Ayden Historic District

Ayden, a railroad market town in southern Pitt County, North Carolina, grew after the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad reached it in 1890 and the town was incorporated in 1891. Landowner William Henry Harris secured the rail line by donating farmland, and the East Carolina Land and Improvement Company platted the town. The district's downtown holds one of the best collections of early twentieth-century commercial buildings in the county, including the 1915 Venetian Gothic Ayden Town Hall on West Avenue and two 1915-era bank buildings facing each other at Second and Lee streets. Residential streets hold Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and bungalow houses built from about 1890 to the 1930s, along with shotgun houses in the historically African-American south side. Tobacco-driven prosperity and the growth of religious schools shaped the town's development, and the district is regarded as a largely intact early town.