Dunn Commercial Historic District

Downtown Dunn's commercial core grew up around the railroad. When the Atlantic Coast Line extended its tracks through town in 1886, streets were laid out perpendicular and parallel to the line, and merchants built along them. The district today contains 55 contributing buildings dating from about 1900 to about 1959, along with the 1886 Wilmington and Weldon right-of-way. Most are one- and two-story brick buildings with granite sills, lintels and copings. Italianate examples feature arched windows and corbelled cornices, while later Commercial Style buildings show patterned brickwork and stepped parapets. The tallest are the three-story Fitchett Drug Store and the four-story Cottondale Hotel of 1924. Two houses, a former post office and the hotel are mixed in with stores, warehouses and offices. Many storefronts have been modernized, but upper facades often survive. As the largest group of early twentieth-century commercial architecture in Harnett County, the district records the prosperity Dunn experienced in the first half of the twentieth century.