Oakwood Historic District

Oakwood is a twenty-block residential neighborhood on the edge of Raleigh's inner city, made up of cottages and larger houses with steep slate roofs, broad verandas and small front yards. Most were built between the Civil War and 1914, and styles range from late Greek Revival and Second Empire to Queen Anne and Neo-Classical Revival. The district is bordered on the east by Oakwood Cemetery, established in 1869 and landscaped in the picturesque park tradition. The area was developed by speculators such as Jonathan McGee Heck and Richard Stanhope Pullen, with contractor Thomas H. Briggs building many of the houses. Residents included railroad builders, merchants, legislators and educators. After World War I, many large homes became boarding or apartment houses, and the area faced possible urban renewal by 1970. Rehabilitation that began in 1970-1971 revived it. It was listed as the only intact nineteenth-century neighborhood left in Raleigh, a record of Southern suburban life in the late 1800s.