{"id":10,"ordinal":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:31:23","content_modified":"2026-08-19 19:48:28","featured":0,"title":"Raleigh Business Districts","creator":"RHDC","description":"<p>Fayetteville Street is the historical heart of this city. It has seen iconic events like the march of Union troops to the Capitol in the waning days of the Civil War. It has seen welcome-home parades at the close of other wars and protests that helped end segregation. More prosaically, Fayetteville and surrounding streets have been Raleigh’s central business district since the nineteenth century. \r\n\r\nA few rudimentary frame shops first lined the street. The late 1800s brought refinement. The 1872 Briggs Hardware Building has a fanciful cast-iron facade with decorative corner quoins and window hoods topped with lion heads. Prefabricated facades could enhance otherwise plain brick structures like the ca. 1865 building of A.D. Royster & Bros. Confectionary. By the 1870s, density spread to nearby streets. Black merchants and property owners occupied smaller, simpler shops on South Wilmington and East Hargett streets. In 1891, a black fraternal organization purchased a ca. 1880 warehouse on East Hargett Street and remodeled it. Their Grand United Order of Odd Fellows Building had an assembly room as well as office and retail space.\r\n\r\nThe emergence of a professional class in the twentieth century brought rising rooflines, like that of the seven-story Old Masonic Temple Building of 1907. A 1920s boom added the Professional Building, the Odd Fellows Building, the Capital Club, and the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel. The three-story, 1913 Raleigh Banking and Trust Company got eight more floors in 1928, courtesy of the roaring economy. Restaurants like The Mecca moved off Fayetteville Street and onto side streets.\r\n\r\nRaleigh was segregated in this period. By 1915, rental spaces in the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows Building were all occupied by black professionals and merchants who couldn’t get space on Fayetteville Street. East Hargett Street evolved into “Main Street” for Raleigh’s black community. The 1921 Lightner Arcade that once stood at 122 East Hargett Street included a hotel and social club and became a center of black culture in Raleigh. The 1914 Raleigh Furniture Building and the 1926 Delany Building also offered retail and office space.\r\n\r\nPost-Depression, the 1940s brought a move from classicism to modernism with the fifteen-story Art Deco Durham Life Insurance Company Building. The Modernist idiom arrived with mid-1960s bank buildings, including the BB&T Building. A mid-1960s Modernist commercial building houses the black-owned Hamlin Drug Store, a century-old business on East Hargett Street.  \r\n\r\nThe late twentieth century brought an extended downturn to the central business district as retail moved to enclosed shopping malls and offices shifted to suburban locations. The conversion of Fayetteville Street into a pedestrian mall failed to save downtown and was eventually reversed but a twenty-first-century resurgence in interest in the area has brought a welcome renaissance.\r\n</p>","postscript_text":null,"tour_img":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/168db3cac90b2f29390286432bbd5643.jpg","items":[{"id":105,"title":"Old Masonic Temple Building","latitude":35.77837085169102238069172017276287078857421875,"longitude":-78.6390060316670087559032253921031951904296875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/168db3cac90b2f29390286432bbd5643.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/168db3cac90b2f29390286432bbd5643.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"133 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":83,"title":"Raleigh Banking And Trust Company Building (Raleigh Building)","latitude":35.7781030000000015434125089086592197418212890625,"longitude":-78.63957299999998440398485399782657623291015625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/097ccd704feeeafae4872ad5eadffb52.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/097ccd704feeeafae4872ad5eadffb52.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"5 West Hargett Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":81,"title":"Odd Fellows Building (Commerce Building)","latitude":35.7781149999999996680344338528811931610107421875,"longitude":-78.63992700000000013460521586239337921142578125,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/9a73b96733f53904dd5fe49681ecffa4.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/9a73b96733f53904dd5fe49681ecffa4.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"19 West Hargett Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":79,"title":"Professional Building","latitude":35.7782686999999981480868882499635219573974609375,"longitude":-78.64158040000000937652657739818096160888671875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/8cdba1375d12227bf0f7fffd11b72592.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/8cdba1375d12227bf0f7fffd11b72592.