Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse Historic District

Downtown Wilson, in the upper coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, is covered by a district of thirty-six blocks that divides into four linked areas. The main business area centers on Nash and Goldsboro streets, where Neo-Classical Revival buildings such as the 1903 Branch Banking Building and the 1924 Wilson County Courthouse occupy the corners. Across the railroad tracks, the 400 and 500 blocks of East Nash Street served as the business district for East Wilson's large Black community, anchored by Jackson Chapel First Baptist Church (1913) and St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church (1915). A third section holds eight surviving tobacco auction warehouses, with broad roofs and thousands of raised skylights. The fourth section, along the railroad, contains prize houses, redrying plants, stemmeries, the Imperial Tobacco Company plant, cotton oil seed company buildings, and a small mill village. Together these areas supported and profited from the city's growth in the early twentieth century.