{"nrhp_refnum":"70000453","name":"Tarboro Town Common","other_names":[],"category":"site","location":{"address":"Bounded by Wilson St., Albemarle Ave., Park Ave. and St. Patrick St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Tarboro","county":"Edgecombe County","state":"NC","lat":35.89821170300007,"lon":-77.53553398999998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1970-09-30","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A roughly triangular nine-acre public park in Tarboro, Edgecombe County, North Carolina, bounded by Park Avenue, St. Patrick Street, Wilson Street and Albemarle Avenue. It is the surviving part of the town common laid out when Tarboro was established in 1760.","why_significant":"The nomination argues that the common is a unique survival of early urban planning in the South. Few eighteenth-century North Carolina towns set aside land specifically as town commons, and Tarboro's original plan reserved fifty acres for this purpose. The remaining space has served as a training ground, a park and a site for memorials.","narrative":"Tarboro Town Common is a nine-acre public park in the center of Tarboro, North Carolina, shaped roughly like a triangle and crossed by Trade, Main and St. Andrew's Streets. It began as part of Joseph Howell's plantation, which commissioners bought in 1760 to lay out a town, setting aside fifty acres for commons. The common once surrounded the town on three sides, but expansion, an academy and a graded school gradually reduced it. During the Civil War it served as a training ground and temporary barracks for the Edgecombe Guards. Today it has open lawns shaded by old oaks and elms, a moved nineteenth-century cotton press, a Confederate monument from 1904, a Wilson obelisk, a Spanish-American War marker and a cast iron fountain honoring Henry Wyatt. The listing rests on its rarity as an early planned town common, an unusual feature among North Carolina's eighteenth-century towns.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Described as in good condition, altered, on its original site, and in use as a public park owned by the Town of Tarboro.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:58:56.931543-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/46/7201/47720146/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/70000453.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"80002832","name":"Tarboro Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/north-carolina/tarboro-historic-district-80002832/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47720146","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarboro_Town_Common","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19863970"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/edgecombe-county/tarboro-town-common-70000453/"}