Capitol Square Historic District

15 Locations | Curated by RHDC

A tour of the Raleigh Historic Landmarks (RHL) located in the local Capitol Square Historic Overlay District (HOD). Two centuries of Raleigh's history are represented in the architecture of the Capitol Square Historic District.

Period of Significance:

1792-1960

Built to replace the original capitol, which burned in 1831, this National Historic Landmark is one of America's most important neoclassical structures. Three outstanding nineteenth century architects, Alexander Jackson, Ithiel Town, and David Paton designed this copper-roofed, roughly…
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Located at the southwest corner of the Capitol facing Union Square, the church addresses its corner site with an angled entry and tower. The irregularly shaped red-brick building exhibits characteristics of the Romanesque Revival style with its heavy, asymmetrical massing and rounded arches. The…
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The City of Raleigh erected this octagonal brick tower to house its water supply in 1887; the structure included an attached two-story office building. Prominent Raleigh architect William Henley Dietrick removed the defunct tank in 1938 and converted the tower and building for his own office use,…
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Dr. Andrew Watson Goodwin ran medical clinics, taught at Shaw University's Leonard Medical School, and served as chief physician at Saint Agnes Hospital. His grand, Neoclassical dwelling is significant as a vestige of what Hillsborough Street once was: a fashionable, tree-lined residential…
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Designed by English architect William Percival, First Baptist Church is a variant of the Gothic Revival style. The church is a symmetrical brick structure stuccoed and scored to give the appearance of stone. The building features an entrance tower with tall pinnacles and a 160-foot-tall spire. It…
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Designed by the Raleigh architects G. Murray Nelson and Thomas W. Cooper, this Neoclassical Revival building imparts a feeling of governmental strength with its Ionic colonnade on raised, striated basement. Both the south and east sides serve as formal facades in recognition of the building's…
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English-born architect Richard Upjohn, founder of the American Institute of Architects, designed this granite church in the early English parish style of Gothic architecture. The church features a Latin-cross plan and a stone bell tower, completed after the main building, in 1861. It is one of the…
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Richard B. Haywood, a founder of the North Carolina Medical Society, designed this Greek Revival brick townhouse, also known as Crabapple. Its outstanding feature is the superb Doric-order porch. The house is the last surviving dwelling in the Capitol Square Historic District and is still owned by…
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Designed in the Beaux Arts style, this structure is the first urban high-rise apartment building erected in Raleigh. It consists of five floors arranged in a U-shape around a well in the main facade. All floor plans have the same features, fireplaces, fourteen-foot ceilings, and exterior porches.…
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Raleigh's oldest surviving financial building housed the first state-sponsored banking institution in North Carolina. Architecturally, the building represents the transition between Federal and Greek Revival styles and features handmade brick as well as granite window sills and lintels. It is…
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Built for John Haywood, state treasurer for forty years, Haywood Hall remained home to one of North Carolina's most distinguished families until 1977. The family bequeathed the late Georgian/early Federal-style house to the State Society of the Colonial Dames who maintain it and its four…
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Judge Walter A. Montgomery, a state supreme court justice, built this two-story frame house with classical detailing in the 100 block of E. Edenton Street. After its 1982 move to this New Bern Place location, renovations readied the house for use as offices. Date: ca. 1906
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Also known as Whitehall, the original late Georgian/early Federal-style dwelling was built for secretary of state William White. The house has undergone major changes including the addition of a Victorian wing and an about face when the City of Raleigh turned it around from its original Morgan St.…
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The ca. 1895 Horton-Beckham-Bretsch House is a bold and now rare example of the Eastlake cottage style in Raleigh. The crowning feature of the house is its front porch with Eastlake-style details that extends the width of the facade, punctuated by an inviting central porch bay that projects to…
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African American members of the N. Salisbury Street First Baptist Church requested separation in 1868 to form their own church. At diagonal corners of Union Square, the two Baptist churches represent two different phases of the Gothic Revival style. This church, begun in 1904, is an example of the…
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