{"nrhp_refnum":"87001913","name":"Planters Building","other_names":["First Union Bank Building"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"312 N. Chestnut St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Lumberton","county":"Robeson County","state":"NC","lat":34.61915709600004,"lon":-79.00763548199996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1987-11-03","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A five-story Classical Revival bank and office building at 312 N. Chestnut Street in Lumberton, Robeson County, North Carolina, built in 1925-26 for the Planters Bank & Trust Company's building corporation.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it is the most prominent surviving expression of Lumberton's commercial and physical boom in the early twentieth century and one of only a handful of high-rise buildings built in eastern North Carolina in that period. It is also a well-preserved example of Classical Revival design, with a luxuriously finished two-story banking room, by the firm Wilson, Berryman and Kennedy, led by Charles Coker Wilson.","narrative":"Rising five stories at the corner of Chestnut and Fourth Streets in Lumberton, this steel-framed Classical Revival building was designed as a bank with leased offices above. Completed in 1925-26 for the Planters Building Corporation, backed by Planters Bank & Trust, it cost about $115,000 and had steam heat and one of two electric elevators in town. The street fronts are faced with rusticated cast concrete and tall arched windows below orange tapestry brick, topped by a bracketed sheetmetal cornice. Inside, a two-story banking room has colossal piers, a coffered ceiling, pink marble wainscot and terrazzo floors. The architects were Wilson, Berryman and Kennedy, a branch of Charles Coker Wilson's South Carolina practice. The building was listed because it reflects Lumberton's growth as a railroad, cotton and tobacco market town in the early twentieth century, and because it is a well-preserved, large-scale example of Classical Revival design in a small eastern North Carolina town. The bank later changed hands, and the building has been vacant since the 1980s.","period_of_significance":"1925-26","architect_builder":"Wilson, Berryman and Kennedy (architects); J. F. Beaman Construction Company of Raleigh (contractor)","architectural_style":"Classical Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The building has been vacant since shortly after 1983, when First Union National Bank ended its operations there. A adjoining former telephone company building is a noncontributing addition.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:50.209145-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/50/7219/47721950/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/87001913.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87001913/c570801e06-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87001913/c570801e06-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Ammodramus","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Planters_Bldg_(Lumberton_NC)_from_NW_1.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Ammodramus</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Planters_Bldg_(Lumberton_NC)_from_NW_1.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"89002131","name":"Lumberton Commercial Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/north-carolina/lumberton-commercial-historic-district-89002131/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47721950","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planters_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19987599"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/robeson-county/planters-building-87001913/"}