Charles McGee Heck (1881-1952) chaired the physics department at North Carolina State College (now University). He was also an inventor, historian, and advocate. Heck built a meteorological station in his backyard and became nationally known for his forecasting tools. He raised funds to feed people in newly-formed China in 1913 and organized Depression-era infrastructure projects in the state. Charles and Maude Heck’s unusual, ca. 1920 house combines Craftsman and Italianate styles and is said to have been designed by Heck. He also drew the floor plans for the physics department in Daniels Hall at State and had grown up in the distinctive Second Empire-style Heck House at 309 N. Blount Street.
Build Date: 1912
]]>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
]]>Sears catalog kit houses populate several 1920s suburbs in Raleigh, particularly Mordecai Place. This modified Foursquare is the Sears Whitehall model, which sold from 1912 through 1926. The 1921 price for a full kit to build the Whitehall was $1,614.00. Virginia Newsom Nowell (1892-1960) built it as spec development in 1924. The News & Observer noted that “she engaged in extensive building and real estate operations” before going into debt in 1928. Additionally, Virginia Nowell was often in the Raleigh newspaper for a variety of reasons, including lawsuits, arrests, and associations with authors ranging from Erskine Caldwell to Thomas Dixon Jr. Private residence.
Date: 1925
]]>Pitysmont stands three feet from the street, a clue that it predates its neighbors and the road. Built in 1916 for English-born Linda Whitaker Browne (1868-1947) and her academic engineer husband, William Hand Browne, Jr. (1868-1958), it is an early Craftsman house. The style was influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement. The bracketed eaves, rafter tails, and shingle siding are notable elements. Inspiration to shingle the gabled house may have another source: the couple were married in Oak Park, Illinois, one-time home to Frank Lloyd Wright, whose house there had a dramatic shingled gable-front form with diamond-patterned windows. Private residence.
Date: ca. 1916
]]>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
]]>Hillcrest Cemetery is one of four burying grounds established for the African American community in segregated Raleigh. The prominent Lightner brothers, Calvin and Rayford, established Hillcrest in 1926 in association with their Lightner Funeral Home, founded in 1908. It was the first undertaking business owned by African Americans in Raleigh. Today, there are about five hundred marked graves in the small, three-acre cemetery; the last burials were made in 2014. Gravestones range from commercially engraved monuments to handmade concrete markers. The landscape is planned but simple, with a linear arrangement throughout the generally open, level area. One large magnolia tree stands at the heart of the cemetery.
Dates: ca. 1920, 1926
]]>In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Raleigh native Dallas Adams (1843-1912) worked as a pharmacist at Dix Hill Asylum, the precursor to Dorothea Dix Hospital. He also invested in real estate. Around 1880, he bought land outside Raleigh and near the asylum. He built this house and six others, the latter to generate rental income. The county road those dwellings lined came to be known as Adams Row. Adams’s house is a vernacular form enriched with a few Queen Anne details: trefoil vents in the gable ends, elaborate porch and eave brackets, and a half-glazed front door.
Around 1940, Adams Row was renamed Daladams Street to honor Dallas Adams. Of the seven houses Adams had built, three remain. Two have been heavily altered. Adams’s own home has recently been rehabilitated, another tribute to this very early Raleigh developer.
Date ca. 1880
]]>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
]]>The buildings and athletic facilities remaining at the Berry O’Kelly School campus reflect the history of an important Raleigh institution. Residents of the freedman’s village that evolved into Method had always prioritized education. Three schools existed in the late nineteenth century before Method’s most prominent resident, Berry O’Kelly, donated land in 1894 for a new school. A frame building with gable roof housed the school until 1915, when a significant upgrade resulted in a ten-classroom brick edifice to house an elementary and high school. The new institution was called Berry O’Kelly Training School, and it consolidated three rural African American schools. Rosenwald funds helped expand the school in the 1920s, and by 1931 it was the state’s largest high school for African American students. The school remained in operation until 1966. The only buildings remaining are the 1926 Agriculture Building and the ca. 1959 Gymnasium. O’Kelly’s grave is on campus, and a memorial marker further honors and remembers his importance to the community. Saint James AME Church stands at the corner of the campus, another institution founded and supported by those who lived in Method.
