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
]]>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
]]>James Yadkin Joyner lived here throughout his influential tenure as the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, which lasted from 1902 to 1919. J.Y. Joyner oversaw a maturation of the state’s educational system, focusing on teacher training, longer school terms, and high school instruction. At the same time, local governments began collecting special school taxes and the state started allocating funds for education.
The house is one of eleven in Oakwood built by Julius Lewis & Company, started in 1865 as a hardware and building supply firm. Lewis and partner Nicholas W. West built in the neighborhood in the 1870s and 1880s. The Lewis‐Joyner house dates to 1878 and combines details from the Stick, Italianate, and Second Empire styles of the Victorian period.
]]>The Atwater-Perry House is an excellent example of a late-nineteenth century, middle-class dwelling. The house is significant for its association with two middle-class black families in Raleigh. William Atwater, a grocer, bought the ca. 1898 single-story rental at 904 E. Hargett Street and moved in with his family. The Atwaters were the first owner-occupants of the house and the first black owners and residents. After Atwater’s death in 1924, his daughter and her husband William Perry bought the house and remodeled it into a two-story Foursquare. The foursquare is a house type that can accommodate a variety of architectural modes; in this case, the porch posts, shingle siding, and exposed rafter tails show the influence of the Craftsman style. The type gets its name from the interior arrangement, which accommodates four rooms in a roughly square plan at each story. William Perry was Raleigh’s first black mail carrier, a position he held for about thirty years. The house stayed in the Atwater and Perry families for the better part of a century. The land was also the site of the first state fairgrounds, established in 1853. When the fair moved to West Raleigh in 1872, the land was subdivided for residential development.
c. 1898, c. 1924, c. 1945
]]>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 ca. 1875 Merrimon-Wynne House is a lovely example of both the Italianate architectural style and the Eastlake mode of decoration. Elongated windows, upright proportions, and modillions under the broad eave are all hallmarks of the style, popular in Raleigh in the 1870s and 1880s. Eastlake detailing is derived from the Gothic style and became popular upon the publication of English architect Charles Locke Eastlake’s book of furniture and decor. The book came out in the United States in 1872 and was an immediate hit. Characteristic Eastlake details include columns, posts, and piers shaped with chamfered corners or turned profiles and adorned with bold, curvaceous forms like knobs and bosses. Such ornament decorates many Victorian-era dwellings in Raleigh and is particularly seen on porches.
ca. 1875
]]>The Heck-Wynne House is one of three distinct landmarks built in a variation of the Second Empire style by Colonel Jonathan M. Heck, a developer in the Oakwood neighborhood. Located on adjacent lots in the Oakwood Historic District, the Heck-Lee, Heck-Pool, and Heck-Wynne houses are differentiated by alterations made to them over time. They are also listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places. Private residence.
between 1872 and 1875
]]>The Heck-Pool House is one of three distinct landmarks built in a variation of the Second Empire style by Colonel Jonathan M. Heck, a developer in the Oakwood neighborhood. Located on adjacent lots in the Oakwood Historic District, the Heck-Lee, Heck-Pool, and Heck-Wynne houses are differentiated by alterations made to them over time. They are also listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places. Private residence.
between 1872 and 1875
]]>The Heck-Lee House is one of three distinct landmarks built in a variation of the Second Empire style by Colonel Jonathan M. Heck, a developer in the Oakwood neighborhood. Located on adjacent lots in the Oakwood Historic District, the Heck-Lee, Heck-Pool, and Heck-Wynne houses are differentiated by alterations made to them over time. They are also listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places. Private residence.
between 1872 and 1875
]]>The Fadum House, designed in 1949 and completed in 1950, is the first modern design privately executed in Raleigh. This was the first house in Wake County to use structural wood columns to support a double-cantilevered roof truss grid, which shelters the living space within the brick and glass curtain walls. It was recognized in 1951 by Architectural Record as one of its houses of the year. Duncan Stuart, associate of architect James W. Fitzgibbon, drew the plans of the house. A substantial and complementary addition designed by Brian Shawcroft was completed in 2006. Private residence.
