Downtown Mocksville Historic District

Mocksville's downtown grew around a town square planned in 1837, when Davie County was created and Mocksville named its seat. The district holds 22 contributing and 9 noncontributing resources, including the 1916 Davie County Courthouse, built using the shell of a 1909 building that burned, and the 1909 county jail of rusticated concrete block. Around the square are one- to three-story brick commercial buildings from about 1880 to the 1940s, among them the three-story Sanford Brothers Building of 1927, the former Princess Theatre, and the Johnstone Office Building of 1939. Small service stations from the 1920s and 1930s add Spanish Mission and Tudor Revival touches. The area is recognized as the only sizable historic urban commercial center in a mostly rural county, as the long-standing site of county government, and for its mix of modest vernacular and Classical Revival architecture. Many shopfronts have been altered, but upper floors largely survive.