dean Henry Kamphoefner recruited several Modernist architects as faculty members, and was instrumental in influencing other Modernists to come to North Carolina to practice. He also brought internationally known architects to the school to lecture and to lead studio workshops. The faculty designed several residences for themselves, other faculty members, or for a small group of clients interested in new ideas in architecture. Built for the most part on relatively ample, wooded suburban lots, located on what then were the outskirts of the city, a key element in most of the designs is a careful integration of the house with its site.

Designed by James Fitzgibbon, the Fadum House was built from 1949 to 1950. It was located adjacent to the Kamphoefner House, home of the Dean of the School of Design. The Fadum House has a single-slope flat roof supported by large, built-up wood columns, giving it a wedge-shaped section. Built on a two by four module, the house displays finishes throughout of exposed brick, stained and sealed plywood, or tongue-and-groove pine, cypress or redwood. Its deeply cantilevered overhangs, orientation to the southeast, and large expanses of glass allow for supplemental solar heating in the winter. Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian mode of design, the Fadum House presents a mostly blank facade with carport toward the street, while opening up elevations toward a natural site on the sides and rear. Usonian design is characterized by small scale, affordable construction, open plan interiors, integration of interior and exterior spaces, flat roof and large glazed areas such as windows and doors. The Fadum House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Fadum House is located at 3056 Granville Dr. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.

Five Points Neighborhoods, MPS

The Five Points Neighborhoods MPS includes the neighborhoods of Bloomsbury, Vanguard Park, Hayes Barton and Roanoke Park. Located directly north of the Glenwood neighborhood and to the northwest of central Raleigh, the area is roughly bounded on the west by Saint Mary’s St., on the north by Byrd and Oxford sts., and on the east by White Oak Rd., Reaves Dr. and Carson St., and on the south by the Norfolk-Southern (formerly Norfolk and Western) railroad, present-day Wade Ave., and historically, the large parkland of the Methodist Orphanage. Glenwood Ave. intersects with Fairview Rd. and Whitaker Mill Rd. creating the Five Points intersection. The houses of these neighbhorhoods are privately owned, and not open to the public.

Josephus Daniels House

Nationally prominent journalist and statesman Josephus Daniels (1862-1948) resided in this house from 1920 until his death. The two-story house, named Wakestone by Daniels' wife, the former Addie Worth Bagley, is situated on three acres at the edge of Hayes Barton, a suburban 1920s neighborhood northwest of downtown Raleigh. Daniels embodied the complexity of Democratic Party politics in early 20th-century North Carolina. An influential editor and journalist, he promoted progressive concepts such as better public schools, women's suffrage and railroad regulation, yet he also supported the Jim Crow laws which enforced racial segregation. He was a member of the Democratic National Committee for many years, and a close friend of William Jennings Bryan. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Daniels as Secretary of the Navy. Over the next eight years--a tenure equaled only by Gideon Welles under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson--Daniels instituted a series of far-reaching reforms. He introduced compulsory schooling for undereducated sailors, approved the enlistment of women and fought collusive bidding for government contracts. He banned alcoholic beverages from the officers' mess and instead supplied coffee, which was nicknamed "cup of Joe." Although many of his measures alienated businessmen and naval officers, Daniels' actions helped prepare the Navy for its role in World War I. A captured German deck gun, installed in front of Daniels' Raleigh home, commemorates his term of appointment.

During his career, Daniels owned and operated several newspapers, including the Raleigh News & Observer. Upon leaving office, Daniels returned to editorship of the News & Observer and full-time residency at Wakestone. He also remained in close contact with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Daniels. In 1933, newly elected President Roosevelt appointed Daniels as Ambassador to Mexico, where he promoted Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy with Latin America. In 1941, Daniels resigned his post because of his wife's ill health, and returned to Raleigh. After Addie Daniels died in 1943, the S.S. Addie Daniels was commissioned in her honor. Josephus Daniels died in Raleigh in 1948 at the age of 85. In 1950, the house was purchased by the Raleigh Masons, and became the headquarters for the Masonic Temple of Raleigh. While the organization has made several external and internal alterations (most significantly a late 1950s rear addition), work has been largely compatible in design and materials with the original residence.

The Josephus Daniels House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Josephus Daniels House, a National Historic Landmark, is located at 1520 Caswell St. Privately owned, the building is not open to the public.