Date: 1949-1950
]]>N.C. State's School of Design Dean Henry Kamphoefner, working with architect and professor George Matsumoto, designed this house for his own family. An ardent admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, Kamphoefner incorporated typical Wrightian features. The closed-off street facade belies an openness to the landscape that is gloriously evident in back. There, window walls dissolve the separation between indoors and outdoors, a feeling literally underscored by flagstone floors that flow from the dining room to the patio overlooking the Carolina Country Club golf course. A substantial 2003 bedroom addition by Robert P. Burns, an early School of Design graduate, is faithful to the original intent. Private residence.
Date: 1950
]]>George Matsumoto, a professor of architecture at NC State's School of Design, incorporated several of Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian house ideas in his design for the Ritcher House: passive climate control, aesthetic use of common building materials, and interior spaces intended for contemporary living. The house was much acclaimed in the early 1950s, and was prominently featured in several national magazines of the period. Private residence.
Date: 1950
]]>Raleigh architect G. Milton Small designed this house as his own residence. It is a nearly square one-story frame house sited on a steep hillside in a bend on Lake Boone Trail. Small studied under the Modernist master Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The Small House, with its uncluttered cubic shape, flat roof, and emphasis on proportions, was the first structure in Raleigh to evoke the design concepts of Mies. Additions and alterations made by Small after the initial construction continued in this style. Private residence.
Date: 1951 and 1961
]]>George Matsumoto built this dwelling for himself, pioneering the use of modular building materials in an attempt to control costs. The proportions, detailing, and materials are exceptional, and the house makes a less-than-ideal building site a benefit by artfully accommodating a sloped grade and stream with a bridge from the street to the entrance. Architectural magazines of the period featured the house. Private residence.
Date: 1954
]]>The Paul and Ellen Welles House was designed by Durham architect Kenneth McKoy, who graduated in 1950 as a member of the first graduating class of the School of Design, established at North Carolina State University under dean Henry Kamphoefner. The house features an open floor plan with high ceilings and large expanses of glass. Summer camp operator and sailing enthusiast Paul Welles Jr. and his wife Ellen built the house in 1956 on land subdivided from the farm of Ellen's parents, George W. and Mary Mordecai. Private residence.
Date: 1956
]]>G. Milton Small found more inspiration from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe than from Frank Lloyd Wight. Working with a chic, opinionated client who wanted a "clean, crisp house," Small delivered an International Style gem loaded with function and elegance. True to its Miesian roots, the house displays its structure with evident vertical and horizontal planes defining its form. Interior finishes include walnut paneling, providing an organic warmth to contrast with the exposed steel structure. Window walls let nature be a backdrop to modern living. Private residence.
Date: 1959
]]>Harwell Hamilton Harris, an internationally known Modernist architect, designed this flat-roofed, stucco-clad house to include living quarters for himself and his wife, a studio for his architectural practice, and a rental apartment. Harris is known for his use of modular design with well-integrated works that express a unified rhythm along their components. A sheltered wood lamppost with a large glass-globe lightshade marking the entrance walk at the left edge of the building façade is a Harris icon.
Date: 1968-1970; 1977
]]>Built in the early 1960s, this dramatic Modernist home is defined by its low, sweeping front gable deck roof that covers a recessed porch. Its post and beam structure conforms to the sloping site, with a one-story front elevation and a two-story rear elevation. The home also features a brick foundation and veneer walls, vertical wood siding, and casement windows. G. Dewey Arndt, general manager of the North Carolina Cotton Growers Association and the Farmers Cooperative Exchange, and his wife Elma hired F. Carter Williams & Associates, a prominent Raleigh architectural firm, to design the home. It was renovated in 1988 and again in 2000; the home’s current owners returned the altered living and dining rooms back to their original design. Private residence.
Date: 1961
]]>Designed by local architect G Milton Small, a student of Mies van der Rohe, the Stahl House is an excellent example of a Contemporary Ranch style residence, as evidenced by its low-slung gable roof, post-and-beam construction, window walls, open floor plan, and integrated carport. Unlike other structures designed by Small, the home uses wood and stone, resulting in a softer, more organic iteration of Modernism. Its high architectural integrity is the result of continuous family ownership.
Date: 1956
]]>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
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