Rochester Heights Historic District

Rochester Heights is a residential district of about thirty-nine acres in southeast Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, with houses built mostly between 1957 and 1964. Its streets were laid out in 1956 and 1958 by the Phillips Building Corporation on land once part of the Lightner farm. It is one of only a few post-World War II subdivisions planned for and open to black families in Raleigh, at a time when housing for black residents was scarce. Its first owners included physicians, educators, builders and government employees. The district holds 137 contributing houses and outbuildings, most of them brick Ranch houses with picture windows and low side-gable roofs. Restrictive covenants set minimum house costs, lot widths and setbacks, which gave the neighborhood a uniform layout that survives today. Its houses are also a well-preserved example of modern design from the postwar period.