Statesville Commercial Historic District

Statesville's commercial core, centered on the crossing of Broad and Center streets, holds more than eighty buildings across nine blocks, most of them attached brick rows built between about 1875 and 1930. The town was made county seat in 1789, and the intersection has been its focal point since the first log courthouse was built on the Square. Growth accelerated after the Western North Carolina Railroad arrived in 1858, and wholesale firms such as the Wallace brothers' herbarium helped make Statesville a trading center for seventeen counties. Banks opened from the 1880s onward, and their buildings display Italianate, Renaissance and Neo-Classical features. The former Post Office and Federal Building of 1892 is regarded as the best Richardsonian Romanesque building in North Carolina. The 1899 Old Courthouse, a Beaux Arts design, anchors the district, and the rear facades of inner-block buildings preserve decorative brickwork.