The mission of the Raleigh Historic Development Commission is to identify, preserve, protect, and promote Raleigh’s historic resources.
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Raleigh Historic Landmarks (RHLs) News
Proposed Landmark Designations
On October 3, Raleigh City Council adopted ordinances for 4 new Raleigh Historic Landmarks and one boundary change to an existing landmark.
As of October 3, 2017 we have 168 landmarks!
Berry O’Kelly School Campus Designated!
Location: 512 & 514 Method Road
Constructed/Altered: 1926, 1928; ca. 1959
Significance: The Berry O’Kelly School is architecturally, historically and culturally significant for its associations with African American ethnic heritage and for education, as well as for its association with Berry O’Kelly. O’Kelly was born into slavery, but through hard work and talent became a prominent businessman whose work to build up the community of Method and whose philanthropy for the school made him a much revered source of pride for Method residents. Method was a community of free African Americans established shortly after the Civil War. Along with the already historic landmark-designated agriculture building, the athletic/agriculture field, gymnasium building, and basketball court and land comprise the remaining resources with physical integrity associated with Berry O’Kelly and the Berry O’Kelly School of the Method community.
Lillie Stroud Rogers House Designated!
Location:616 Method Road
Constructed/Altered: ca. 1940
Significance: The Lillie Stroud Rogers House is significant as an intact, representative example of the modest housing built in Method in the second quarter of the twentieth century. This was a time when Method was evolving from a rural freedman’s village into a black residential suburb of Raleigh. Unlike most suburban development, Method was subdivided and parcels sold or passed down largely to friends and relatives of Method’s earliest settlers and property owners. Most of Method’s early dwellings have been demolished or very heavily altered. The Rogers House is a rare intact example from this period of Method’s development.
Rev. Plummer T. Hall House Boundary change adopted.
Location:814 Oberlin Road
Significance: The Rev. Plummer T. Hall House is architecturally and historically significant. The picturesque one-story frame Queen Anne cottage was built for Plummer T. Hall, the first pastor of the Oberlin Baptist Church, as a wedding present for his bride. The house is the only 1-story Queen Anne cottage in the Oberlin community, and features a turreted porch and bay window as well as circular and quatrefoil gable vents. The boundary is being changed to encompass the full lot created by city acquisition and recombination. The additional land was purchased to accommodate the relocation of the house back from Oberlin Road and clean up its encroachment on the former adjacent lot..
H. J. Brown Coffin House Building Designated!
Location: 3108 Hillmer Drive
Constructed/Altered: 1907, ca. 1920, 2013
Significance: The H.J. Brown Coffin House building was constructed by a Raleigh business founded in 1836. The concern started as a cabinet shop becoming the city's most prominent undertaking and funeral business and evolving alongside technological advances in embalming and undertaking. The establishment eventually became Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, now Raleigh's oldest continuously-operating business. The impeccably-restored Classical Revival-style building embodies the type and form of architecture built in downtown Raleigh in the early twentieth century, a period of prosperity and optimism in the capital city.
Fisher's Bakery & Sandwich Company Designated!
Location: 1519 Brookside Drive
Constructed/Altered: 1952, 1979
Significance: The Fisher's Bakery and Sandwich Company building housed a long-lived local company with a regional reach. It expanded from a home-based business to occupy a post-war complex combining a factory, warehouse, and offices on Brookside Drive north of downtown. The company was born of a Piedmont tradition of sandwich-making as a cottage industry and grew along with the city of Raleigh into a thriving corporation with a few dozen employees and customers in three states. The Brookside Avenue building represents the successful business built by Karlie Keith Fisher and the company's contribution to local industry in Raleigh in a period of such growth.
