Graham Historic District

Graham's historic district is built around a courthouse square laid out in 1849 when the town became the seat of Alamance County. The square follows the Lancaster plan, with notched corners, and is framed by dense rows of one- to three-story brick commercial buildings with arched windows, corbeled cornices and pilasters. Anchors include the Vestal Hotel, the Patterson Building of 1898 and the Mont-White Theatre of 1906. At the center stands the 1923 Neoclassical courthouse by Greensboro architect Harry Barton. A few mid-nineteenth-century houses and stores survive, along with late Victorian dwellings tied to the Holt family, whose industrial wealth shaped the town. West Elm Street holds well-preserved houses and a Gothic Revival Presbyterian church designed by Richmond architect Charles L. Reade. The district matters because it shows how a small Piedmont courthouse town moved from simple early forms to more elaborate nationally popular styles during industrial growth between 1880 and 1940, and because its square remains unusually intact.