The State Capitol Building and the War Memorial
North Carolina's State Capitol is one of the Nation's most intact examples of a Greek Revival public building. Built of local stone, the building replaced the previous stuccoed-brick State House destroyed by fire in 1831. Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis of New York served as principal architects, while the supervising architect, David Paton from Scotland, is credited with much of the interior's design. The cornerstone of the building was laid July 4, 1833. To haul locally quarried granite to the building site, an experimental wooden-track railway was developed, using mule power to pull the cars. In the spring of 1840 the building was completed. The final cost exceeded $530,000--more than six times the state's 1840 revenue.
Views of the State Capitol Building at night
The Capitol is roughly cruciform in plan, three stories tall crowned by a copper dome. The interior features a central rotunda open from the ground floor to the top of the dome. The two other major rooms are the house and senate chambers, each two full stories in height. The building stands in the center of Capitol Square, largest of the five public squares established in Raleigh's original 1792 plan. Large trees and public monuments surrounding the building add to its air of permanence, formality and importance. The layout of Capitol Square dates from 1928, according to a plan designed by the Olmstead Brothers.
North Carolina's presidents to the nation
All branches of state government were housed in the Capitol until the Supreme Court moved into its own building in 1888. The General Assembly met in the Capitol until 1963, when it moved into the Legislative Building. Offices of the Governor and Secretary of State remain in the building. While several remodelings and additions to the building have been suggested over the years, actual changes have been minimal. Recent work has restored the original senate and house chambers. The North Carolina State Capitol is a designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.
The Lewis-Smith House (1855)
The Lewis-Smith house is the oldest home in Blount Street Commons, constructed in 1855 for Major Augustus M. Lewis, a state legislator from Louisburg, NC. In 1912, Dr. Charles Lee Smith bought the home, where he lived until his death in 1951. Dr. Smith was one of the most distinguished and respected educators and publishers in North Carolina during the twentieth century. He was a former president of Mercer University, president of the Edwards and Broughton Printing Company, a published historian and a trustee of the University of North Carolina.
Many of the home’s features, including the portico with Doric and Ionic columns, corner pilasters, and window and door surrounds with corner blocks, all came from Asher Benjamin’s classical pattern books for home design that were widely used during the early to mid-1800s. Dr. Smith expanded the house to add two-story bayed conservatories on each side and a large arched window with leaded glass fanlight in the rear of the home. He also added a classical columned screen between the front and rear hall. Four elaborate original gas light fixtures hang in the entryway, though they have since been converted to electricity. Original chandeliers, mirrors, and marble mantelpieces are still located throughout the first floor of the home. The Lewis Smith home is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is also designated as a Raleigh Historic Landmark. It is also the only house that is still standing on North Blount Street that was constructed before the Civil War.
The Heck-Andrews House (1870)
Among the first grand residences built in Raleigh after the Civil War, the Heck-Andrews House set the tone for the subsequent development of North Blount Street as an enclave of the well-to-do. Industrialist Jonathan McGee Heck had the towering Second Empire house constructed for his wife Mattie in 1869 on what was then the edge of town. Heck was born in western Virginia in 1831. A Confederate officer early in the Civil War, he was captured but subsequently paroled. Heck then turned to manufacturing armaments for the Confederacy, an activity that seeded his fortune. After the war, Heck expanded his wealth through real estate sales and development. It was his wife, however, who pursued the purchase of the Blount Street lot.
During the war, Mattie Heck and her children had led a nomadic existence. In 1866, the family secured a plantation in Warren County, but rural life did not agree with Mrs. Heck. With the purchase of the one-acre lot in Raleigh, the capital city became the Hecks' permanent home. On July 22, 1869, Raleigh builders Wilson and Waddell were contracted to erect "a three story house, with tower, slate and french roof, all materials to be of the very best, and to be put up in the very best manner." The building's architect was G. S. H. Appleget, who also designed the Andrews-Duncan house just across North Street, and Shaw University's Estey Hall.
Life at the house was opulent and active. Photographs show the interior lavishly decorated in the style of the day, with heavy draperies, lace curtains, mahogany furniture and plush carpets. Eight of the Hecks' 12 children were born at the house. One daughter, Fannie, grew to national prominence as president of the Women's Missionary Union from 1890 until her death in 1915.
Jonathan Heck died in 1894. In 1916, Mattie Heck deeded the house to daughter Mattie Heck Boushall. In 1921, the house was acquired by prominent Raleigh attorney A. B. Andrews, Jr. who had grown up in the Andrews-Duncan house across the street. He is said to have bought the property for his wife, Helen, who sadly died before their move was completed. Andrews moved in nonetheless, frequently entertaining at the house, escorting guests to the top of the four-story tower to view the changing Raleigh skyline. After Andrews' death in 1946, the house experienced a period of decline. In 1987, the state government, which had acquired most of the other large residences on Blount Street as office space, secured controlling interest in the house. Recent stabilization measures have included complete refurbishment of the exterior.