Mordecai House

The Mordecai House is the oldest residence in Raleigh on its original foundation. Closely associated with the founding Lane family, the property is representative of the plantations that once dominated the local landscape. In recent years, the building has also come to symbolize public commitment to local historic preservation. At one time the house was the seat of one of the largest farms in Wake County, encompassing more than 5,000 acres. The oldest portion of the home was built about 1785 by Joel Lane for his son Henry. Seven years later, Joel Lane sold 1,000 acres immediately south of the house to the state as the site of the new capital city of Raleigh.

The house takes its name from Moses Mordecai, who twice married into the family of Henry Lane--first to daughter Margaret and after her death to her sister Ann. Before his death in 1824, Moses Mordecai hired William Nichols, then State Architect, to enlarge the original house. This addition is considered a significant work of Nichols, who had previously overseen the remodeling of the State House. In 1826, with the completion of the four new rooms, the Mordecai house was transformed into a Greek Revival mansion. The Mordecai family was prominent in local and state affairs. Jacob, Moses' father, founded a girls' school in Warrenton, North Carolina. Moses was a prominent lawyer and member of the 1805 Court of Conference. Moses Mordecai had two sons, Henry and Jacob, and one daughter, Ellen, by his first wife and one daughter, Margaret, by his second. Henry was a prosperous planter at Mordecai House and served in the State Legislature. His daughter Margaret and her descendants owned and occupied Mordecai House until 1967.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the subdivision and sale of Mordecai lands helped feed Raleigh's expansion as a city. In 1867, Henry Mordecai donated a wooded parcel east of the city to establish a Confederate cemetery; another plot became the county's first Hebrew Cemetery. The adjacent Oakwood Cemetery, chartered in 1869, eventually lent its name to the large suburb that developed in the adjoining wooded land, earlier known as Mordecai Grove. In 1974, Oakwood became the first neighborhood in Raleigh to be listed in the National Register

Sales of Mordecai property continued until 1967, when the house and its surrounding block were put on the market. Spurred by local preservationists, the city purchased the property, turning it over to the Raleigh Historic Sites Commission to supervise and develop as a historic park. The commission was able to obtain many original Mordecai furnishings, as well as preserve the family papers and library. Mordecai Square Historic Park is now managed by City of Raleigh's Parks and Recreation Department. The Mordecai House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

Mordecai House is located at 1 Mimosa St. in the Mordecai Square Historic Park, about one half mile north of the State Capitol, just off Wake Forest Rd. It is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday from 9:00am to 4:00pm, and Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. Tours begin on the hour, with the last one departing at 3:00pm; closed major holidays. There is a fee for guided tours. For further information call 919-857-4364 or visit house's website.

St. Augustine's College Campus

Located 10 blocks east of the State Capitol, St. Augustine's College was founded in 1867, an outgrowth of Christian missionary work in the Reconstruction Era South. With Shaw University, it established Raleigh as a center of educational opportunity for freedmen, and over the years has graduated many of the region's most accomplished African Americans. Among its early faculty members was Rev. Henry Beard Delany, whose daughters Bessie and Sadie, as centenarians, recounted their childhood days on campus in the national bestseller Having Our Say.

Affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church, St. Augustine's began as a normal school with a technical and trade-related program, and subsequently adopted a liberal arts curriculum. The church further extended its mission by establishing St. Agnes Hospital and Training School for Nurses, to provide medical care for and by African Americans. Historically, the school also has served as an anchor of the predominantly black neighborhoods of Idlewild and College Park, which flank it.

The evolving nature of the school is reflected in its varied architecture. The campus' earliest buildings are clustered around a central, landscaped oval and near Oakwood Avenue, which runs east to west past the school. St. Augustine's Chapel (1895) was constructed of stone in the Gothic style; the Romanesque Benson Library building (1896), which is now part of Taylor Hall (1902), and St. Agnes Hospital (1909) are also built from stone. The Hunter, Delany and Cheshire buildings, dating from the early 20th century, are constructed of brick in the Classical Revival style. While contemporary buildings of the school's outer grounds provide a modernist contrast, the campus core remains a tangible bequest from St. Augustine's pioneering beginnings. St. Augustine's Chapel and St. Agnes Hospital are designated Raleigh Historic Landmarks.

The St. Augustine's College Historic District is located at 1315 Oakwood Ave. Buildings and grounds are open during daytime school hours. For further information visit the school's website.

