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#----~----------- State North Carol ina Divi ion of Archives and H ___.u.R-l.:ou.c.....lk::._l.L. • .w.n-l"g.-'-h.L.Ila.L.mt.U-_ COUNTY Reidsville QUAD _____.u __ MULTIPLE RESOURCE OR-··------ THEMATIC NOMINATION NAME HISTORIC Reidsville Historic District AND/OR COMMON LOCATION STREET & NUMBER __ NOT FOR PUBLICATION CITY. TOWN CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT Reidsville VICINITY OF STATE CODE COUNTY CODE CATEGORY OWNERSHIP STATUS PRESENT USE ...XDISTRICT _PUBLIC -X-OCCUPIED -AGRICULTURE -MUSEUM _BUILDING(S) _PRIVATE .!.UNOCCUPIED 2£.COMMERCIAL _PARK _STRUCTURE .X BOTH !.WORK IN PROGRESS .XEDUCA TIONAL !..PAIVA TE RESIDENCE _SITE PUBLIC ACQUISITION ACCESSifJlE ..XENTERTAINMENT XAELIGIOUS _OBJECT _IN PROCESS X. YES: RESTRICTED .XGOVERNMENT _SCIENTIFIC _BEING CONSIDERED X YES UNRESTRICTED .XINDUSTRIAL K TRANSPORTATION N/A _.NO _MILITARY _OTHER OWNER OF PROPERTY NAME Multiple owners -------------------- ----------------------------STREET & NUMBER CITY. TOWN STATE _ VICINITY 01-" LOCATION OF LEGAL DESCRIPTION COURTHOUSE. REGISTRY OF DEEDS, ETC. Rockingham County Register of Deeds, Courthouse STREET & NUMBER Highway 65 CITY. TOWN STATE FORM PREPARED BY NAME I TITLE Allison Harris Blac~rchitectural Historian ORGANIZATION DATE Black & BJack Preservation Consultants August 1986 TELEPHONE CONDITION CHECK ONE CHECK _!exCELLENT _DETER I ORA TED )LUNALTERED .X.ORIGINAL SITE ..!GOOD -RUINS X-ALTERED X..MOVED DATE See ..!FAIR _UNEXPOSED individual entries PHYSICAL APPEARANCE The Reidsville Historic District, comprising approximately 140 acres in an irregular configuration and encompassing most of the central business district, an industrial area to the east and northeast, and residential areas to the west and southeast, is located in the north central section of the city. The rectangular heart of the district is the grid-patterned four city blocks flanking South Scales Street in the 100 and 200 blocks and extending to the legs of Market Street running east and west of and parallel to the railroad , with a perpendicular rectangle to the southwest composed of the 300 blocks of south Main street, Maple Avenue, Irvin Street, and south washington Avenue. From these larger sections, a number of branches extend in all compass direc­ tions to include significant groups of buildings representing the deve­ lopment of the town. The streets in these areas, including south Main street, Lindsey street, and Lawsonville Avenue, are frequently curvili­ near in plan, following the rolling terrain of the city's topography as well as land ownership and use patterns. The district consists of some 372 properties, including 419 buildings, twelve structures, one object, and one site. Of the 419 buildings6 324 are contributing and 95 are non-contributing. Only one of the structures is non-contributing. The boundaries of the district, as shown on the sketch map, are defined principally by development which has occurred since the dis­ trict's period of significance (roughly 186 1941) and deterioration and/or alteration of buildings which might otherwise be included in a district. Within these boundaries is a full range of building types and styles representing the period of significance and the various forces and trends at work in the city's development during that period. They include commercial and industrial buildings, the homes of those who owned or worked in local commercial or industrial enterprises, the churches in which they worshipped, one school in which their children were educated, governmental buildings, and a depot symbolic of the railroad's importance in the development of Reidsville in the last quarter of the 19th century. Although a tiny settlement known as Reidsville was established early in the 19th century, the community remained little more than a stagecoach stop until the Civil War. With the arrival of the Piedmont Railroad in 1863 and the establishment of Reidsville as the principal station between Danville, Virginia and Greensboro, the way was open for the town to become an important trade center. The tobacco industry having acquired a foothold in the town in the late 1850s, at the center of a tobacco-growing belt, it was natural that Reidsville would also become the locus for the tobacco trade. After the war ended, Reidsville began to undergo fairly. rapid OHB No. 1024-0018 Expires 10-31-87 1111 I 0 Reidsville Historic District Descri tion 7 . 