Elizabeth City Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Elizabeth City's historic district covers about thirty blocks between the Pasquotank River and the post-1920 suburbs to the west. Main Street runs through its center, linking the downtown business area with Victorian residential streets. The oldest known building is the Grice-Fearing House, built between 1789 and 1808 and enlarged in 1840. Eight Greek Revival houses from about 1834 to 1863 survive, most with side-hall plans and distinctive acorn-capped stair newels. Seven antebellum commercial buildings cluster along South Road Street and the first block of East Main, among them the Cobb Building, which combines a store and a residential wing. The town prospered after the Dismal Swamp Canal was deepened in 1826-1828, becoming a shipbuilding and trading port with ties to Norfolk and the West Indies. A competing canal completed in 1859 and the Civil War, including a naval battle nearby in 1862, ended that boom and stalled growth for about twenty years.