Oakwood Historic District

Oakwood is Raleigh's only intact 19th-century neighborhood. It was the first area in the city to be listed in the National Register, and is Raleigh's oldest and largest local historic district. The development of Oakwood began shortly after the Civil War. The locally prominent Mordecai family donated a tract east of the city as a cemetery for Confederate soldiers; in 1869, a larger, private cemetery, named Oakwood, was chartered immediately adjoining it.

Sales of residential parcels just to the west, in the wooded area known as Mordecai Grove, began at about the same time. Development was slow but steady, with the majority of residences built between 1890 and 1930. Reflecting this extended construction period, homes display a diversity of architectural styles including Queen Anne, Second Empire, Classical Revival and Bungalow. The narrow lots, small front yards, large front porches and tree-lined sidewalks unify and give an intimacy to this diverse residential district.

Two lot-sized parks and a small commercial area are also located within the approximately 25-block neighborhood. Oakwood's original residents mostly plied middle class trades, walking to work in the nearby downtown. Following World War I, however, as the automobile came into general use and more fashionable neighborhoods developed on Raleigh's outskirts, many second generation families moved away. Numerous residences were subsequently divided into apartments or rooming houses. Upkeep often lagged, and by mid-century the area seemed destined for urban renewal. Around 1970, however, the renovation of several houses sparked an interest in neighborhood revitalization. The announcement in 1972 of plans for a major thoroughfare through the heart of Oakwood united residents, and the Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood was formed. The thoroughfare plan was ultimately thwarted and neighborhood revitalization continues. Oakwood is now one of Raleigh's major tourist attractions. It is a tangible reminder of Southern urban life during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but is also a vital modern community.

Oakwood Historic District, directly east of the Executive Mansion, is roughly bounded by Person St. on the west, Franklin St. on the north, Watauga and Linden sts. on the east, and Edenton and Morson sts. on the south. Walking tour maps are available at the Raleigh Capital Area Visitor Services, located in the lobby of the North Carolina Museum of History at 5 E. Edenton St. For further information visit the neighborhood's website, which includes information on the Annual Garden Tour and December's Candlelight Tour. Oakwood Cemetery (www.historicoakwood.com) is open to visitors daily, from 8:00am to 5:00pm in the winter, and until 6:00pm the rest of the year.

Tucker House

One of the grand dames of early 20th-century Raleigh, the Neo-Classical Revival Tucker House was repaired after fire destroyed parts of it in the 1930s. Forty years later, it was preserved by moving it a full city block from its original location. The residence was built for Garland Scott Tucker, a Raleigh businessman. Tucker was the founder of G. S. Tucker and Company Furniture, which he expanded into a chain of stores in eastern North Carolina. Tucker married Toler Moore of Tarboro, North Carolina, and in 1904, the first of their four children was born. About 1915, the Tuckers built this house at 420 North Blount Street, then considered the premier residential street in Raleigh. The elegant home was a bit unusual for its time--it not only had a bathroom downstairs, but two more upstairs. A descendant recalls the layout--a reception hall, library, radio room, telephone room and dining room downstairs, as well as the kitchen, bathroom and a butler's pantry--in the pre-World War I years when household servants were a fixture. There are also four fireplaces downstairs and five bedrooms and a sleeping porch upstairs. The home boasts fine mahogany woodwork throughout, dark paneling on the walls and beautiful hardwood floors, which incorporate Greek key designs.

As the Tucker's family home, the mansion was the scene of a constant round of formal teas, receptions and parties for many years. When necessary, it was also used for family funerals, with the deceased lying in state in one of the richly appointed rooms while the funeral service was performed. One night in the 1930s, as the family slept in the upstairs bedrooms, fire broke out on the first floor. The people escaped without injury, but damage was severe in some downstairs rooms. The damage was repaired, however, and life went on. The Tucker children grew up and moved away. Garland S. Tucker, Sr. died in 1949. Mrs. Tucker continued to reside there until her death in 1972, when the house passed into the hands of their only son, Garland S. Tucker, Jr. At that time, many homes surrounding the Tucker House were falling to demolition, as the state government pursued pressing needs for expansion. In 1975, Tucker donated the house to the city of Raleigh. The city responded by moving the house one block, to 414 N. Person Street, there to take on new life as a center for community and private events. The city renovated the mansion and furnished it with antique furniture. Today is serves as a community meeting house for the adjacent Mordecai and Oakwood neighborhoods, and as a rental facility. The Tucker House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark

The Tucker House is managed by the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department. Those wishing to visit may schedule a time by calling 919-831-6009. The house is also available for weddings, receptions, small parties, conferences and similar functions.