Date: 1926, ca. 1928, ca. 1959
]]>This Craftsman bungalow is typical of dwellings built in the early twentieth century in Method, a neighborhood that evolved from an 1872 freedman’s village. The area was rural and miles beyond Raleigh’s nineteenth-century limits. By the 1920s, Method was evolving into a suburb. The population remained predominantly African American. Lillie Stroud Rogers and her husband Wiley Rogers bought the parcel at 616 Method Road in 1924. They did not build right away; in fact, Lillie had the house built in the 1940s after Wiley’s death. Bungalows were more common in the 1920s than the 1940s, but family history and public records support the later date. Perhaps the Wileys purchased house plans along with the parcel and Lillie kept them until she was able to build. Lillie Stroud Rogers lived in the Method bungalow until her death in 1968 at age 82.
Date: ca. 1940
]]>The H.J. Brown Coffin House Building was the early twentieth-century headquarters for a local business established in 1836. Originally a cabinet shop and later a maker of coffins, it evolved into an undertaking and mortuary company that eventually became Brown-Wynne Funeral Home. It is Raleigh’s oldest continuously operating business. The Classical Revival style exhibited by the 1907 headquarters building was typical of the early twentieth century—the columns, corner quoins, and bracketed cornice all promoted the idea of a solid, stable business operating within. By the 1970s, the company had moved out. To refresh the old building, a new Brutalist skin was applied, covering all Classical Revival detailing. A 2013 remodel uncovered the original edifice and restored the architectural detail, painstakingly replicating the cornice and the iron-flecked bricks.
Date: 1907, ca. 1920
]]>Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist Church at 501 South Person Street was the first SDA church, black or white, established in Raleigh. Many of Gethsemane’s elders and pastors went on to become influential leaders in the black SDA movement, most notably Benjamin W. Abney, its founding pastor. In the early 1920s, after a year or so of tent meetings led by Abney, the growing group of Seventh Day Adventists managed to erect a sanctuary. The modest building has classic Gothic Revival-style elements like buttresses and pointed-arch windows with stained glass.
The wall material is rare for the period of construction and unique in its ornament. The walls boast distinctive concrete blocks adorned with pebbled quartz. The blocks were probably made onsite by the congregation members. Block-making machines were affordable and widely available—you could buy one from the Sears catalog. Advertisements bragged “one man can make from 100 to 150 perfect blocks a day…and can do it day after day.” The concrete blocks were formed in a mold and then decorated with quartz pieces that were pressed into the face of the block. The roof structure of the church was seriously damaged in the tornado of 2011; it was lifted and then dropped back on the walls. The building was declared unsafe by the building official and came within days of being demolished before it was purchased and restored by Phuc Tran.
Date: 1922
]]>Leonard Medical Hospital was erected in 1912 to support the neighboring Leonard Medical School in the education of black physicians at Shaw University. The hospital initially opened in an 1885 frame building behind the medical school. It provided much-needed health care for Raleigh’s black community, which generally could not get treatment at Rex Hospital during the segregated period of Raleigh’s history.
Chatham County native Gaston Alonzo Edwards was the architect. Edwards was North Carolina’s first professionally registered black architect. He also designed the 1907 Masonic Temple Building at 427 S. Blount Street and oversaw the 1909 rebuilding of the St. Paul’s A.M.E. Church at 402 W. Edenton Street. Leonard Hospital closed in 1914 and has been converted into a classroom building known as Tyler Hall.
]]>St. Matthews is one of just five remaining Rosenwald schools in Wake County; twenty-one were built in the early twentieth century. Julius Rosenwald, an owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, established a charitable fund to open schools for African American children across the South. St. Matthews was built in 1922 according to a standard building plan to accommodate two teachers. The small building has two classrooms; their dividing wall can be moved to combine the spaces. In the 1930s and 1940s, the school offered instruction for grades one through seven in the two rooms. In the evenings there were adult education classes and agricultural cooperative extension programs. In 1949, the county sold the school to St. Matthews Church, which rehabilitated the school in 1995.
