News

N.C. announces properties named to National Register

By Bill Moss, Published: December 5, 2016

Three districts and 13 properties in North Carolina, including Berkeley Mills Park in Hendersonville, have been added to the National Register of Historic Places, the North Carolina North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources announced.

The Hendersonville Lightning first reported last month the successful nomination of the ballpark by the Hendersonville Historic Preservation Commission.

Constructed in 1949 by mill employees on land set aside by mill executives, the ballpark was home to the Berkeley Spinners, who had organized in 1948 and played through the 1961 season, after which the Spinners dissolved. Since then, the ballpark, now part of the oarkland Kimberly Clark donated to the city, has remained in use by school and community baseball teams.

“North Carolina is a leader in the nation’s historic preservation movement and the National Register is a vital tool in the preservation of our state’s historic resources” said Susan Kluttz, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. “These buildings and homes tell the North Carolina story and every effort should be made to preserve them. If we count all of the buildings classified as contributing to the significance of historic districts listed in the Register, it is estimated that North Carolina has approximately 75,000 National Register Properties.”

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, 2016, over 3,500 rehabilitation projects with an estimated private investment of over $2.18 billion have been completed.

Central North Carolina

Hanes Hosiery Mill, Ivy Avenue Plant, Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, listed 5/31/2016

The Hanes Hosiery Mill Company opened its Ivy Avenue plant in 1925, and by 1929 the factory was operating 1,300 knitting machines and producing 100,000 pairs of circular knit hose a day, making it the third-largest hosiery mill and the largest producer of women’s seamless stockings in the state. Hanes Hosiery helped create a national market for women’s seamless stockings in the mid-twentieth century, developing new knitting techniques and technologies that improved the appearance of circular-knit hosiery and launching a national advertising campaign. Over the years, the Ivy Avenue plant was expanded five times, and the separate three-story 1939 Finishing Mill was designed by the internationally renowned architectural firm of Albert Kahn, Inc. The textile mill complex is an intact representative example of early- to mid-twentieth-century industrial construction that exhibits the evolution of heavy timber and structural metal industrial design trends in the United States through the 1950s.
Mayodan Downtown Historic District, Mayodan, Rockingham County, listed 8/15/2016
The town of Mayodan was founded in 1895 by a group of prominent businessmen from Winston and Salem who believed that the location beside a powerful waterfall on the Mayo River and along the newly formed Roanoke and Southern Railroad could support a major textile operation. Moravian Francis Henry Fries began raising funds to build a mill in 1892, and shortly after he purchased 300 acres for real estate development. The commercial business area, mill worker housing, Episcopal and Moravian churches and a hotel followed beginning at the turn of the century. Mayodan’s downtown architecture is noteworthy for its one- and two-story Commercial Style brick buildings with decorative brick patterning and its Colonial Revival and Modern style building designs, in particular the distinctive 1971 Municipal Building on West Main Street.

Nathaniel Jones Jr. House, Raleigh, Wake County, listed 05/10/2016
The Nathaniel Jones Jr. House (formerly known as the Crabtree Jones House) is locally significant as an early Federal-style plantation house with a Greek Revival-style rear addition. To save the house from destruction, it was moved a short distance from its original site (listed in the National Register in 1973) and still stands on property historically owned by the Jones family. The ca. 1809-1812 two-story house is noteworthy for its hall-parlor plan, flanking one-story side-gable wings, and a large rear stair hall added during the construction of the main house. In ca. 1835-1844 a Greek Revival-style two-story rear addition with a single large room on each story added substantial space to an already commodious house. The house features upright proportions, a symmetrical façade, molded weatherboards, and classical architraves and modillions, as well as paneled doors and wainscoting on the interior and a decorative painted mantel.

Philip and Johanna Hoehns (Hanes) House, Clemmons, Forsyth County, listed 4/19/2016
The 1798 Philip and Johanna Hoehns (Hanes) House is one of Forsyth County’s most architecturally significant dwellings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hoehns, a farmer and distiller, became a well-to-do and respected man in the Moravian community. Built near the economic pinnacle of his life, the house was a testament to his wealth, status, and sophistication. The rural two-story masonry dwelling with refined Flemish-bond brickwork with decorative treatments is notably large and features a distinctive three-room plan. Its appearance and structure have more in common with substantial Moravian brick buildings being erected at the time in Salem than the more common log and timber frame houses of the period. The exterior brickwork is noteworthy, in particular the end gables with brick laid in a chevron pattern and the arched window openings with painted orange and black detailing.

Western Electric Company - Tarheel Army Missile Plant, Burlington, Alamance County, listed 5/2/2016
The Western Electric Company - Tarheel Army Missile Plant is historically important for the military-related manufacturing, product development, and testing operations that took place there between 1942 and 1966. Twin-engine laminated-plywood test airplanes and later ordnance were produced at the plant during World War II. Western Electric Company then leased the plant from 1946 until 1991 for the development and manufacturing of sophisticated communications equipment and weapons including Nike missile guidance and anti-aircraft apparatus. The plant employed up to 4,500 workers when operating at full capacity. A number of buildings at the plant are important for their architectural design, in particular the step-roofed Buildings 13 and 16 dating from the 1950s, which housed assembly space and rooftop radar systems testing areas, and several buildings designed by internationally renowned architect Albert Kahn.

