Fayetteville Street Historic District

Fayetteville Street is Raleigh's main commercial corridor, and this district takes in four blocks of it along with a few buildings on West Hargett, West Martin and South Salisbury Streets. The district has 21 contributing and 8 noncontributing resources. The buildings range from four-story brick stores to steel-framed skyscrapers of up to sixteen stories. The period of significance begins in 1874 with Briggs Hardware and the Second Empire Post Office and Courtroom, and ends in 1965 with three modernist bank buildings. Together these show the street's growth from a retail corridor of shops, banks and theaters into a center of corporate banking. The 1909 Masonic Temple, designed by Charles McMillan, was the state's first skyscraper with a steel-reinforced concrete frame. Many older storefronts were remodeled before 1965, and the district counts those changes as part of the buildings' history. Later infill from the 1970s and 1980s is classed as noncontributing. Uses today include offices, restaurants, apartments, a museum and government functions.