1922
]]>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
]]>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 Anderson House is a Sears catalog home, built from the “Argyle” plan for a Craftsman-style gable-front bungalow. Sears, Roebuck & Company sold plans and even full build-it-yourself kits in the early twentieth century. A kit would include plans, instructions, and all the lumber and most other materials needed to erect a dwelling. At the Anderson House, the carved rafter tails, faceted beams, stuccoed gables, and massive stuccoed porch posts are hallmark details of the “Argyle” plan. The projecting gabled porch that extends beyond the east elevation is another clue. Speculative real estate developers C. E. Hornaday and H. F. Faucette built the house in 1923. John and Belle Anderson purchased it in 1924 and made it their home for 53 years. The small one-car garage at the top of the driveway may be a Sears plan or kit as well.
1923
]]>The Dr. M.T. Pope House is the last structure in its original location illustrating the presence of a middle and professional class of African-American families along South Wilmington Street. Dr. Pope was a politically active and well-known African American physician and Trustee of Shaw University and his daughters both became educators. The two-story brick house is a rare and early example of an African American residence built of expensive, high-quality materials with stylish workmanship. Owned by the City of Raleigh, the building is now available for tours.
Date: 1900
]]>The Turner House is an intact Neoclassical I-house in the African American community of Oberlin. The house was expanded by John T. Turner, Oberlin's major landowner, around 1900 from a three-room one-story house. While the I-house type is more often seen on agricultural landscapes, Oberlin was more rural in the late nineteenth century than it appears today. Turner, in fact, is listed as a farmer in Oberlin in the 1880 census. Private residence.
Date: ca. 1900
]]>Built by local businessman Joel K. Marshall, this house is among the most intact examples of the elaborately ornamental Queen Anne dwellings that reflect the Victorian era in Raleigh. The interior features excellent examples of early Colonial Revival details. The house was moved from N. Blount Street in 1985 to spare it from demolition; it currently houses offices.
Date: ca. 1900
]]>At the start of the twentieth-century, the once-rural freedman's village of Oberlin had grown into a tight-knit community of middle-class African American families. Oberlin had well-established churches, small retail shops, and the highest rate of home-ownership of all Raleigh neighborhoods. The James S. Morgan House is a rare intact example of a traditional early-twentieth century vernacular dwelling (Triple-A I-house form). The rarity of the James Morgan House is due to its location and its ownership. While common, the I-house form was largely associated with substantial rural farms and constructed by the land owners as evidence of their financial success. I-houses are extremely rare in Raleigh's African American neighborhoods. The fact that Wilson Morgan, James’ father, was African American and built this house in the in-town African American Oberlin community comprised of more modest dwellings, is what makes the structure stand out. Wilson W. Morgan, one of Oberlin's earliest settlers and a member of the North Carolina General Assembly from 1870 through 1892, built the house for his son James around 1900. Private residence.
Date: ca. 1900
]]>Dr. Andrew Watson Goodwin ran medical clinics, taught at Shaw University's Leonard Medical School, and served as chief physician at Saint Agnes Hospital. His grand, Neoclassical dwelling is significant as a vestige of what Hillsborough Street once was: a fashionable, tree-lined residential boulevard. It is now home to the state's Democratic Party headquarters.
Date: 1903
]]>Judge Walter A. Montgomery, a state supreme court justice, built this two-story frame house with classical detailing in the 100 block of E. Edenton Street. After its 1982 move to this New Bern Place location, renovations readied the house for use as offices.
Date: ca. 1906
]]>The Thompson house is one of several remaining dwellings from the once-grand residential corridor that extended along Hillsborough Street from the Capitol west to Oberlin Road. The house, a combination of Queen Anne detailing and Colonial Revival form and decoration, is a hybrid style often called Southern Colonial. John Thompson, a prominent Raleigh businessman, built this house for his eight-member family. It now houses offices.
Date: ca. 1910
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