Mount Hope, established around 1872, is one of the first municipal cemeteries for African Americans in the state. City Cemetery’s African American section was full by 1871 and the city purchased eleven or so acres south of town for additional burial grounds. It was common in this period for cities to establish such cemeteries for whites, but very rare to do so for African Americans. Those buried at Mount Hope include some prominent professionals and businessmen from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Raleigh, such as Dr. Manassa T. Pope, whose family home is another historic landmark. The cemetery features a garden design characterized by looping drives in contrast with the rectilinear design of City Cemetery. The funerary sculpture is particularly notable and is one of the largest collections of African American funerary art in the county.
Date: ca. 1872
]]>Raleigh established City Cemetery in 1798, one of the earliest public burying grounds in the state. Narrow lanes divide the original four acres into segregated quadrants. Graves for African Americans are in the southeast quadrant, for white citizens of Raleigh in the two north quadrants, and for “strangers,” or white non-Raleighites in the southwest. Within the quadrants, graves are arranged in family or associated groups delineated by fences, low masonry curbs, or granite posts marking just the corners. Notable in the strangers’ quadrant is the Stonecutters group for the highly skilled artisans who came to Raleigh in the 1830s to build the Neoclassical-style State Capitol. Neoclassical grave markers and the two mid-nineteenth-century mausoleums at the cemetery reflect the architectural and material influence of the Capitol.
Expansions and upgrades changed the cemetery. The city relocated an 1850s cast-iron fence that had encircled Capitol Square, installing it here in 1898. Around the same time, granite cobblestones and cut-granite curbs were installed along the lanes. Two new municipal cemeteries, Oakwood for whites and Mount Hope for African Americans, opened in 1869 and 1872 as City Cemetery was nearing capacity. By 1900, all City Cemetery plots were sold. The death dates on markers in City Cemetery extend from 1795 through 2006.
Date: 1798
]]>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
]]>In 1894 Berry O'Kelly and others on the School Committee for House Creek Township District # 2 purchased one acre of land for a school. Through numerous additions over the years, including as late as 1962, the campus eventually grew to approximately eight acres before its closure as a school in 1966. Today only two of the numerous classroom, vocational, dormitory, and assembly buildings that were erected during the school’s history remain. Its vocational curriculum in agriculture, among others, necessitated land for agricultural demonstration, and the physical fitness programs also required land and facilities. The site was large enough to require internal vehicular circulation, which still serves that purpose today, along with new parking areas added to serve the current community park facilities.
Dates: ca. 1928; ca. 1959; ca. 1988
]]>The grave of Berry O'Kelly School's founder is the only grave on the church grounds south of the school parcel. A stone plinth also accommodates a planter with a small boxwood that partially obscures the dressed face of the stone. The dressed portion is divided into three parts – the larger central part is concave with BERRY O'KELLY carved into its face. The flanking sections, also concave, are dressed with a sinuous foliate motif carved at their tops. The footstone reads
BERRY O'KELLY
DIED
MARCH 14, 1931
Symbolizing the esteem within which the community still holds O’Kelly, north of the grave on the former school parcel is a commemorative granite obelisk erected in 1986 by alumni and friends of the school. It has a carved likeness of O'Kelly and below his likeness the inscription
BERRY O'KELLY
ABOUT 1864-1931
HUMANITARIAN
LEADER IN BUSINESS AND EDUCATION
Dates: 1931 and 1986
]]>Following Berry O’Kelly’s death in 1931, his namesake school continued to serve the community of Method. As more schools for African Americans were established in the area, its enrollment began to fall. The push toward integration further affected the school’s enrollment (eventually leading to its closure in 1966). Nonetheless, there continued to be advocates for “separate but equal” school facilities for blacks and whites. This was probably a factor leading to construction of the gymnasium as advocates pressed for equalization of facilities in schools serving African Americans. The utilitarian brick building features the clean lines of mid-century modern design, with horizontally-proportioned grids of windows in large openings daylighting the interior spaces. A barrel-arched roof supported by metal bow trusses spans the large gymnasium space, flanked on three sides by one-story wings.