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"123-127 West Hargett Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":39,"title":"Briggs Hardware Building","latitude":35.7776580035912417088184156455099582672119140625,"longitude":-78.639442688458302654908038675785064697265625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/aa34e26fa1e85c77061fe86d42fb1d6c.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/aa34e26fa1e85c77061fe86d42fb1d6c.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"220 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":86,"title":"Lumsden-Boone Building","latitude":35.77742769999999694618963985703885555267333984375,"longitude":-78.63940289999999322390067391097545623779296875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/eeb34acfe38b40716574ca1a2ea131b2.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/eeb34acfe38b40716574ca1a2ea131b2.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"226 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":38,"title":"Carolina Trust/Mahler Buildings","latitude":35.7773628999999999678038875572383403778076171875,"longitude":-78.639427200000000084401108324527740478515625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/19e83b22cae505a554705d3b9dc21e90.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/19e83b22cae505a554705d3b9dc21e90.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"228-232 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":75,"title":"Capital Club Building","latitude":35.77709229999999962501533445902168750762939453125,"longitude":-78.64001899999999523060978390276432037353515625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/3541dbb4c960189fcfbe96bcdd075349.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/3541dbb4c960189fcfbe96bcdd075349.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"16 West Martin Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":51,"title":"Federal Building (Century Post Office)","latitude":35.77672290000000288046066998504102230072021484375,"longitude":-78.6398040000000264626578427851200103759765625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/75211e50400620c5935aff7cf64f91d8.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/75211e50400620c5935aff7cf64f91d8.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"314 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":80,"title":"Sir Walter Hotel","latitude":35.7754660741439209914460661821067333221435546875,"longitude":-78.639579465425640592002309858798980712890625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/f2d95d81f02077d5c736dfe89f6217e9.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/f2d95d81f02077d5c736dfe89f6217e9.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"400-412 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":137,"title":"(former) Branch Banking and Trust Building","latitude":35.77575399999999916644810582511126995086669921875,"longitude":-78.6388170000000172876752912998199462890625,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/7664bec4286a30063d9492baf136d4c9.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/7664bec4286a30063d9492baf136d4c9.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"333 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":160,"title":"The Mecca","latitude":35.77706674913175532992681837640702724456787109375,"longitude":-78.6386594587055469673941843211650848388671875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/cdf9fcee51a82a869adc1da43d6f9d9c.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/cdf9fcee51a82a869adc1da43d6f9d9c.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"13 East Martin Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":14,"title":"Arkansas Delaware and Vermont Connecticut Royster Confectioners Building","latitude":35.7779547009339893293144996277987957000732421875,"longitude":-78.63902424304495752949151210486888885498046875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/6aab333e8dd98f832a9b7208d3bdadd1.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/6aab333e8dd98f832a9b7208d3bdadd1.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"207 Fayetteville Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":43,"title":"Grand United Order of Odd Fellows Building","latitude":35.77830832303144603656619437970221042633056640625,"longitude":-78.6375892024819904690957628190517425537109375,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/5501b5ad798c0531b82a62175c153754.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/5501b5ad798c0531b82a62175c153754.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"115 East Hargett Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":68,"title":"Raleigh Furniture Building","latitude":35.77833142873790706062209210358560085296630859375,"longitude":-78.6372888502863816029275767505168914794921875,"thumbnail":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/square_thumbnails/e9dce3dc7b70736ebdd98639016564e4.jpg","fullsize":"https://mail.raleighhistoric.org/files/fullsize/e9dce3dc7b70736ebdd98639016564e4.jpg","subtitle":null,"address":"119 East Hargett Street","custom":{"subtitle":null,"text":null}},{"id":77,"title":"Delany 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