Fairmont Commercial Historic District

Fairmont's downtown commercial district, centred on Main Street, is a collection of brick buildings constructed from the late 1890s through 1960. The town grew after the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad reached it in 1898, and it became a major market for bright leaf tobacco, which was sold each August. Tobacco and cotton brought money and visitors downtown, and warehouses, stores, banks and hotels followed. The district holds thirty-one contributing buildings, including the Italianate blocks of the 1910s and 1920s with their decorative brick cornices, window hoods and denticulated detailing. Several Commercial Style buildings and a few Modern Movement buildings from the 1950s and 1960s, such as the 1963 Southern National Bank Building, add to the range. Most alterations have been to storefronts, and the buildings remain a readable record of the town's commercial development.