Downtown Gastonia Historic District

Downtown Gastonia's historic core is a dense grid of commercial, civic and institutional buildings, with some apartment buildings, laid out south of the railroad about twenty-two miles west of Charlotte. It holds 78 contributing resources, mostly brick buildings from the early 1890s to the early 1950s, including two steel-frame skyscrapers at Main Avenue and South Street, a Classical Revival bank, and an Art Deco Kress store. It was recognized because the buildings record Gastonia's growth into the leading cotton textile center of the western Piedmont. Population rose from 1,033 in 1890 to over 17,000 in 1930, and the county seat moved to the city in 1911. That prosperity paid for a courthouse, City Hall, a school, churches, banks and theaters. Local architect Hugh E. White designed six of the finest, among them City Hall, the War Memorial Hall and the Webb Theater. A 1950s fire station extends the period of significance to 1954.