The Haymount Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and a boundary increase was listed in 2006. [‡, ‡] Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination documents.
Description
The primarily residential Haymount Historic District is located approximately one mile west of the city center at Market Square and is connected to it by Hay Street, one of the four main axes radiating from the downtown square. The Haymount Historic District is situated on the steep incline which connects lands near the river bottoms with those of the elevated western regions. When it was developing in the nineteenth century, Haymount — the name which by 1801 was fixed to these elevated lands — bordered but was situated outside of the city limits. It was not until approximately 1910 that lower Haymount residences on Hale Street, Brandt's Lane, Hillside Avenue, Athens Avenue, and Hay Street up to Fountainhead Lane were incorporated into the city limits. What was once a sparsely settled area with scattered but substantial houses is now a full-fledged suburban neighborhood with a total of forty-one dwellings.
The dwellings were constructed in a 130 year time span — between c.1817 and c.1950 — and together form one of Fayetteville's oldest and most cohesive neighborhoods. The structures parallel the general architectural and historical development of the area and represent a full range of styles from Federal and Greek Revival to Bungalow and Colonial Revival. One very important building which served an educational function rather than residential — the Donaldson Academy c.1834-1835 — was situated at the northwest corner of Hay Street and Hillside Avenues and not only formed a neighborhood focal point but functioned as a stimulus to development. (The lot supported one other school and is at present [1982] vacant). Today, the neighborhood character is maintained by forty-one dwellings, approximately eighty percent of which are frame and the rest — all except one built between c.1925 and c.1950 — brick or brick veneer.
Houses in the Haymount Historic District are arranged along streets which form a rough grid pattern, with Hale Street and Hillside Avenue running perpendicular to Brandt's Lane and Hay Street and the major part of Athens Avenue paralleling Hay Street. Until 1900, the area was dotted by scattered buildings mostly dating to the antebellum period. As Haymount followed the course of suburban development in the early twentieth century, new construction gradually filled in the vacant spaces between existing buildings. Approximately eighty percent of the dwellings present in the Haymount Historic District were built between 1900 and 1930, with the remaining twenty percent divided almost evenly between the pre-1900 and post-1930 periods. The result is a fine residential mix with an overlay of at least six major nineteenth and twentieth century styles.
This lower Haymount neighborhood earned a reputation as a fashionable area very early in the nineteenth century which has been maintained throughout its history. It was largely due to the fact that persons prominent in the history of Fayetteville, such as E.J. Hale, Robert Strange, and members of the Rose family, built stylish homes there. Their homes constitute the bulk of the nineteenth century properties in the Haymount Historic District and exhibit a range of styles from Federal to Victorian.
The earliest extant residence in the Haymount Historic District is that known locally as the Robert Strange Town House (114 Hale Street, c.1817). It was probably one of the first to be built and it dominates a choice, commanding site with an unobstructed view of the town below. The main block of the frame house is two stories tall with front and rear porches, a hip roof, end chimneys, and — although altered over the years — characteristic Federal detailing. The Hale Street facade — once the rear but now the front — has, for example, a Palladian entrance with sidelights, flanking pilasters, and a spoked fanlight. This characteristic feature is shared by other Fayetteville buildings c.1789-c.1832 such as the Cool Spring Tavern and the Belden-Horne House. The house also has at least one interior mantel dating to the Federal period, which has the characteristic three-part form and fluted pilasters.
The E.J. Hale House (Greenbank) appeared across Hale Street and one block south (630 Hay Street) c.1847. The two-story five-bay brick house shows the influence of the Greek Revival, especially with regard to the formal Doric front porch and the front entrance which has the characteristic sidelights and transom. Its hip roof is graced with bracketed eaves, characteristic of the then-popular Italianate, and small decorative gables with cut stencil faces at the front and sides. The mixture of early Victorian stylistic influences on the E.J. Hale House help to distinguish it from other period houses in the Haymount Historic District and Fayetteville in general. The home of the distinguished editor of the Fayetteville Observer was a landmark in the mid-nineteenth century architectural landscape and often mentioned in period accounts and reminiscences.
The Smith-Lauder House appeared approximately seven years later at 118 Hillside Avenue, which was theretofore undeveloped. The house was built by John Smith, a Scottish immigrant and stonemason who was associated with the rebuilding of the state capitol in Raleigh. He and his friend, George Lauder, also a stonemason who came to live in the house after Smith's death, settled in Fayetteville and continued practicing their trade locally. The two-story three-bay, frame house is an exquisite example of the Greek Revival with a pedimented gable front and diminutive pedimented portico protecting the side-hall-plan entrance, both reminiscent of the classical temple form. Fenestration includes enlarged 6/6 window sash and an entrance featuring sidelights and a transom, both typical of the Greek Revival. The interior is distinguished by several marble mantels exhibiting Greek Revival post-and-lintel construction, which are products of the owner's handwork.
