Named for Phares Yates, whose family operated it from 1869 to 1948, Yates Mill is the only water-powered mill building remaining in Wake County. Remodeled at various times, its present size and configuration date to the 1850s. Prior to closing in 1953 for lack of demand, it was utilized for lumber manufacturing, corn and wheat milling, and wool carding. The mill is now part of a county park with hiking trails and picnic areas in addition to the historic structure.
Date: ca. 1756
]]>This bungalow in the Forest Park neighborhood was the location of meetings of the Women’s Collective Coffeehouse, an early lesbian-focused organization in the first years of the gay liberation movement. Few places associated with lesbians have been identified in Raleigh. In the period, the house was owned by the Unitarian Universal Fellowship of Raleigh, which made the space available to the collective. The UUF campus on Wade Ave. was also evaluated under this project for association with other LGBTQIA+ focused groups.
Build Date: ca. 1917
LGBTQIA+ Associated: Ca. 1978-1984
]]>This Gothic Revival church, erected in 1910 to replace an 1873 wood-frame chapel, is the earliest and most prominent surviving institutional building in the once-rural freedman's community of Oberlin. The church sustained heavy damage from Hurricane Hazel in 1954 but retains its Gothic Revival style despite several repairs and renovations. With the exception of the castellated tower, expanded southeast entry, and stained-glass windows, the original building appears much as it did in 1910.
Date: 1910-1911
]]>The first apartment building built west of the North Carolina State University campus, the Wilmont takes its name from the subdivision located directly to the north. Daniel Allen, a real estate entrepreneur who developed the Wilmont, Hayes-Barton, and Mordecai neighborhoods, and builder C.C. Pierce constructed the Wilmont in 1926. The four-story U-plan building features Spanish Colonial-influenced details, including a stepped parapet with a green tile ornamental roof, an arched parapet piercing the tile roof at the center of each bay, and brick arches. The central bay has a concrete panel with the word "Wilmont" carved into it. Private residences.
Date: 1926
]]>Willis Graves, an African American brick mason, built this two-and-a-half-story frame Queen Anne house soon after buying the land in 1884. The square corner turret and front bay window with roof pediment are placed on a basic I-house form. The house, with its wrap-around porch and stained-glass windows in shingled gables, was considered one of the most stylish residences built in the Oberlin community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mr. Graves, also a justice of the peace and leader in the Wilson A. M. E. Church, was one of Oberlin's most respected citizens. Private residence.
Date: Between 1884 and 1891
]]>For more than 60 years, Willie Virginia Otey Kay created elegant, custom gowns which made her one of North Carolina’s most sought after clothing designers. Born at 125 West Cabarrus Street, she was the youngest of eight children. Kay graduated from Shaw University in 1912 with a degree in Home Economics, winning the school’s dressmaking competition along the way.
She married John Walcott Kay and moved to Wilmington, but after his death in 1927, she returned to Raleigh with five children to support. With help from her sisters, Josephine, Inez, Gloria, Constance, and June, she opened her own dressmaking business. The Otey name soon became known across the state for fine formal wear, serving both Black and white clients.
Kay remained deeply connected to her faith as a lifelong member of Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church. Her children later honored her legacy by dedicating a stained-glass window in her memory.
]]>Peace Institute, chartered in 1857, was named for William Peace, who contributed eight acres and $10,000 toward the establishment of a Presbyterian school for girls. The Main Building is an impressive Greek Revival structure with Italianate accents. Used during the Civil War as a hospital, it then became a Freedman's Bureau. During Reconstruction, the building was reclaimed for use as a girls' school.
Date: ca. 1861
]]>William Henley Deitrick, a prolific Raleigh architect, led the city’s largest firm during the building boom of the mid-twentieth century. His work embraces tradition and modernism, new builds as well as adaptive reuse and historic preservation. His 1936 house is one of Raleigh’s very best examples of the Georgian Revival style. It exhibits textbook Georgian details—symmetry, tracery, modillions, pediments—layered onto a floor plan fashioned for “modern” life. Tooled mortar joints, Flemish-bond brickwork, and cast-iron rosettes evidence impressive craftsmanship. Inside, a floating stair hugs a curved wall in the entrance hall, the unpainted birch rail echoing its serpentine line. Robust paneling and wainscot characterize public rooms, while modest Georgian detailing decorates private spaces upstairs.
