Lenoir Downtown Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Downtown Lenoir, the Caldwell County seat since 1841, is represented by a historic district of brick commercial and government buildings arranged around the square where Main Street meets West Avenue. The district covers three full blocks and parts of five more, with about fifty buildings, two structures and seven objects, roughly two-thirds of them contributing. Most buildings are one or two stories, with a few three-story landmarks at key corners. The earliest intact commercial building is an Italianate warehouse on Church Street from about 1888. The Courtney buildings on West Avenue, dating from 1897 and 1908, show elaborate Italianate and Classical Revival facades, while the 1907 Lenoir Building is Romanesque Revival. Late-1920s landmarks include the 1929 courthouse, the 1930 post office and the First National Bank Building. Department stores from the 1920s and 1940s reflect Commercial Style and modern influences. Plazas around the square hold a Confederate monument, a war memorial, a bandstand and a bench from the 1929 courthouse remodeling.