Columbia Historic District

Columbia, the county seat of Tyrrell County, lies on the east shore of the Scuppernong River estuary, where the town was laid out between 1793 and 1802. The district occupies most of the town core and centers on Main Street, where a nearly continuous row of commercial buildings, many of brick, dates from the turn of the twentieth century to about 1940. The 1903 Tyrrell County Courthouse and Jail stand in a landscaped public ground at Main and Broad streets. Residential areas include frame dwellings with Victorian sawn and turned ornament, Queen Anne and Gothic Revival houses, and Craftsman and Tudor Revival houses of the 1920s and 1930s. Lumber milling after the Civil War drove the town's growth, and the district reflects that expansion through its banks, churches and boarding houses. The district is regarded as the most varied architectural collection in the county, with streetscapes shaped by buildings, shade trees and sidewalks.