Date: 1936
]]>In the early twentieth century, you could buy a house kit from the Sears catalog. The kit included plans, instructions, lumber, and other necessary building supplies. The Holleman House is an example of the “Americus” plan from Sears. It is a modified Foursquare dwelling with Craftsman-style detailing. The porch posts are classic “Americus” features, as is the interior plan.
William and Georgia Holleman purchased an unimproved parcel in the developing Cameron Park neighborhood in 1925. Deed restrictions instructed homeowners and developers to build a house costing at least $3,000 and standing twenty feet back from the street. The Hollemans likely built the house right away and moved in with their then-teenaged daughter. William Holleman, a salesman, managed a local outlet of Armour & Company, a wholesaler of meat and other provisions. They lived in the house until 1933, when they lost it due to Depression-era debts.
ca. 1925
]]>The 1915 Curtis House, a two-story Late Victorian/Neoclassical dwelling, is a stylish family home built by William A. Curtis for his mother and siblings. After the death of his father, William, his mother, and his eldest siblings pursued work and education to help support the younger Curtis siblings. William worked three jobs and his mother ran a hairdressing business in the previous family home on New Bern Avenue. In 1913, William purchased parcels in the newly developing African American neighborhood of Lincoln Park and built the house around 1915. Notable architectural features are the leaded and beveled glass in windows and the front door, classical columns and balustrade at the wraparound porch, and corbelled brick chimneys. Neoclassical style is evident inside, particularly at mantels and the grand center-hall stair.
Date: ca. 1915
]]>Also known as Whitehall, the original late Georgian/early Federal-style dwelling was built for secretary of state William White. The house has undergone major changes including the addition of a Victorian wing and an about face when the City of Raleigh turned it around from its original Morgan St. frontage to face New Bern Ave. Private residence.
Date: ca. 1799
]]>The City of Raleigh erected this octagonal brick tower to house its water supply in 1887; the structure included an attached two-story office building. Prominent Raleigh architect William Henley Dietrick removed the defunct tank in 1938 and converted the tower and building for his own office use, marking Raleigh's first adaptive use of a historic property. Dietrick eventually protected the structure with covenants and donated it to the N.C. Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which used the structure for its headquarters office. It continues to serve office uses.
Date: 1887
]]>Washington School was founded after the Civil War to educate newly freed African Americans at the corner of McDowell and South Streets. As Raleigh grew, a new school building was constructed in 1923–1924 to serve the rising number of students. For many years, Washington Graded and High School was the only secondary school available to Black students in the city, a role it held until John W. Ligon Junior–Senior High School opened in 1953. The school later integrated in 1971.
In 1982, Washington became part of Raleigh’s magnet program, offering a Gifted & Talented curriculum for elementary students. Its long legacy in public education was recognized in 2005, when the school was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
]]>This was the first public high school for African Americans in Raleigh and continued as the only such school until 1953. Many influential members of the Raleigh African American community were Washington High School graduates. The building is an example of the Jacobean style popular for school buildings in the 1920s. The architect, C. A. Gadsden Sayre, who was noted for his school designs, employed a sophisticated combination of stone and glazed terra cotta accents on the brick structure. The building now houses the Washington Gifted and Talented Elementary Magnet School of the Wake County Public School System.
Date: 1923-1924; 1927; 1948-1950; 1996
]]>Charles E. Hartage designed this building in a symmetrical Classical Revival style. The two-story, E-plan, brick structure with a central entrance pavilion features a colossal wooden portico with Tuscan-columns. Hartage was also the architect for Smedes Hall renovations and Pittman Hall at Saint Mary's School and the Church of the Good Shepherd at S. McDowell and Hillsborough streets. This building symbolizes the development of social services as an attempt to aid the indigent, aged, and disabled at a time when no other options existed.