Peace College Main Building

Dramatically sited at the northern end of Wilmington Street, Peace College's Main Building is an imposing Greek Revival building, architecturally lightened by Italianate accents. Begun c.1859, the four-story brick edifice is one of the largest antebellum buildings surviving in Raleigh. The facade is dominated by a massive central portico supported by four masonry Doric columns. A sawnwork balustrade runs between the columns on each of the porch's three upper levels. At the rear is a central projecting wing, creating a T-shaped composition.

The building's significance is magnified by its historical association with the Reconstruction Era Freedmen's Bureau and the growth of higher education in the capital city. Peace Institute was incorporated in 1858 as a Presbyterian-affiliated school for young women. Its namesake was local merchant William Peace, who donated the land and $10,000 for construction of a building. When the Civil War began, the partially completed building was pressed into service as a hospital. In 1865, the building became the district headquarters of the Freedmen's Bureau, the government body set up to help newly freed African Americans find education and employment.

The Freedmen's Bureau use of the building ended in 1869, and the building underwent extensive renovations, including the addition of the sawnwork trim. However, its use as a school was not entirely assured until 1872, when a joint-stock company made up mainly of members of the Presbyterian Church funded a curriculum of "three courses of instruction: Primary, Preparatory and Collegiate." Growth was slow, but by 1882 there were more than 200 students enrolled. In 1914, Peace became the first accredited junior college in the South; until 1968, it also offered a four-year high school program. In 1995, the curriculum moved to baccalaureate status. Throughout the years, the Main Building has retained its multi-purpose function, housing classrooms, offices and social rooms. New buildings on campus echo the Main Building's architectural forms, but in location and scale defer to the original building's visual dominance. Peace College is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Peace College Main Building is located just north of downtown at 15 E. Peace St. It is open during the college's regular operating hours and for special college functions. For information, contact the college at 919-508-2000 or through their website.

Capehart House

The Capehart House is among Raleigh's finest surviving examples of the Queen Anne style. Its dramatic massing of towers, turrets, dormers and pediments is complemented by a rich combination of colors and textures, including pressed tan brick, rough stone, patterned slate shingles, stained glass and elaborate wood ornamentation. Built in 1898 in the Blount Street area, just north of downtown, the residence added to the neighborhood's rising reputation as an enclave of the well-to-do. The home's designer was Adolphus G. Bauer, a notable local architect whose work included Norburn Terrace, a towered residence off Wake Forest Road, and the now-demolished Baptist Female Seminary and Park Hotel.

The house was constructed for Lucy Catherine Capehart and her second husband, B. A. "Baldy" Capehart. Mrs. Capehart had inherited considerable wealth from the estate of her father, former State Attorney General Bartholomew Moore, and her first husband, Dr. Peyton Henry. B. A. Capehart died in 1899, shortly after he and Lucy moved into the house. Lucy continued to reside there--an invalid for much of the time--until her death in 1908. Subsequently, the house was the home of sheriff H. H. Crocker until 1947, when it was divided into apartments. Since 1971, the house has served as offices for the State Government. In 1979, when much of the surrounding neighborhood was being razed for the state's new Government Mall, the house was moved from 403 North Wilmington Street to its present location on Blount Street.

The Capehart House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Capehart House is located at 424 North Blount St. The building is open during the regular office hours of the State Department of Administrative Hearings.

Hawkins-Hartness House

The Hawkins-Hartness House is one of a group of large residences built on North Blount Street during the late 19th century. Collectively, they made the street one of that era's most desirable Raleigh addresses. In its architecture and materials, however, the Hawkins-Hartness House remains boldly individualistic. On October 26, 1881, Dr. Alexander B. Hawkins of Leon County, Florida, purchased the property at the southeast corner of Blount and North streets. Family tradition says that Hawkins' wife, Martha, was particularly fond of the frame house that stood there. The Hawkinses then returned to their home in Florida, after asking Dr. Hawkins' brother, Dr. William J. Hawkins of Raleigh, to have the frame house renovated for them during their absence. When they returned, the story goes, the Hawkinses found the brother had instead moved the original house across town, and in its place built a new brick house of his own design for them. Mrs. Hawkins is believed to have subsequently had the 92-foot verandah added to modify what she considered to be the overly severe appearance of the exterior. Whatever their original reaction, the Hawkinses found the house enough to their liking that they lived there the rest of their lives.

