North Carolina

The late antebellum plantation buildings at Horton Grove—four rare, two-story, frame slave dwellings and a massive, frame stable-barn—represented a remarkable achievement when they were completed for planter Paul Cameron on the eve of the Civil War, and they constitute an even more remarkable survival today. These are the most significant buildings of the Horton Grove and Stagville plantations that comprise the Stagville State Historic Site.

St. Joseph’s AME Church, now the Hayti Heritage Center, is the symbolic cornerstone of Durham’s African American community. Following the Civil War, a neighborhood of African American freedmen known as Hayti grew on the southern side of the railroad tracks that ran along the edge of downtown Durham. The community was economically and culturally independent of Durham in the Jim Crow era and largely self-sufficient with prominent commercial districts along Fayetteville, Pine, and Pettigrew streets. Nicknamed “Black Wall Street” by Booker T.

The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) was established to jumpstart development and build momentum for research operations in the Research Triangle Park (RTP), one of the oldest and largest commercial land development projects in North America dedicated specifically to multi-agency research and technology development.

Atkins High School was the first school in North Carolina to be constructed with the assistance of the Rosenwald Fund, an organization created to build schools and improve education for African Americans in the segregated South. With the financial backing of Julius Rosenwald, president of the Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck and Company, the philanthropic organization was administered through the Tuskegee Institute originated by Booker T. Washington.

The American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) national headquarters near the east edge of the Research Triangle Park in southeast Durham County is one of the few remaining commercial structures designed by pioneering North Carolina architect G. Milton Small. It is representative of the International Style architecture he helped popularize in the region.

Coolmore is a nineteenth-century plantation mansion built in the Italian Villa style. Located outside Tarboro, it is one of the most completely preserved residences designed by Edmund George Lind. While the exterior is imposing, the interior is extraordinary with a dramatic elliptical staircase and rooms with elaborate trompe l’oeil panels by Ernst Dreyer, possibly the most complete surviving example of his work.

The Bethabara Moravian Church or Gemeinhaus, completed in 1788, is considered one of the finest examples of Moravian architecture in the United States, and it is the oldest surviving example of a Colonial German church with an adjoined parsonage.

The Single Brothers House, located in the historic Old Salem district of Winston-Salem, is one of the oldest surviving examples of the Moravian presence in the Piedmont.

Loray Mill and Village exemplifies the growth and decline of the textile industry in North Carolina. Like other towns in the Piedmont region, Gaston County had been a hub for the cotton and textile industry since the mid-1800s, with the Catawba River and its tributaries providing a source of power. Most of these early mills were small in scale and run by local businessmen. In 1902, Gaston County businessmen John Love and George Gray developed Loray Mill on the west side of Gastonia.

Fontana Dam and Village are part of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) system. On December 17, 1941, nine days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress authorized construction of Fontana Dam on the Little Tennessee River in Graham County. The dam would support the war effort by providing electricity for the production of aluminum and for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.