North Washington Avenue Workers' House
Why it's listed
Five small frame houses on North Washington Avenue in Reidsville preserve a nearly vanished type of worker housing. Built around 1915 to 1917 as rental homes, they served black employees of the American Tobacco Company, whose large plant opened in Reidsville in 1912. Each house began with three rooms, one over one with a shed room behind, giving a saltbox profile, and each has a shed-roofed front porch, weatherboard siding, a standing seam metal roof and a central brick chimney. Their form echoes the single-pen houses common in rural North Carolina, familiar to workers who had left farms for town. A local pharmacist bought the land and had them built as an investment; the first rent was $1.50 a week. Other clusters surveyed in 1978 have been demolished, and two of these seven houses are also gone. The surviving five, with their original spacing, slope and mature trees, show how industrial workers lived in the early twentieth century.
Significance in brief: They are described as the only surviving intact group of a house type built in the early twentieth century for black workers at the American Tobacco Company plant. They illustrate the wider pattern of inexpensive housing built for industrial workers who left farming. They are also urban examples of rural folk house forms such as the single-pen house.
Machine-generated summary. This summary was generated by a language model from the official nomination document and has not been reviewed line by line by an editor. It may contain errors. Check the source document before relying on any detail. Source: nomination document (PDF) · National Archives catalog entry. NRHP reference 86003388, listed December 11, 1986. Summary generated October 2026 (model claude-sonnet-5-5, prompt v1.0-2026-10-29, confidence high).
Key facts
| Address | E side of 300 blk. of N. Washington Ave., Reidsville |
|---|---|
| County | Rockingham County |
| Listed | December 11, 1986 |
| Reference number | 86003388 |
| Resource type | Building |
| Period of significance | ca. 1917 |
| Architect / builder | Unknown |
| Architectural style | Simple frame saltbox-form houses derived from rural single-pen folk house types |
| Criteria |
|
| Areas of significance | Industry, Black, Architecture |
| Level of significance | Local |
| Status (as stated in the nomination) | Occupied rental houses in good condition, with modern conveniences added and repairs and repainting done by the current owners; most current tenants are retired. |
| Acreage | 0.9 |
| Coordinates | 36.36530, -79.67110 (NPS GIS) |
What listing means for this property
National Register listing is honorary for a privately owned home: it does not by itself restrict what an owner may do with their own money, and it does not require public access. Restrictions come from local landmark or historic-district ordinances, which are separate (how they differ).
Owner-occupied houses are not eligible for the 20% federal rehabilitation tax credit, which applies to income-producing buildings, but many states offer credits for homeowners. Listing also opens the door to preservation easements and to buying a plaque. Start with what listing means for homeowners, renovating a listed house and selling one.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; confirm with your State Historic Preservation Office or a qualified adviser.
Sources and further reading
- National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places database (snapshot May 2026), reference 86003388.
- Nomination form (PDF, National Archives) — catalog entry
- Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking only; text not reproduced here)
- Wikidata Q19987341
- This listing as JSON
Last updated October 2026. Found an error? See the editorial policy for how to report it.