Raleigh did not have a citywide water system until 1889. To secure water for washing, Dr. Hawkins had a windmill installed in the backyard to pump water from a well into a tank located in the attic. A 6,000-gallon rainwater cistern in the north garden furnished filtered drinking water for both Hawkins house and the Governor's Mansion, built in 1891, immediately to the south.

Dr. Hawkins died in 1922. Mrs. Sadie Erwin, wife of Durham, North Carolina, manufacturer William A. Erwin, then acquired the house, but the Erwins apparently never lived in the house. In 1928, it was purchased by Mrs. Annie Sloan Hartness, whose husband, James A. Hartness, served as North Carolina Secretary of State between 1929 and 1931. In 1969, during a wave of state government expansion north from its historical focus around the Capitol, the house was bought by the state. Today the building serves as the offices of the Lieutenant Governor. The Hawkins-Hartness House is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Hawkins-Hartness House is located at 310 N. Blount St. The building is open during the regular operating hours of the offices of the Lieutenant Governor of the State of North Carolina.

Heck-Andrews House

Among the first grand residences built in Raleigh after the Civil War, the Heck-Andrews House set the tone for the subsequent development of North Blount Street as an enclave of the well-to-do. Industrialist Jonathan McGee Heck had the towering Second Empire house constructed for his wife Mattie in 1869 on what was then the edge of town. Heck was born in western Virginia in 1831. A Confederate officer early in the Civil War, he was captured but subsequently paroled. Heck then turned to manufacturing armaments for the Confederacy, an activity that seeded his fortune. After the war, Heck expanded his wealth through real estate sales and development. It was his wife, however, who pursued the purchase of the Blount Street lot.

During the war, Mattie Heck and her children had led a nomadic existence. In 1866, the family secured a plantation in Warren County, but rural life did not agree with Mrs. Heck. With the purchase of the one-acre lot in Raleigh, the capital city became the Hecks' permanent home. On July 22, 1869, Raleigh builders Wilson and Waddell were contracted to erect "a three story house, with tower, slate and french roof, all materials to be of the very best, and to be put up in the very best manner." The building's architect was G. S. H. Appleget, who also designed the Andrews-Duncan house just across North Street, and Shaw University's Estey Hall.

Life at the house was opulent and active. Photographs show the interior lavishly decorated in the style of the day, with heavy draperies, lace curtains, mahogany furniture and plush carpets. Eight of the Hecks' 12 children were born at the house. One daughter, Fannie, grew to national prominence as president of the Women's Missionary Union from 1890 until her death in 1915.

Jonathan Heck died in 1894. In 1916, Mattie Heck deeded the house to daughter Mattie Heck Boushall. In 1921, the house was acquired by prominent Raleigh attorney A. B. Andrews, Jr. who had grown up in the Andrews-Duncan house across the street. He is said to have bought the property for his wife, Helen, who sadly died before their move was completed. Andrews moved in nonetheless, frequently entertaining at the house, escorting guests to the top of the four-story tower to view the changing Raleigh skyline. After Andrews' death in 1946, the house experienced a period of decline. In 1987, the state government, which had acquired most of the other large residences on Blount Street as office space, secured controlling interest in the house. Recent stabilization measures have included complete refurbishment of the exterior. Plans are now under development for an adaptive use of the interior of this designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The Heck-Andrews House is located at 309 N. Blount St. It is currently open for special events only.

North Carolina Executive Mansion

Since 1891, the Executive Mansion has served as the official residence of North Carolina's governors. Today, as when it was constructed, it serves as an architectural anchor of the Blount Street neighborhood. Its predecessor was a large brick residence built in 1814, at the south end of Fayetteville Street (today's Raleigh Memorial Auditorium stands on the site). Neglect and the damage of war led to that building's abandonment in 1865. For a quarter century afterward, the state's governors resided in private homes or hotels. Planning for a new executive residence began in the 1870s under Governor Zebulon B. Vance.