Cherryville Downtown Historic District, Cherryville, Gaston County, listed 8/17/2016
Cherryville Downtown Historic District is historically important as the heart of the town’s commercial development. The intact and cohesive group of early- to mid-twentieth-century commercial buildings and nearby residences tells the story of the community’s primarily textile industry-driven commercial expansion from 1901 to 1966. Merchants lived in stylish Queen Anne, Craftsman, and Colonial Revival style houses on West Main Street and operated their businesses in the Commercial Style, Art Moderne, Spanish Revival, and Modernist commercial and institutional buildings found throughout the central business district. Particularly noteworthy are the three-story classical and Commercial Style fraternal and bank buildings and the distinctive 1911 Classical Revival-style City Hall on East Main Street.

May Hosiery Mills Knitting Mill, Burlington, Alamance County, listed 8/26/2016
May Hosiery Mills Knitting Mill, dating from 1928-29, is architecturally important as an example of an early twentieth-century textile mill design in Burlington. The company was established by brothers William and Benjamin May in 1922. The mill is one of only a few remaining historic buildings associated with the hosiery industry in the city. The building features a brick classical façade design, flat-slab reinforced concrete construction, and a distinctive sawtooth roof.

Richfield Milling Company, Richfield, Stanly County, listed 9/19/2016
The ca. 1910 Richfield Milling Company is the only remaining historic industrial building in the small farming and railroad community of Richfield in northern Stanly County. Strategically located near the railroad, the mill served local farmers selling their grain crops for shipment to larger markets and for their own use and animal feed. The frame roller mill is architecturally important for its heavy-timber construction and mill grain handling system, in particular the tall grain bins on the upper floors.

St. Andrews Presbyterian College, Laurinburg, Scotland County, listed 8/22/2016
St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg is historically important for higher education and modernist architecture and landscape architecture. An entirely new site was selected by the Presbyterian Church Synod for the merger of two church colleges located elsewhere in southeastern North Carolina. At its opening in 1961, the campus was one of only a few four-year colleges in the region. Architectural firm A. G. Odell Jr. and Associates and landscape architect Lewis Clarke’s vision for St. Andrews Presbyterian College resulted in a total transformation of what had been 225 acres of open agricultural land. The firms’ collaborative master plan created an integrated modern design with a picturesque three-part lake, Modern style academic and residential concrete building clusters, plazas, terraces, walkways, ramps, and naturalistic plantings. Open green space separates buildings and creates expansive vistas to the existing woodlands surrounding the campus.

Western North Carolina

Cleveland County Training School, Shelby, Cleveland County, listed 5/2/2016
The Cleveland County Training School is locally significant under Criterion A for Education and African American Ethnic history and Criterion C for Architecture. The red brick school comprises four different interconnected parts: a 1935 wing that once was attached to the 1927 Rosenwald school (not extant), a 1951 modernist classroom and cafeteria building, which replaced the Rosenwald school, a 1951 Auditorium, and a 1960 gymnasium. The 1951 buildings were designed by Shelby architecture firm, V.W. Breeze and Associates, while the 1960s gymnasium was designed by Van Wageningen and Cothran, also of Shelby. The school offered academic and vocational courses to first through twelfth-grade students, became known as Cleveland Training School around 1949 and operated as such until the Shelby school system’s 1967 integration. [Note: The school suffered extensive fire damage on September 15, 2016.]

Davidson Elementary School, Kings Mountain, Cleveland County, listed 5/18/2016
The Davidson Elementary School, designed by architect James Beam Jr., is locally significant for its contributions to the education of African American students in Kings Mountain. With construction complete in 1954, this one-story, six-room school is the last remaining of three buildings constructed for Davidson’s African American students and continued to serve them until 1968, when integration resulted in the repurposing of the building for special education classes.

Eastern North Carolina

Fountain Historic District, Fountain, Pitt County, listed 5/3/2016
The Fountain Historic District is significant for transportation and commerce. Established along the East Carolina Railway within twenty miles of the larger towns of Greenville, Tarboro, and Wilson, Fountain served as a commercial hub for the tobacco farmers and loggers in the area. The arrival of the East Carolina Railway around 1900 would fuel the growth of the logging and agricultural industries in and around Fountain and the town’s businesses provided a variety of services to the local residents. In addition to its importance in the areas of transportation and commerce, the district also is important for its architecture reflecting the town’s status as a railroad and farming town. Its large and distinctive homes of wealthy residents, modest homes of the middle and working classes, and warehouses and commercial buildings display representative examples of popular types and styles of the early to mid-twentieth century.

Pleasant Plains School, Pleasant Plains, Hertford County, listed 5/17/2016
The Pleasant Plains School, built in 1920, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its local educational importance as the only graded public school that served both local African American and Native American students in the unincorporated Pleasant Plains community of Hertford County from 1920 to 1950. The construction of the school was partially funded by the Rosenwald Fund. The frame, one-story, T-shaped, three-classroom school is also of local architectural significance as a very intact, representative example of early twentieth-century rural school design.

Burt-Arrington House, Hilliardston vicinity, Nash County, listed 8/22/2016
Located in the small rural enclave of Hillardston, the Burt-Arrington House is primarily significant for its architecture as a well-preserved example of a substantial Federal-era dwelling reflecting the economic and professional status of its owners. Physician and planter Dr. Willian Burt had the house built ca. 1824 as an asymmetrical four-bay, double-pile, side-hall plan house. Dr. John Arrington purchased the property in 1838 and had the house enlarged by adding a bay to the west gable end to create a hall-parlor plan. The added room is embellished with woodwork in the Greek Revival style while the rest of the dwelling exhibits Federal-style finishes.