Date: 1913-1914
]]>Vallie Lewis Henderson was a life-long Oakwood resident and champion. She was a major force in fighting 1970s plans for a highway that would have paved over a broad swath of the neighborhood. In addition to her work fighting the roadway plan, as a founder and active member of the Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood, Henderson was active in garden clubs and beautification efforts in her home neighborhood for decades. She and her husband Archie lived in this house for most of the twentieth century, and created and tended the gardens here. The house and its landscape are locally significant for their association with Henderson and her activism for Oakwood’s preservation and work in beautification through gardening. Private Residence
Dates: ca. 1900, ca. 1920, ca. 1953
]]>Union Grove Baptist Church took root around 1905 under the leadership of Reverend Alex A. Jones, beginning as a humble wooden sanctuary on South Saunders Street. By 1935, members like recording artist Hamp Jones who journeyed from South Carolina in search of new opportunities during the Great Depression. Jones and others found the small Baptist congregation and helped raise the wooden church that still stands today. While much of the surrounding neighborhood was erased by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, Union Grove Baptist Church endured, becoming the lone surviving spiritual landmark of its community. Its doors remain open, carrying forward more than a century of faith, resilience, and fellowship in Raleigh.
]]>Dr. Henry Martin Tupper founded the church in 1866 as Second Baptist Church, providing religious services and classes for African Americans, including theological training for preachers, adult education, and eventually high school and grade school lessons. Eventually, classes outgrew the church and moved to the Raleigh Institute, later Shaw University. Dr. Tupper served the university as its first president. In 1912, a Gothic Revival frame church replaced the 1866 building; renovations in 1957 included the addition of brick veneer, new windows, and buttresses. The 1940 name change to Tupper Memorial honors its founder, who died in 1893.
Date: 1912, renovated in 1957 and 1976
]]>This rare surviving carriage house, which escaped the 1968 demolition of the Tucker Mansion, has unusually detailed features for an outbuilding. The patterned shingle walls and multi-colored slate roof are typical of the Queen Anne style. The building also survived a second demolition threat, rescued through a joint effort by the City of Raleigh and Arts Together.
Date: Late 19th Century
]]>Designed by Jerome Robert Cerny, a noted architect of residential estate homes in the Chicago area, and constructed by local builder John F. Danielson, this house is a rare example of the Norman French style in Raleigh. The residence is clad in Wake County granite and features a distinctive multicolored slate roof. The landscape was designed by Charles F. Gillette, a prominent twentieth century landscape architect in the southeast. Commissioned by the owner of the Raleigh Dental Laboratory, Truman G. Williams and his wife, Annie Laurie Snow Williams, the house and gardens have been well preserved and retain a high degree of original material. Private residence.
Date: 1939
]]>The Trinity House is Wake County's oldest surviving brick house. Despite an expansion in the nineteenth century and extensive remodeling in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the house retains original details like the Flemish-bond brick walls (visible inside but covered by stucco at the exterior), a steeply pitched side-gable roof, and interior chimneys. As late as the 1960s, the house still had Federal-era mantels and six-panel doors. Private residence.
Date: ca. 1800
]]>This much-altered house is one of the oldest in Raleigh. In 1851, the dwelling faced south with a side-hall-plan, weather boarded walls, and wood roof shingles. Alterations before 1881 included the Queen Anne stair rail and newel. A 1920s remodel included brick veneer, an expanded front porch, vestibule, sunroom, and slate roof. The cornice returns and Doric porch columns added Colonial Revival style from that period. A 2012 fire nearly destroyed the house, but the rehabilitation revealed its structural systems, helping date the sections. William Thompson, the first owner and builder, also built desks and chairs for the State Capitol chambers.
Date: ca. 1851, 1871, 1921-6, 2012
]]>The Mecca is a Raleigh institution. Greek immigrant Nick Dombalis and his wife Helen opened The Mecca Luncheonette on Fayetteville Street in 1930. They bought this building in 1937 and moved the restaurant. Like the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, The Mecca quickly became destination where lawmakers and downtown professionals gathered for lunch and networking. Politicians especially found The Mecca a great place to meet Raleigh voters and business people and find out their take on issues. Also of note is the neon marquee sign, a remnant from a time when such signs were commonplace in downtown Raleigh’s central business district. The restaurant is still in the Dombalis family; four generations have run The Mecca since it first served lunch on Fayetteville Street.
Date: ca. 1880, 1937
]]>The Italianate-style plantation home of prominent citizen William Montford Boylan is a landmark at the northern entrance to the Boylan Heights Historic District. Designed by English architect William Percival, the house features deep bracketed eaves, round-arched and segmented-arch windows, and a polygonal cupola at the roof. A local church altered the dwelling for religious services, but Montford Hall has since been restored to its original use. Private residence.
Date: 1858
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