National Register Adds 13 North Carolina Historic Places
The Taylor Park Historic District is Mount Airy’s earliest example of a subdivision with a curvilinear street plan.
RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is pleased to announce that three historic districts and eight individual properties across the state have been added to the National Register of Historic Places. In addition, one previously listed historic district received additional historical documentation and a boundary adjustment through both an increase and a decrease, while another previously listed historic district received a boundary increase. The following properties were reviewed by the North Carolina National Register Advisory Committee and subsequently nominated by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Officer and forwarded to the Keeper of the National Register for consideration for listing in the National Register, which is maintained by the National Park Service.
“Congratulations to the communities where properties and districts were added to the National Register of Historic Places," said Secretary Reid Wilson, N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. "Preservation of these places helps maintain community character, strengthen connections to our diverse shared history, and contribute to local economic development.”
The listing of a property in the National Register places no obligation or restriction on a private owner using private resources to maintain or alter the property. Over the years, various federal and state incentives have been introduced to assist private preservation initiatives, including tax credits for the rehabilitation of National Register properties. As of January 1, 2021, over 4,036 historic rehabilitation projects with an estimated private investment of over $3.216 billion have been completed.
In Eastern North Carolina
Samuel Warren Branch House, Enfield vicinity, Halifax County, listed 6/8/2021
The ca. 1828 tripartite Samuel Warren Branch House is locally significant under Criterion C in the area of architecture as an intact example of an antebellum Federal-style tripartite house. Attached to the house is the ca. 1790 Georgian-style William Branch Jr. House. The houses were listed as a single contributing building in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as Branch Grove, the plantation of Samuel Warren Branch. In 2017, under active threat of demolition and collapse, the houses were separated and moved, reattached in a different configuration, and rehabilitated. This nomination relists the Samuel Warren Branch House in its new location. The William Branch Jr. House no longer retained integrity after the move and rehabilitation and is a non-contributing resource.
Wilson Walker House and Walker-Snowden Store, Currituck, Currituck County, listed 4/26/2021
Located on the south side of Courthouse Road and directly across the street from the Currituck County Courthouse are the c.1876 Wilson Walker House and 1895 Walker-Snowden Store, both contributing buildings. This house replaced an earlier c.1850 house on the site and several outbuildings on the property were constructed around the time of the earlier house but remain on the parcel and are contributing resources. The store is a one-story, frame building with a false front parapet hiding a front gable roof. A small grouping of outbuildings including the Walker Cottage (c.1850, contributing building), kitchen (1852, contributing building), smokehouse (c.1850, contributing building), shed (c.1950, noncontributing building) and office (c.1920, noncontributing building) are located to the rear south and west of the house and store. To the far south of the parcel is a small family cemetery. The property is sited on an approximately 4.07-acre parcel. The Wilson Walker House and Walker-Snowden Store are locally significant under Criterion C in the area of architecture. There are two distinct periods of significance for this property. The first is associated with the date of construction for the Wilson Walker House in c.1876. The second is associated with the date of construction for the Wilson Walker Store in 1895.
Elizabeth City Industrial Historic District, Elizabeth City, Pasquotank County, listed 4/30/2021
The Elizabeth City Industrial Historic District is located just north of the commercial core of Elizabeth City on the waterfront of the west bank of the Pasquotank River. The Elizabeth City Industrial Historic District is significant at the local level under Criterion A for Industry as the only remaining concentration of early- to mid-twentieth-century industrial buildings in the city, which historically had a significant industrial presence in the region. Although Elizabeth City was once a center of industry for northeastern North Carolina, little remains of its industrial landscape. The city’s early industrial development was fueled by the completion of the Dismal Swamp Canal in 1805, with its peak after the arrival of the Elizabeth City and Norfolk Railroad (now operated by the Chesapeake and Albemarle Railroad) in 1881. The period of significance for the historic district begins in c.1896 with the construction of the oldest extant building within the Elizabeth City Iron Works and Supply Company, Inc., complex, and extends to c.1965, by which time the remaining extant above-ground resources within the historic district had been constructed.
