Lee Avenue Historic District

Lee Avenue Historic District is a seven-block, L-shaped neighborhood in the Jonesboro Heights section of south Sanford. It includes stretches of Lee Avenue and West Main Street plus a few lots on South Academy and West Raleigh streets. Of 54 primary buildings, 46 contribute to its character. The oldest is the Pierce-Seawell House, an I-House built about 1882. Other early dwellings date to the 1880s. Most later houses were built from the 1890s to the early 1950s. The most distinctive group is eight pyramidal cottages with flanking side-gabled wings, followed by brick bungalows from the 1920s and 1930s. Two large brick Colonial Revival houses bracket the district, both built by local contractor Leslie P. Cox. The Tenny Inn, a resort hotel that burned in 1921, once occupied part of Lee Avenue. Original porches unify the streetscape. The district was recognized for its architecture and the integrity of its early twentieth-century housing.