Spencer Historic District

Spencer, North Carolina, grew from 1896 as a railroad town beside the Southern Railway's large repair shops. Its historic district holds 322 buildings laid out on a gridiron plotted in 1897, with a former park block at the center of the business district. Land owner A. B. Andrews, Jr. set frontage rules and minimum construction costs in his deeds and donated lots for churches and schools, giving the streets an even line of facades. Most buildings are frame houses built between 1896 and 1930, including Queen Anne cottages, triple-A and L-plan houses, bungalows and foursquares. Because the town was settled mainly by well-paid railroad workers in a middle-class economy, high-style architecture is largely absent, and builders worked from pattern books. Brick commercial buildings from 1902 to 1928 line Salisbury Avenue and Fifth Street, and churches follow simplified Gothic, Queen Anne and classical forms. Some landmarks, such as the Y.M.C.A. and a bank building, have been demolished, but the district remains largely intact and occupied.