Kinston Commercial Historic District (Additional Documentation, Boundary Increase, and Boundary Decrease), Kinston, Lenoir County, listed 4/30/2021
Updates to the National Register Queen-Gordon Streets Historic District and the Kinston Commercial Historic District in Kinston, Lenoir County were listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 2021. Significant for architecture, commerce, and industry, the districts comprise the most concentrated collection of relatively intact late nineteenth though mid twentieth century commercial and institutional buildings in the city. They represent the city’s growth and its development as the Lenoir County seat, an important regional tobacco market, and a major commercial center in eastern North Carolina. The updated nomination provides Additional Documentation, a Boundary Increase, and a small Boundary Decrease. The additional documentation includes updated inventories and extends the period of significance for the districts. The boundary increase expands the district in seven different areas and by thirty-five primary resources. The boundary increase areas include commercial and governmental buildings that are similar in size, scale, and setback to the buildings in the existing district. These areas illustrate the continued development of downtown Kinston, which experienced significant growth from the 1930s through the 1960s. The boundary decrease removes the site of the former Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad Freight Depot that was demolished in 2009.
In Central North Carolina
J.J. Jones High School, Mount Airy, Surry County, listed 4/27/2021
The J.J. Jones High School, first constructed in 1940, with subsequent additions in the 1950s and 1960s, accommodated high school and elementary students in Surry and Stokes counties, as well as nearby Patrick County, Virginia. Furthermore, it was the first and only high school for Black students in Surry County. Its history represents the struggle for improved educational opportunities for Black youth in Surry County, North Carolina, during the period of twentieth-century racial segregation and the leaders and community that came together to make it happen. As such, it meets National Register Criterion A in the areas of education and black ethnic heritage. The school is locally significant for the period from 1940, when the original part of the brick school was built, to 1966, when it closed as a segregated black high school because the Mount Airy and Surry County schools became fully integrated.
Mount Airy Historic District (Boundary Increase II), Mount Airy, Surry County, listed 4/27/2021
As listed in the National Register in 1985, the Mount Airy Historic District encompassed the commercial and residential heart of Mount Airy. The boundaries of the district were expanded in 2012 to add a concentration of industrial buildings on the west side of the central business district. This second boundary increase listed in the Register on April 27, 2021, totals approximately 65 acres and enlarges the district with three discrete areas that include two small textile mills and houses, churches, and other buildings in a variety of styles from the 1880s through the 1960s. While building on the industrial importance of the 1985 district and its 2012 expansion, the boundary increase also is a natural extension of architectural trends represented in the original district that adds under-represented architectural characteristics such as smaller house types in later twentieth-century styles. There are a few Italianate and Queen Anne-style houses, but most of the added properties represent the Craftsman, Minimal Traditional, and various period revival styles, as well as Ranch houses pervasive in the 1950s and 1960s. Concurrent with the new boundary increase, four small areas at the edge of the 1985 district that have lost their historic resources were deleted from the boundaries.
Taylor Park Historic District, Mount Airy, Surry County, listed 4/27/2021
The Taylor Park Historic District is Mount Airy’s earliest example of a subdivision with a curvilinear street plan. With the exception of Grace Moravian Church, the neighborhood’s oldest positively dated building, the district is residential and features several of the city’s most architecturally sophisticated houses from the 1920s through the mid-twentieth century, including notable period revival style houses and several of Mount Airy’s small coterie of early Modernist houses. The district also contains many largely intact representative examples of Colonial Revival and Ranch houses that were most prevalent during the middle decades of the century.
Henry Fletcher and Carrie Allison Long House, Statesville, Iredell County, listed 4/26/2021
The Long House is locally significant under Criterion C for architecture as a remarkably intact dwelling designed by prominent Charlotte architect Louis H. Asbury that manifests nationally popular early-twentieth-century Colonial Revival, Craftsman, and Tudor stylistic elements. It is also nominated under Criterion B, for its association with the productive life of Dr. Henry F. Long, who made significant contributions to Statesville in the field of heath and medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The period of significance from 1915 to 1939, spans the date of construction to the date of Dr. Long’s death. There are several contributing outbuildings with the nominated boundary, including an early 1900s laundry and a smokehouse, a 1915 carriage house/garage, and a garage built between 1918 and 1925, with a later rear addition. A prominent 1915 retaining wall runs along the front elevation and an early twentieth century garden wall runs near the rear of the property.
Edgar S. and Madge Temple House, Salisbury, Rowan County, listed 4/26/2021
The Edgar S. and Madge Temple House is locally significant in the area of architecture, as it embodies distinctive characteristics of the Spanish Colonial Revival style. It is an excellent, and locally unparalleled, example of a one-story Spanish Colonial Revival style house with integral courtyard and complementary site design in Salisbury. Built in 1936 by Edgar S. Temple, a landscape professional, the home was one of the earliest and most prominent homes in the Milford Hills subdivision, which first opened for residential development in the late 1920s. Two outbuildings, a multi-level garage and a chicken house also date to the house’s construction period and are contributing buildings. The grounds include garden plantings, courtyards, and a stucco-clad wall with archways, statuary niche, and triangular fishpond. All are important features of the contributing site. Mr. Temple also completed this landscape work at the time of house construction, and it lends to the design concept of continuous flow between the exterior landscape and interior residential living space of the home.
