Moore Square Historic District

8 Locations | Curated by RHDC

A tour of the Raleigh Historic Landmarks (RHL) located in the local Moore Square Historic Overlay District (HOD). Moore Square Historic District is home to Raleigh’s “Black Main Street” and the City Market.

Period of Significance: 1870-1940

This three-story brick commercial building is the surviving north half of a larger Italianate commercial building. By 1884, the building housed commercial establishments on the first floor with apartments on the second and third levels. Built by prominent local architect Joseph P. Prairie, this is…
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The three-story Heilig-Levine Furniture store remains one of the few intact nineteenth century commercial buildings surviving downtown. Built as a hotel, it displays the heavily bracketed cornice and tall arched windows of the Italianate style. Two adjacent commercial structures have been…
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An early commercial building, this utilitarian, three-story painted brick structure was originally a clothing warehouse and manufacturing facility. The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows (GUOOF), an African American fraternal organization, purchased the building in 1891 and converted the interior…
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A three-story brick building in the late Romanesque Revival style with Italianate elements, the Raleigh Furniture Building operated as a furniture retailer for much of the 20th century. Its façade showcases a high degree of architectural detail, including large lintel-type openings, vertical…
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The Delany Building is one of only two remaining commercial structures built on Raleigh's "Black Main Street" before World War II. Builder Dr. Lemuel T. Delany, the first black surgeon practicing at Saint Agnes Hospital and son of the first African American bishop of the Episcopal…
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The Montague Building, a combination of the Neoclassical Revival and the emerging Commercial styles, was the first large retail building in the Moore Square area. This building, along with the Mission-style City Market, helps define a lively center of urban activity around the square. Date: 1912
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The picturesque appearance of this late Gothic Revival church stems from the combination of three square towers and two gable-roof blocks -- the result of six remodelings between 1881 and 1909. Raleigh architect James Matthew Kennedy, who designed the City Market and Murphey School, is primarily…
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The best surviving example of a market house erected in North Carolina since the Civil War, this Spanish Mission-style complex designed by James Matthew Kennedy housed a complement of butchers, fish dealers, and vegetable vendors. Development of the supermarket concept and the new state…
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