Burke Square, northeasternmost of the city's four original public squares, was selected as the house site. Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan of Philadelphia and his assistant Adolphus Bauer presented their plans in 1883; work began shortly thereafter.Bauer was subsequently to design several other prominent downtown buildings, including the nearby Capehart House. Supervising the work was Colonel W. G. Hicks, superintendent of the State Prison, who economized through use of local materials and convict labor. The initials of several brick-making prisoners can be seen today, etched into the red sidewalk pavers. The house was finished in 1890 and occupied by Governor Daniel G. Fowle on January 5, 1891. Over the years, besides housing the governor's family, the building has been the setting for public functions and social events and has welcomed numerous guests of state. Despite several internal modernizations, the building's exterior is virtually unaltered from its original appearance.

The Executive Mansion is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The North Carolina Executive Mansion is located at 201 N. Blount St. Its first floor is open for tours on a frequent basis, particularly during the holidays; hours vary by season. Call the Capital Area Visitor Services at 919-807-7950 for tour times.

Capitol Area Historic District

The Capitol Area Historic District is a blend of architecture, landscape design and civic art, embodying more than 200 years of local history. Once the geographical center of the city, the area remains Raleigh's historical heart. The district takes its name from its pre-eminent feature. When the streets of Raleigh were laid out in 1792, Union (now Capitol) Square--the site of the State House--was placed at their core. The street grid is the historic district's oldest design legacy.

The city's earliest surviving buildings stand just east of the square. Haywood Hall, built c. 1799, rises on a large landscaped lot that recalls the house's once semi-rural setting. Opposite it is the White-Holman House (c. 1799, with a late 19th-century addition), containing some the city's finest Federal-style interior woodwork. Nearby is the brick State Bank of North Carolina (1813), the state's oldest extant financial building. The collection of early 20th-century residences and apartments built between reflects the downtown area's subsequent urbanization.

Government buildings and churches dominate the district's central portion. The granite, Greek Revival-style Capitol, completed in 1840, stands in the center of the Capitol Square, its cruciform design aligning with the city's four axial streets. Dotting the surrounding lawn are more than a dozen monuments honoring North Carolina soldiers and statesmen, framed by the 1928 Olmstead Brothers landscape plan and ancient trees. Facing the Capitol are six large government buildings, most with granite facades echoing the character of the Capitol. The oldest (1888) is the Supreme Court and State Library Building (now the Labor Building ); the newest, the Highway Building (1950). Others date from the early 20th century, reflecting the state's growth during that era.

Anchoring the corners of the square are four churches, two of antebellum Gothic Revival style: Christ Episcopal Church (1854) and the First Baptist Church (1859). The Romanesque First Presbyterian Church dates from 1900; the Gothic-style First Baptist Church on Wilmington Street was built in 1904 by black members of the other First Baptist Church. To the west, the district also encompasses All Saints Chapel (1875) and the associated Church of the Good Shepherd (1914), plus the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (1922), with its attendant rectory (1917), convent (1927) and school (1938).

Examples of adaptive use attest to the district's on-going evolution. Among them are the 1887 Raleigh Water Tower, now serving as the chapter headquarters of the American Institute of Architects, and the 1903 Dr. A. W. Goodwin House, a classically-styled mansion that today houses the Democratic Party's state headquarters. While new parking lots and peripheral construction have had their effects, the district retains a high level of architectural integrity. Its early buildings and mature streetscape provide a visual counterpoint to the city's present burgeoning growth, recalling the tree-shaded small town that North Carolina's capital once was.

The Capitol Area Historic District surrounds the Capitol building, including Edenton, Blount, Morgan, Wilmington, Salisbury, Hillsborough, McDowell sts. and New Bern Ave. The Capital Area Visitor Services is located in the lobby of the North Carolina Museum of History at 5 East Edenton St. and is open Monday-Friday from 8:00am to 5:00pm, Saturday from 10:00am to 4:00pm, and Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm; closed major holidays. Call 919-807-7950 or visit the center's website for further information.

North Carolina State Capitol

North Carolina's State Capitol is one of the Nation's most intact examples of a Greek Revival public building. Built of local stone, the building replaced the previous stuccoed-brick State House destroyed by fire in 1831. Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis of New York served as principal architects, while the supervising architect, David Paton from Scotland, is credited with much of the interior's design. The cornerstone of the building was laid July 4, 1833. To haul locally quarried granite to the building site, an experimental wooden-track railway was developed, using mule power to pull the cars. In the spring of 1840 the building was completed. The final cost exceeded $530,000--more than six times the state's 1840 revenue.

