Louisburg Historic District

Louisburg Historic District covers 168 acres in the northern part of the Franklin County town, mostly within the street plan laid out in 1779. About 212 properties are included, among them houses, three brick churches, a frame Gothic Revival church and the old campus of Louisburg College. The architecture runs from a few late 18th-century Georgian houses through Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian, Queen Anne, Neo Classical, Colonial Revival and Bungalow designs of the 1920s. Most buildings were the work of practical builders using pattern books, though regional builder Albert Gamaliel Jones and architects such as M. Stuart Davis and Howard Satterfield are named. Tobacco and cotton marketing brought prosperity between 1890 and 1915, and large estates were divided into house lots. Original street widths, block sizes, mature oak canopy, large lots and deep setbacks hold the district together. The downtown commercial area and the neighborhoods south of the Tar River were left out because of alterations and demolitions.