Queen-Gordon Streets Historic District

Kinston's central commercial core, centred on the intersection of North Queen and Gordon streets, forms this district of twenty-three buildings on about seven acres. Most were erected after a fire in February 1895 destroyed two blocks of the business district, and many date from the first decades of the 20th century. The district includes three bank buildings at the intersection, among them a six-story Renaissance Revival bank of 1924 designed by Benton and Benton of Wilson. Its anchors are the Gordon Street Christian Church, a tan-brick Romanesque Revival building of 1912-1915, and a limestone Neo-Classical Revival federal post office built in 1915. The buildings are listed for their architecture and for their representation of the city's commercial growth. The district holds the largest group of relatively intact buildings of this kind in the central business district, though many shopfronts have been changed and some facades covered.