Julius Clegg Hall House and Grounds, Albemarle, Stanly County, listed 4/22/2021
Julius Clegg Hall, a prominent local physician and proprietor of a leading local drug store, commissioned prominent Charlotte architect, Louis H. Asbury to design his large brick Colonial Revival-style residence in 1912. Around 1913-1914, he employed Philadelphia-based architect William Hooten Richie for landscape design. Hall doubled his lot size expanding south in 1922 and hired Earle S. Draper to complete landscape plans. In the 1920s he also reengaged Asbury for an auto garage design. The house is locally significant under Criterion C in the area of Architecture as a it embodies distinctive characteristics of Colonial Revival-style domestic architecture. It also has statewide significance in the area of landscape architecture and reflects the unique associations of both Mr. Richie and Mr. Draper with the complementary development of the Hall family’s Colonial Revival style gardens and grounds. The blueprint plans and the surviving hardscape features of their designs reflect an unusual level of enhancement exercised here, in a small yet prosperous town outside the major metropolitan areas of the state, in the opening decades of the twentieth century. The period of significance begins in 1912, when construction of the house began, and extends to 1930, at Dr. Hall’s death, by which date the surviving enhancements to the property were completed.
In Western North Carolina
Frank Rickert Summers House, Kings Mountain, Cleveland County, listed 5/26/2021
Constructed in 1928 for prominent local businessman Frank Rickert Summers, the Summers House is an outstanding and highly intact example of Tudor Revival-style architecture in Cleveland County.
Pigeon Street School, Waynesville, Haywood County, listed 4/26/2021
Designed by Asheville-based architect Lindsay Madison Gudger and completed in 1958, the Pigeon Street School is an excellent and highly intact example of mid-twentieth-century school architecture in Waynesville and Haywood County. The property is significant for its role in the education of African American students in Waynesville and Haywood County. The Pigeon Street School closed in 1966 upon integration of the Haywood County school system.
The Cotton Patch, Tryon, Polk County, listed 5/25/2021
Located on rolling terrain along the Pacolet River east of Tryon, the Cotton Patch is a locally significant rural equestrian estate built by James and Katrine Perkins in 1938 and owned and operated by Willis and Jacquelyn Kuhn from 1948 to the early 1980s. Under the Kuhn’s ownership the property played an important role in the development of Tryon’s equestrian culture.
NOTE TO EDITORS: All of the above images are available in a higher resolution on our Flickr site.
About the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the nation's official list of buildings, structures, objects, sites, and districts worthy of preservation for their significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, and culture. The National Register was established by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 to ensure that as a matter of public policy, properties significant in national, state, and local history are considered in the planning of federal undertakings, and to encourage historic preservation initiatives by state and local governments and the private sector. The Act authorized the establishment of a State Historic Preservation Office in each state and territory to help administer federal historic preservation programs.
In North Carolina, the State Historic Preservation Office is a unit of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The North Carolina National Register Advisory Committee, a board of professionals and citizens with expertise in history, architectural history, and archaeology, meets three times a year to advise the State Historic Preservation Officer on the eligibility of properties for the National Register and the adequacy of nominations.
The National Register nominations for the recently listed properties may be read in their entirety by clicking on the National Register page of the State Historic Preservation Office website. For more information on the National Register, including the criteria for listing, see this page.
About the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
The N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR) is the state agency with a vision to be the leader in using the state's natural and cultural resources to build the social, cultural, educational and economic future of North Carolina. NCDNCR's mission is to improve the quality of life in our state by creating opportunities to experience excellence in the arts, history, libraries and nature in North Carolina by stimulating learning, inspiring creativity, preserving the state's history, conserving the state's natural heritage, encouraging recreation and cultural tourism, and promoting economic development.
NCDNCR includes 27 historic sites, seven history museums, two art museums, two science museums, three aquariums and Jennette's Pier, 39 state parks and recreation areas, the N.C. Zoo, the nation's first state-supported Symphony Orchestra, the State Library, the State Archives, the N.C. Arts Council, State Preservation Office and the Office of State Archaeology, along with the Division of Land and Water Stewardship. For more information, please visit www.ncdcr.gov.
