{"nrhp_refnum":"84003876","name":"Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse Historic District","other_names":["See Also:78001986","79001765","82003531"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Pender, Green, Pine, S. Jackson, and Hines Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Wilson","county":"Wilson County","state":"NC","lat":35.725196937500044,"lon":-77.91016872062949,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1984-12-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Commerce","Agriculture","Economics","Education","Politics/Government","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A large historic district covering all or parts of thirty-six blocks in downtown Wilson, Wilson County, North Carolina. It combines the main business area, the East Wilson Black commercial area, a tobacco auction warehouse area, and an industrial zone along the railroad.","why_significant":"The nomination presents the district as the core of Wilson's commercial and tobacco-related growth, especially during the early twentieth-century boom years. Its four connected sections held the public buildings and banks, a neighborhood business district for the Black community, the tobacco auction warehouses, and the tobacco and cotton processing plants. The text available does not include the formal significance statement, so criteria and dates are not given.","narrative":"Downtown Wilson, in the upper coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, is covered by a district of thirty-six blocks that divides into four linked areas. The main business area centers on Nash and Goldsboro streets, where Neo-Classical Revival buildings such as the 1903 Branch Banking Building and the 1924 Wilson County Courthouse occupy the corners. Across the railroad tracks, the 400 and 500 blocks of East Nash Street served as the business district for East Wilson's large Black community, anchored by Jackson Chapel First Baptist Church (1913) and St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church (1915). A third section holds eight surviving tobacco auction warehouses, with broad roofs and thousands of raised skylights. The fourth section, along the railroad, contains prize houses, redrying plants, stemmeries, the Imperial Tobacco Company plant, cotton oil seed company buildings, and a small mill village. Together these areas supported and profited from the city's growth in the early twentieth century.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Neo-Classical Revival for the main downtown landmarks; the district also includes early twentieth-century brick commercial buildings, churches, and large tobacco warehouses","criteria":[],"status_note":"Mixed condition; the form marks the district as occupied, deteriorated and altered. Some individual buildings, such as the Perry Building at 118 East Barnes Street, have been vacant and deteriorating.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:50.945929-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/57/7228/47722857/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/84003876.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84003876/d17aa70b87-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84003876/d17aa70b87-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"MattShaw9365","credit_html":"MattShaw9365, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wilson_City_Hall.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47722857","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Central_Business%E2%80%93Tobacco_Warehouse_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q22061148"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/wilson-county/wilson-central-business-tobacco-warehouse-historic-district-84003876/"}