Salisbury Historic District

Salisbury's historic district covers about 94 acres of the Rowan County seat, laid out in 1755 and divided into quadrants by Innes and Main streets. A residential area lies to the west and a commercial area to the east, with roughly 240 buildings, most built after the Civil War. The houses range from the Federal-style Conrad Brem House and Greek Revival brick and double-porch dwellings to Italianate, Queen Anne, Neo-Classical, Spanish Mission and Tudor Revival homes and bungalows. Downtown, a tightly packed group of late Victorian brick commercial buildings survives, including Richardsonian Romanesque blocks and the ca. 1795 Archibald Henderson Law Office. Oak Grove Cemetery and the 1909 Confederate Monument add to the townscape. The district was listed because Salisbury was western North Carolina's early center of trade and politics, the railroad later spurred its growth, and slow twentieth-century change left a notably complete collection of architectural styles.