The Capitol is roughly cruciform in plan, three stories tall crowned by a copper dome. The interior features a central rotunda open from the ground floor to the top of the dome. The two other major rooms are the house and senate chambers, each two full stories in height. The building stands in the center of Capitol Square, largest of the five public squares established in Raleigh's original 1792 plan. Large trees and public monuments surrounding the building add to its air of permanence, formality and importance. The layout of Capitol Square dates from 1928, according to a plan designed by the Olmstead Brothers.

All branches of state government were housed in the Capitol until the Supreme Court moved into its own building in 1888. The General Assembly met in the Capitol until 1963, when it moved into the Legislative Building. Offices of the Governor and Secretary of State remain in the building. While several remodelings and additions to the building have been suggested over the years, actual changes have been minimal. Recent work has restored the original senate and house chambers. The North Carolina State Capitol is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

The North Carolina State Capitol, a National Historic Landmark, is located on Capitol Square in the heart of downtown Raleigh. The building is open Monday-Friday from 8:00am to 5:00pm, Saturday from 10:00am to 4:00pm and Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm; closed major holidays. Guided tours are offered Monday-Saturday at 11:00am and 2:00pm, and on Sunday at 2:00pm. The grounds are open at all times. Call 919-733-4994 or visit the capitol's website for further information. The North Carolina State Capitol has also been documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey.

The North Carolina State Capitol is the subject of an online-lesson plan produced by Teaching with Historic Places, a National Register program that offers classroom-ready lesson plans on properties listed in the National Register. To learn more, visit the Teaching with Historic Places home page.

Christ Episcopal Church

Christ Church is the oldest example of the early Gothic Revival style in the South. It was a major commission for Richard Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church in New York and founder of the American Institute of Architects, who designed the building in 1848. The sanctuary was consecrated in 1854. The adjacent bell tower was completed in 1861, constructed of different colored stone and topped with an ancient symbol of the church--a gilded weathercock. It has been said that after Sherman’s troops went through Raleigh during the Civil War the tower’s rooster was the only chicken left in town.

Christ Church was organized in 1821 by Episcopal churches from the eastern section of the state as part of a concerted effort to establish churches in central North Carolina. A frame sanctuary, designed by state architect William Nichols, was completed later that decade. The first rector, John Stark Ravenscroft, became the first Bishop of North Carolina in 1823. He was buried beneath the chancel of the original church building in 1830 and was re-interred under the new chancel in 1850.

Subsequent changes to the sanctuary have been relatively minor. Beginning in the 1870s, the church’s original clear glass windows were gradually replaced by memorials of stained glass, the last installed in 1897. While modifications have also been made to the altar and lighting, the majority of the interior remains unchanged. By contrast, expansion of the adjoining church facilities has been significant. In all construction, close attention has been paid to the sanctuary’s Gothic style, and the use of stone. In 1914, Hobart Brown Upjohn, grandson of the church’s original architect, designed a parish house and chapel connected to the sanctuary by arched cloisters. The latter were incorporated into major additions to the parish house completed in 1941 and 1970.

Church expansion has twice required moving neighboring landmarks. The 1813 State Bank Building, which served as the church rectory from 1873 to 1951, was relocated in 1968 to allow enlargement of the parish house; the two-story brick building was placed on steel rails and moved 100 feet east. In 1981, expansion of church parking led to the moving of the 1906 Montgomery House a block southeast. Christ Church is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

Christ Church, a National Historic Landmark, is located at 120 E. Edenton St. It is open to the public for services and sponsored events. Call 919-834-6259 or visit the church’s website for more information. Christ Church has also been documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey.

State Bank of North Carolina

The oldest surviving commercial building in Raleigh, the State Bank was constructed in 1813 to house the first state-sponsored banking institution in North Carolina. The two-story brick building has since gone through several uses--and a 100-foot move--to serve again as a banking facility. The State Bank was incorporated in 1810, with its central office in Raleigh and branches in six other communities. During the War of 1812, there was justifiable fear that the British would attack North Carolina’s coast, and all hard cash was moved inland to State Banks at Raleigh and Tarboro. The action sufficiently strengthened the main branch to spur construction of the present building. The bank’s first president