West Main Street Historic District

Two tree-lined blocks of West Main Street in Lincolnton, plus one house on North High Street, make up a district of modest-scale houses just west of the Lincoln County courthouse square. The lots follow the town's original 1780s plan. Most of the fifteen primary buildings from the period of significance, about 1819 to 1941, are one-and-a-half or two stories, and most are frame. Shadow Lawn, built in 1826 in the Federal style, and the ca. 1854 temple-form William H. Michal House show the district's early architecture, while the unusual ca. 1842 Houser-Hildebrand House combines a brick first story with a projecting frame second story. Later houses include a 1920s bungalow, two Colonial Revival houses and a ca. 1941 period cottage. Several buildings from the 1960s through about 1980, including the public library, are noncontributing. The district was listed because it preserves a concentrated view of Lincolnton housing from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.