Main Street Commercial Historic District

Brick commercial buildings line Main Street in Hamlet, a railway town in Richmond County, North Carolina. Most were built between 1900 and 1941, with the majority completed by about 1916. The district was largely developed by E.A. Lackey, a businessman, banker and real estate developer who settled in Hamlet in 1890 and opened Main Street in 1897. Its buildings include a 1912 Terminal Hotel with an octagonal tower, a 1912 Neo-Classical Bank of Hamlet, and the Hamlet Opera House, built in 1914 and remodeled in Art Deco style in 1927. The 1900 Seaboard Air Line passenger depot and a 1940 Works Progress Administration post office also stand within the district. The district is valued for its numerous unaltered storefronts, which reflect typical small-town commercial architecture of the period. It also reflects the growth of transportation and commerce after the railroads reached Hamlet in the late nineteenth century.