Estey Hall (1873)
Estey Hall is the first building constructed for the higher education of black women in the United States. It is also the oldest surviving building of Shaw University, the first institutionalized effort to educate former slaves after the Civil War. A Union army chaplain and Baptist missionary, Henry Martin Tupper, founded the school in 1865. Tupper’s efforts were part of a widespread, church-based movement to educate former slaves in the post-Civil War South. Originally meeting in a Raleigh hotel room, Tupper’s school was subsequently provided a building by the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1870, with the financial assistance of Massachusetts benefactor Elijah J. Shaw, the school purchased a tract of land at the south end of Fayetteville Street, near the former Governor’s Mansion. Five years later, the school was chartered by the General Assembly as Shaw University. It subsequently trained many of the region’s most prominent black professionals and business leaders.
Shaw began to admit women soon after its founding, and in 1874, “Estey Seminary” was erected to serve them. Named for Vermont contributor Jacob Estey, the building was designed by G. S. H. Appleget, architect of the Colonel J. M. Heck house and several other large residences north of downtown. The brick building features four floors and an attic, with a cross-gable roof capped by a frame cupola. Contrasting stucco defines the window surrounds and corner quoins. A three-story south annex, added in 1882, displays similar detailing. In Estey Hall, women attended classes in home economics, music, art and religion. Records suggest they also had the opportunity, if they chose, to pursue the same courses of study offered to university men.
Estey Hall served Shaw students for nearly 100 years. However, in 1970, advancing deterioration resulted in its closing. Talk of possible demolition led to the founding of the Estey Hall Foundation, which to date has secured the renovation of the building’s exterior and partial renovation of its interior space.
Merrimon-Wynn House (1876)
The Merrimon House/Wynne Hall is a boldy ornamented Italianate villa featuring full-lengh segmental arch windows and ornate porches. It was orginally the residence of Augustus Merrimon, judge, senator and state Supreme Court justice and later it was the home of Stanley Wynne, whose wife deeded the property to Peace College in 1919. In 1975 it was sold to the state of North Carolina and converted into offices.
August S. Merrimon was a Democratic U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina between 1873 and 1879. An attorney from Buncombe County, North Carolina, Merrimon served in the North Carolina House of Commons from 1860 to 1861. He briefly served in the Confederate Army when the American Civil War broke out, but resigned to become solicitor (prosecutor) for North Carolina's eighth judicial district. After the war, Merrimon served as a state superior court judge, then returned to the practice of law, and was an unsuccessful Democratic (at the time, officially called the Conservative Party) candidate for Governor of North Carolina in 1872. With 49.5 percent of the vote, Merrimon lost an extremely close race to incumbent Tod R. Caldwell.
Merrimon was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1872. He and former Gov. Zebulon B. Vance had already become intense political enemies, though both were affiliated with the Conservative Party. After Vance won the endorsement of the Conservative Party in the legislature, the minority Republicans in the legislature voted with Merrimon's supporters to elect him to the Senate.
During his term in the Senate, Merrimon gained a reputation as "one of the bitterest partisan Democrats in Congress". He was appointed to the 'South Carolina Committee,' a Congressional commission assigned to conduct hearings into voter intimidation and fraud during the 1876 elections in South Carolina—the elections which brought an end to Reconstruction and restored white supremacists to power. The only Democrat on the Committee, Merrimon badgered black and white Republican witnesses band attempted to downplay and excuse white atrocities. A full transcript of the testimony can be found in the 3 bound volumes published by the 42nd Congress. After Vance was elected Governor in 1876, he began recruiting candidates to defeat Merrimon supporters in legislative races to lay the groundwork to take Merrimon's seat in the Senate. In the legislative election of 1878, the state Democrats ran two slates in many districts: one pledged to Merrimon and one pledged to Vance. The result was mixed; the Republicans gained 13 seats in the legislature, and the majority Democrats were still divided in their loyalties (Merrimon 40 to Vance 60 with 70 Republicans). The Republican legislators voted for Vance in the election in early 1879, giving him the majority.
After being defeated for re-election, Merrimon served as an Associate Justice (1883–1889) and then Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (1889 until his death in 1892).
Leonidas L. Polk House (1881)
Agrarian leader, editor, and first North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture, Leonidas L. Polk was born on April 24, 1837 in Anson County. He was the son of Andrew and Serena Autry Polk, successful farmers and owners of thirty-two slaves. By age fifteen, Leonidas lost his father and mother. Their estate was divided between him and three half-brothers, with young Polk’s share being 353 acres and seven slaves. Polk was educated in the local schools and at nearby Davidson College. In 1857, Polk married Sarah Pamela Gaddy of Anson County; they had six children.
