Catawba Historic District

Catawba Historic District covers roughly seventy acres of a small North Carolina railroad village, taking in farmhouses, village homes, open fields, outbuildings and a compact brick commercial block along Main Street. Of its seventy-three primary buildings, nearly half are frame, with brick concentrated near downtown. The oldest houses date from the early 1870s and are two-story, single-room-deep vernacular dwellings with center entrances and rear kitchen wings. Two Gothic-influenced buildings, the Trollinger-Sherrill House and the Catawba Baptist Church, followed in the mid-1870s. Large brick commercial buildings from the 1890s, including the Sherrill Tobacco Company Building and the Long and Company Store, reflect the town's economic strength. Later houses show Queen Anne, classical and bungalow influences. Barns, granaries and other outbuildings, along with surrounding open land, preserve the link between town and farm. The district was listed because it shows how a small community grew within an agricultural setting, aided by the railroad.