Also built during the antebellum period were the two-story frame Greek Revival/Italianate Donaldson Academy c.1834 at the northwest corner of what is now Hillside and Hay Streets, and the principal's house one block north approximately one year later. The Donaldson Academy lot is now vacant, but the former principal's house still stands. It started out as a three-bay two-story frame house with a gable roof, shed porch, and rear ell which may have been an independent or pre-existing structure. It was modified in 1895 by its owners, the Edward Lee Clarks, in the Victorian manner which was then in vogue. They added two upstairs rooms, a rear kitchen wing, and its most distinguishing feature, a wraparound porch which is two tiers in height at the front center and has a corner gazebo. This house (113 Hillside Avenue), named the Colton-Clark-Monaghan House after successive owners, set a stylistic standard which influenced neighborhood structures for approximately ten years and formed the bridge between architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Etta Bell Clark Monaghan House just north (119 Hillside Avenue) maintains direct links with its neighbor both stylistically and historically. The house was built around 1900 by the Clarks for their daughter, Etta Bell, upon her marriage to Edward Monaghan. The "Wedding Gift House" is a unique, delightful one-and-one-half story Victorian cottage with a wraparound front porch featuring delicate millwork such as turned balusters, posts, spindles, and sawn brackets. Gable front bays with cutwork brackets project from the front and south sides. The entire house is capped by a steep pyramidal roof, shared only by a classically-ornamented dwelling across the street at 214 Hillside Avenue and one other Haymount structure not located within the district.
Four neighboring dwellings — at 708, 710, and 712 Athens Avenue and 112 Hillside Avenue — are plain Victorian buildings which were erected during the first decade of the twentieth century. Strong stylistic similarities between the structures suggest that they were built as a group. Each two-story frame house has a pedimented gable front and projecting side bay. Except for alterations made to the house at 712 Athens Avenue, the structures have hip-roof porches which vary in treatment, from turned posts and delicate brackets at 710 Adams Avenue to rectilinear columns with squared capitals next door at 708.
Colonial Revival was the favored style of the early twentieth century, and new construction, especially that which appeared so rapidly in the area of the Haymount Historic District, reflected the new preferences. Approximately one-fourth of the forty-one structures in the district were built between 1910 and 1930 and are colonial inspired. A particularly robust example is located at 109 Hale Street. The two-and-one-half story five-bay frame house is replete with detail from its brick foundation to its hip roof with gable interruptions. The first floor is sheltered by a massive porch which wraps around two sides. The central entrance bay has a door with sidelights on the first floor, a three-part door-window combination on the second, and a trio of gable dormers above. The interior of the house has notable woodwork including wainscoting, beamed ceilings, and two-tiered Colonial Revival mantels in the principal rooms. Most of the Colonial Revival structures are not quite as robust as this example but do share similar features and styling. It was favored by merchants, industrialists, and professionals who built homes in the lower Haymount neighborhood in the first several decades of the twentieth century.
The construction firm of E.W. Reinecke and even the man himself (who lived on Hillside and Athens Avenues briefly) promoted the use of colonial forms in area residential architecture. He is known to be associated with modernizations of porch design on new construction with structures located at 215, 218, 229, and 230 Hillside Avenue and 716 Athens Avenue. A typical example of his favorite design is the handsome Colonial Revival Charles G. Rose House built c.1911. Reinecke replaced the original front porch in the 1950s with a portico supported by Corinthian columns and capped by a balustrade. In comparison, the house at 716 Athens Avenue c.1925 bears a portico of similar design but is two stories in height.
The bungalow was also commonly used in early Fayetteville residential architecture and almost as many houses in the Haymount Historic District area show its influence as the Colonial Revival. A typical bungalow is one-and-one-half stories in height with shingling, a gable front or gable front porch, bracketed eaves, and pier-and-post porch construction. A group of three bungalows at 219, 223, and 225 Hillside Avenue built by members of the Rose family exhibit these characteristic features. However, several exceptions exist, most notably the three bungalows on Hale Street which are built of brick veneer and the one at 108 Hillside Avenue which is over two stories in height.
Between 1920 and 1950, revival styles were predominantly used in new construction. Versions of the Colonial Revival, along with Tudor and/or Elizabethan Revival, continued to be popular. A very fine example of a house showing the Tudor influence is Dr. R.L. Pittman's residence c.1925 at 645 Hay Street. It is a two-and-one-half story combination brick/stone veneer house with front gable peaks ornamented in old English fashion. The house reinforces the area's reputation for elegance with its fenced, manicured grounds and opulent European interior and furnishings, and features the more durable building materials favored after the first quarter of the century.
The Haymount Historic District is presently in a good state of preservation. Although some houses along Hale, Athens, and Hay Street have been converted to rental units, most of the pivotal and contributing properties enjoy the stability of being owner-occupied. Rezoning of the area along Hay Street now permits professional use of existing structures, and both a law firm and interior decorator/architect's firm have moved in or are in the process of moving into structures at 713 and 717 Hay Street, respectively.