In 1860, Polk was elected to the state House as a Whig Unionist. Like most Whigs, he only advocated secession after President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) in April 1861 issued a call for troops to quell the states that formed the Confederate States of America and bring them back into the Union. As a state representative, Polk chaired a joint committee that created the state militia that he soon led as a commissioned colonel. (He was known thereafter as Colonel Polk.) In May 1862, he joined the 26th North Carolina Regiment as a private; he was later promoted to the rank of sergeant-major. Later that year, he transferred to the 43rd Regiment. He served in it as a second lieutenant, until he was elected in 1864 to the state legislature.
Meanwhile, Polk was also active in the Baptist church, once serving as president of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention. Polk was instrumental in establishing the North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College and Baptist Female University.
In the late 1880s, Polk rose to nationwide prominence through his leadership of the state and national Farmers' Alliance, which had begun in Texas. He became its national vice president in 1887 and its president in 1889. These words, spoken in 1887, were typical of Polk's rhetoric: "Our farmers buy everything to raise cotton, and raise cotton to buy everything, and, after going through this treadmill business for years, they lie down and die and leave their families penniless."
The Alliance's mixed record using traditional two-party politics paved the way for the Populist Party, or People's Party. Polk presided over the meeting in February 1892 that formally created the party. The Populists likely would have nominated Polk for president in 1892 (see U.S. presidential election, 1892), but he died unexpectedly in Washington, D.C. on June 11, 1892.
He was one of the first inductees into the North Carolina Agricultural Hall of Fame.
Polk's house is today owned by the state of North Carolina. It was moved on Nov. 12, 2000, to its new home on Blount Street in Raleigh. The Leonidas LaFayette Polk House Foundation plans to use part of the house for the Polk Museum.
The Hawkins-Harntness House (c.1882)
The Hawkins-Hartness House is one of a group of large residences built on North Blount Street during the late 19th century. Collectively, they made the street one of that era's most desirable Raleigh addresses. In its architecture and materials, however, the Hawkins-Hartness House remains boldly individualistic. On October 26, 1881, Dr. Alexander B. Hawkins of Leon County, Florida, purchased the property at the southeast corner of Blount and North streets. Family tradition says that Hawkins' wife, Martha, was particularly fond of the frame house that stood there. The Hawkinses then returned to their home in Florida, after asking Dr. Hawkins' brother, Dr. William J. Hawkins of Raleigh, to have the frame house renovated for them during their absence. When they returned, the story goes, the Hawkinses found the brother had instead moved the original house across town, and in its place built a new brick house of his own design for them. Mrs. Hawkins is believed to have subsequently had the 92-foot verandah added to modify what she considered to be the overly severe appearance of the exterior. Whatever their original reaction, the Hawkinses found the house enough to their liking that they lived there the rest of their lives.
Raleigh did not have a citywide water system until 1889. To secure water for washing, Dr. Hawkins had a windmill installed in the backyard to pump water from a well into a tank located in the attic. A 6,000-gallon rainwater cistern in the north garden furnished filtered drinking water for both Hawkins house and the Governor's Mansion, built in 1891, immediately to the south.
Dr. Hawkins died in 1922. Mrs. Sadie Erwin, wife of Durham, North Carolina, manufacturer William A. Erwin, then acquired the house, but the Erwins apparently never lived in the house. In 1928, it was purchased by Mrs. Annie Sloan Hartness, whose husband, James A. Hartness, served as North Carolina Secretary of State between 1929 and 1931. In 1969, during a wave of state government expansion north from its historical focus around the Capitol, the house was bought by the state. Today the building serves as the offices of the Lieutenant Governor.
Cowper House (1895)
The Cowper house was built in 1895 for United States district attorney Claude Bernard. At the turn of the century, Brian Grimes Cowper moved his family from their farm at Five Points in Raleigh to this home on North Blount Street. Mr. Cowper and his partner Bryan Grimes owned an insurance agency on Fayetteville Street. Cowper was active in community civic affairs, serving on the original board of trustees for Raleigh’s first public library, the Olivia Raney Library in 1899. Cowper’s daughter, Mary Grimes Cowper, married Currin G. Keeble in 1925 and they lived in the family’s home through the 1950s. The house later served as offices for the North Carolina architectural licensing board in the late twentieth century.
The two-and-one-half-story frame house is a completely intact and delightful example of the picturesque Queen Anne style popular at the turn-of-the-century. With its tall hipped slate roof, slate gables, its square corner tower with a slate belfry with metal finial, and a two-story front bay window, the house is a visual feast of this Victorian style. Details such as the decorative wood brackets framing the cutaway upper bay window, the rosette window in the tower, and the completely original wraparound veranda with bracketed posts and a decorative balustrade complete this attractive building.