1 development, with the majority of the earliest construction--industrial, commercial, and residential--along the parallel east and west legs of Market street, which bracket the railroad tracks. Among the first buildings constructed was a hotel owned and operated by Major Mortimer Oaks, a former official of the Piedmont Railroad, who was a founder of many of the town's enterprises in the years immediately following the war. The only building believed to have survived from this earliest period in the town's post-Civil War development is the Oaks-Motley House (#6), a two-story frame rtalianate dwelling originally located on the east side of the 110 block of North East Market Street; it was moved in the mid-20th century to its current site in the middle of· that block behind a number of other buildings. The house may have been built by Oaks and was later owned by A. H. Motley, sr., founder of an important tobacco factory. By the late 1870s, the desired location for residences for the more prosperous industrialists, merchants, and professionals and for the retail trade had shifted westward to areas where the topography was less pronounced in its elevation diversity and, therefore, more suitable for construction. commerce became centered along south scales street which is parallel to and one block west of Market street, and numerous fine residences were built along south Main Street, a block still further west. By about 1890, both sides of the 100 block of south scales street were relatively densely developed, as were the cross streets to the north and south--West Morehead and Gilmer streets. At the same time, south Main Street was fairly evenly developed some seven blocks south of Morehead Street (the approximate northern edge of the district), with scattered dwellings to the west. In the mid 1880s, Lindsey Street, running east to west from south Main Street, joined the latter tho­ roughfare as an important site for residential construction. Throughout this period, the dominant style for both residential and commercial design was the rtalian~te; many fine examples survive, parti­ cularly of houses, both those clearly drawn directly from available pattern books and those with only evocative elements grafted onto more traditional forms. The most high-style, as well as the most, intact example of an rtalianate residence in the district is the Colonel A. J. Boyd House (#107) on south Main street near the southern edge of the district; the two-story frame house, built in the mid 1870s, features the hallmark central tower with an abundance of Italianate ornament. A somewhat earlier brick example of the style, the William Lindsey House (#124), which is located farther north on Main street, was updated early in the 20th century in the classical revival idiom. Similarly updated was another brick rtalianate, the nearby Robert Williams House (#128), dating from the late 1870s. Other significant frame examples of rtalia- NPS Form 10·900·111 OMB No. 1024-0018 (3-82) Expires 10-31-87 Reidsville Historic District Continuation sheet DescriPtion Item number 7 • 2 nate residences on south Main street are the John A. Roach House (#131), which has early 20th century classically-inspired alterations, and the Walters House (#106), recently clad in aluminum siding. A final impor­ tant example of Italianate residential design is the Reid House (#16, listed in the National Register in 1974), built in 1881 for the son of David Settle Reid and the only surviving building in Reidsville asso­ ciated with the governor. During the 1880s, several houses were built near the western edge of the district on Lindsey Street, which derive in more diluted fashion from the Italianate style so popular in the previous decade. The Bethell House (#299) and the Steven H. Ware House (#266), both two-story frame houses are embellished with turned and sawn wooden ornament typi­ cal of the style. In contrast, the nearby James A. Ware House (#296) and w. L. Gardner House (#297) are more modest brick examples of the use of Italianate elements on traditional forms. Particularly on south Main and Lindsey streets, elements of the Italianate style are as pervasive as are those of the later and equally popular classical revival styles. The finest and most intact surviving examples of Italianate commer­ cial buildings in the district date from the 1880s, as the majority of earlier commercial buildings, both frame and brick, have long since disappeared. The Reid Block (#21), located on the northwest corner of West Morehead and West Market streets, is a two-story brick commercial building with the distinguishing brick hood molds above segmental arch window openings, with remnants of a cast iron cornice above the shop fronts. More intact is the Whitsett and crafton Block (#2), located across the railroad one-half block to the northeast, with its decorative brickwork and metal cornice above the intact shopfronts. Finally, the former Citizens' Bank Building (#46), at the southeast corner of scales and Morehead streets, also exhibits the trademark segmental arch window openings with brick label molds. A number of other buildings in the central business district exhibit some characteristics of the style, but most have been altered to a greater degree, especially by the bricking up of window openings. Few buildings associated with the town's tobacco industry in the late 19th and early 20th century survive; a number of the tobacco ware­ houses were destroyed by fire and others were demolished as they became obsolete. Many of the numerous small tobacco factories had closed prior to the 1911 acquisition of the F.

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