Date: ca. 1950
]]>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
]]>The 1881 Leonard Medical School is a nice—if not entirely intact—example of the Romanesque Revival style. Its primary significance, however, lies in its connection to the medical education provided by Shaw University to black male students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Increasing the ranks of professionally trained black doctors during segregation bettered the black community’s access to health care. It also helped create a black professional class and a group of leaders active in the political fight against segregation. The school unfortunately closed in 1918; it was always in want of a sustaining endowment. Shaw converted the building to general classroom and office use. A 1983 fire did heavy damage and Leonard stood empty for over a decade. The university rehabilitated it in the last years of the twentieth century, rebuilding architectural features lost in the fire. It is now known as Leonard Hall.
]]>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 J. S. Dorton Arena features parabolic design that boldly combined architecture and engineering, earning the building its reputation as an exceptionally significant design. Polish architect Matthew Nowicki, who conceived the structural idea for the building, died in a plane crash before construction finished. Raleigh architect William Henley Deitrick oversaw the completion of the paraboleum and made minor changes to the fenestration. The building provides a concert hall and exhibition space for the state fair.
Date: 1952
]]>The picturesque appearance of this late Gothic Revival church stems from the combination of three square towers and two gable-roof blocks -- the result of six remodelings between 1881 and 1909. Raleigh architect James Matthew Kennedy, who designed the City Market and Murphey School, is primarily responsible for the church's present asymmetrical appearance.
Date: 1881-1909
]]>This two-story red-brick building was the first of several erected in the Methodist Orphanage complex. Designed by architect Charles Pearson, it is a hybrid of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles and imparts a feeling of domesticity not usually found in institutional buildings. Owned by the City of Raleigh, it is located in Fletcher Park and is available for receptions.
Date: 1900
]]>Located at the southwest corner of the Capitol facing Union Square, the church addresses its corner site with an angled entry and tower. The irregularly shaped red-brick building exhibits characteristics of the Romanesque Revival style with its heavy, asymmetrical massing and rounded arches. The open bell tower, surrounded by small copper-capped pinnacles, is particularly commanding.
Date: 1900
]]>African American members of the N. Salisbury Street First Baptist Church requested separation in 1868 to form their own church. At diagonal corners of Union Square, the two Baptist churches represent two different phases of the Gothic Revival style. This church, begun in 1904, is an example of the late Gothic Revival.
Date: 1904
]]>Resembling a Lorraine cross to maximize the interior space, the Neoclassical Revival auditorium is ornamented with classical motifs, rusticated piers, cast-iron Corinthian columns, and heavy window cornices that add interest and animation to the design. The building bears the name of a student who attended the school in the 1880s.
Date: 1906
]]>This three-story brick building with Italianate details housed commercial space on the first floor, a meeting hall on the second floor, and the Masonic Hall on the third floor. It was built in 1907 by Raleigh's earliest African American fraternal orders: the Widow's Sons' Lodge #4, established in 1867 by prominent African American missionary and social leader Bishop James W. Hood; and the Excelsior Lodge #21, founded in 1879. The lodges were major contributors to the social and economic betterment of Raleigh's African American community. Oral tradition suggests it was built of bricks salvaged from the earlier white Masonic Hall, demolished to make way for the 1907 Masonic Hall at 133 Fayetteville Street.
Date: 1907
]]>Charles McMillan designed the Masonic Temple building, Raleigh's oldest surviving steel-reinforced concrete structure, in the Sullivanesque-style. In addition to its design and construction, the building is significant as a major landmark in the downtown area.
Date: 1907
]]>Fire severely damaged the original 1895 building, which housed a nurse training center. Under the direction of Rev. Henry Beard Delany, the first African American Episcopal bishop in North Carolina, students quarried the stone and started the current building in 1905.
]]>The church building is an example of high Victorian Gothic Revival architecture with its abundance of ornamental and visual complexity. Founding members withdrew from Edenton Street Methodist Church in 1849 to establish the first separate African American congregation in Raleigh. The current brick building dates to 1910, built on the site of two previous church buildings.
Date: 1910
]]>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
]]>This fine carousel, produced by Gustav A. Dentzel's Pennsylvania Carousel Company, originally operated at Bloomsbury Park; it was moved to Pullen Park in 1915. The carousel animals are thought to be the work of Salvatore Cernigliaro, master carver of Dentzel's company. Operated by the City of Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department.
Date: Before 1912
]]>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
]]>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
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