The Capehart House (1898)
The Capehart House is among Raleigh's finest surviving examples of the Queen Anne style. Its dramatic massing of towers, turrets, dormers and pediments is complemented by a rich combination of colors and textures, including pressed tan brick, rough stone, patterned slate shingles, stained glass and elaborate wood ornamentation. Built in 1898 in the Blount Street area, just north of downtown, the residence added to the neighborhood's rising reputation as an enclave of the well-to-do. The home's designer was Adolphus G. Bauer, a notable local architect whose work included Norburn Terrace, a towered residence off Wake Forest Road, and the now-demolished Baptist Female Seminary and Park Hotel.
The house was constructed for Lucy Catherine Capehart and her second husband, B. A. "Baldy" Capehart. Mrs. Capehart had inherited considerable wealth from the estate of her father, former State Attorney General Bartholomew Moore, and her first husband, Dr. Peyton Henry. B. A. Capehart died in 1899, shortly after he and Lucy moved into the house. Lucy continued to reside there--an invalid for much of the time--until her death in 1908. Subsequently, the house was the home of sheriff H. H. Crocker until 1947, when it was divided into apartments. Since 1971, the house has served as offices for the State Government. In 1979, when much of the surrounding neighborhood was being razed for the state's new Government Mall, the house was moved from 403 North Wilmington Street to its present location on Blount Street.
Jordan House (1898)
The Jordan House was built around 1898 for Thomas M. Jordan. By 1901, Dr. Jordan and his wife lived in the home. Dr. Jordan was a distinguished physician and served on the first sanitary board in Wake County during the early 1900s.
The house is a large and handsome frame dwelling of late Queen Anne style. Especially fine features of the popular style are the high hipped slate roof, tall cream-colored brick corbelled chimneys, and the stylish veranda which sweeps around the front and side elevations, pushing out into an octagonal pavilion at the corner. The original narrow weatherboards are a stylish feature as well. The delightful decorative brackets of the veranda and the bell-curved slate roof of the pavilion, with its turned finial, were a visual landmark to motorists passing by along Peace Street when the house stood on its original site at the northeast corner of N. Wilmington and Peace streets. The Jordan house moved from its original location at 532 N. Wilmington Street to 545 N. Blount St. in July 2008.
Lee House (1900)
The Lee House, built in 1900 for farmer Paul Lee, served as his family's home through the 1950s. The distinguished Georgian Revival-style home has a beautiful full wraparound veranda, anchored by 9 ionic columns and a wrought-iron stairway.
The Tucker House (1915)
One of the grand dames of early 20th-century Raleigh, the Neo-Classical Revival Tucker House was repaired after fire destroyed parts of it in the 1930s. Forty years later, it was preserved by moving it a full city block from its original location. The residence was built for Garland Scott Tucker, a Raleigh businessman. Tucker was the founder of G. S. Tucker and Company Furniture, which he expanded into a chain of stores in eastern North Carolina. Tucker married Toler Moore of Tarboro, North Carolina, and in 1904, the first of their four children was born. About 1915, the Tuckers built this house at 420 North Blount Street, then considered the premier residential street in Raleigh. The elegant home was a bit unusual for its time--it not only had a bathroom downstairs, but two more upstairs. A descendant recalls the layout--a reception hall, library, radio room, telephone room and dining room downstairs, as well as the kitchen, bathroom and a butler's pantry--in the pre-World War I years when household servants were a fixture. There are also four fireplaces downstairs and five bedrooms and a sleeping porch upstairs. The home boasts fine mahogany woodwork throughout, dark paneling on the walls and beautiful hardwood floors, which incorporate Greek key designs.
As the Tucker's family home, the mansion was the scene of a constant round of formal teas, receptions and parties for many years. When necessary, it was also used for family funerals, with the deceased lying in state in one of the richly appointed rooms while the funeral service was performed. One night in the 1930s, as the family slept in the upstairs bedrooms, fire broke out on the first floor. The people escaped without injury, but damage was severe in some downstairs rooms. The damage was repaired, however, and life went on. The Tucker children grew up and moved away. Garland S. Tucker, Sr. died in 1949. Mrs. Tucker continued to reside there until her death in 1972, when the house passed into the hands of their only son, Garland S. Tucker, Jr. At that time, many homes surrounding the Tucker House were falling to demolition, as the state government pursued pressing needs for expansion. In 1975, Tucker donated the house to the city of Raleigh. The city responded by moving the house one block, to 414 N. Person Street, there to take on new life as a center for community and private events. The city renovated the mansion and furnished it with antique furniture. Today is serves as a community meeting house for the adjacent Mordecai and Oakwood neighborhoods, and as a rental facility.