Significance
The Haymount Historic District, situated on a rise overlooking the town below, is one of Fayetteville's most intact residential neighborhoods. Centered on Hale Street, Hillside Avenue, Athens Avenue, and Hay Street, the district contains forty-one structures which illustrate the development of residential architecture in Fayetteville from c.1817 to c.1950. All of the major national architectural trends during this time span are represented, from the Robert Strange Town House, c.1817, which is a fine two-story example of Federal architecture, to the Smith-Lauder House, c.1853, a frame Greek Revival house with a side-hall plan and pedimented roof and portico, to the Etta Bell Clark Monaghan House, c.1900, a delightful one-story Victorian cottage with pyramidal roof, wraparound porch, and sawnwork. The twentieth century is well represented also with a fine collection of Colonial Revival houses, such as that built by Charles G. Rose in 1911, and numerous bungalows.
Also significant historically, the neighborhood began to develop west of town on an elevated and picturesque site during the early nineteenth century and was served by westward wagon roads leading from the city. It gained a fashionable reputation early on with the presence of such personages as Robert Strange, prominent lawyer, judge, author, and statesman, and E.J. Hale, editor of the Fayetteville Observer, whose houses still stand, besides being the location a string of schools, (all of which no longer stand) beginning in the 1830s with a private school known as the Donaldson Academy. Some of the earliest houses of the neighborhood survive intact, and with new construction spanning over a century and a quarter, help to show the variety and importance of Fayetteville's architectural and historical development.
Historical Background
The origins of the residential district at the foot of Haymount date to the second and third decades of the nineteenth century when the first permanent houses were built overlooking the city and when the Donaldson Academy and Manual Labor School was established at what is now the northwest corner of Hay Street and Hillside Avenue. Fayetteville's early development corresponded with three distinct local topographical divisions, and Haymount, the highest in elevation and the farthest west from the Cape Fear River, was the last to be settled. It is mentioned by name in records as early as 1801, and was intersected by westward wagon roads such as the Yadkin Road which reached to the Dan River. Because of its healthful elevation, proximity to Fayetteville, and location on major transportation routes, Haymount was influenced profoundly by settlement activity in the Upper Cape Fear River Valley.
The earliest extant building in the Haymount Historic District is the Robert Strange Town House, a two-story frame house with a hip roof and Federal detailing built c.1817. Strange, an illustrious judge, lawyer, author, and statesman, purchased improved property at the foot of Haymount from George McNeill in 1818, the year following his marriage to Jane Rebecca Kirkland.[1] Local tradition states that Jane's father, William Kirkland, built the house for his daughter upon her marriage to Robert Strange. The fact that Strange acquired the property from McNeill in 1818 does not discredit the tradition, since McNeill and Kirkland were business partners and could very likely have entered into an unrecorded real estate agreement.[2]
Charles Peter Mallett was the next owner of record and seemed to be fixed in the location by the mid-1820s after Strange relocated to his country home or plantation at Myrtle Hill.[3] Mallett, like Strange, was a prominent local figure; he was a landowner, prosperous merchant, and instrumental in establishing the Rockfish Manufacturing Company, a leading local antebellum textile concern. Like Strange, he also maintained a country residence in addition to one near town. Mallett's Haymount residence is mentioned specifically in an 1848 North Carolinian advertisement which states that it was beautiful, well-known, enjoyed a commanding site overlooking town, and implied that it was a self-contained complex with "stables and outhouses of all kinds."[4] Although Mallett had already sold the house in 1843, his name was long associated with it.[5] It was people like Strange and Mallett who gave the lower Haymount neighborhood a fashionable reputation, and who with houses like the one now on Hale Street set standards for design, style, and substance.
One factor which encouraged further development was the establishment of the Donaldson Academy and Manual Labor School in the 1830s at what is now the northwest corner of Hay Street and Hillside Avenue. It acted as a magnet to attract further residential population. The school was chartered on 3 April 1833 and opened for the 1835 winter session "in a new building provided for that purpose, on Hay Mount." The erection of a two story frame school was made possible by subscription and donation, such as that by Robert Donaldson who requested that the proceeds from the sale of a piece of land that he gave should be "invested in the principal or main academic building, and that the said institution may be open to all without sectarian discrimination or preference..."[7] The school was named after this man.
Donaldson Academy opened in January, 1835 with Simeon Colton as the first principal. Colton was educated in New England and was ordained in the Congregational Church of the Salem Massachusetts Association. He served mainly in the field of education and in 1833, after relocating to Fayetteville, he became the principal or headmaster of the Academy and served as such until 1846.[8] Colton lived just north of the two-story frame school in a house which, though overbuilt, still stands. He was succeeded in the capacity of principal by fine educators such as the Rev. W. Johnson and Captain S.C. Rankin.[9] Although the Manual Labor Department of the Academy was closed in 1840 due to lack of funds, general operations continued throughout the decades until 1878 when the buildings were taken over by the Fayetteville Graded Schools.[10] Donaldson Academy's reputation was widespread, and from its tradition of academic excellence, along with that of earlier schools like the Fayetteville Academy, grew the local public school movement of the late nineteenth century.[11]
Another prominent person associated with the lower Haymount neighborhood was E.J. Hale. His house stood across the lane from the Strange/Mallett home at the northwest corner of present-day Hay and Hale streets. Hale built the house soon after he purchased the lot in 1847 and retained ownership of it until 1869.[12] Its imposing facade and expansive spaces were appropriate for a man with a reputation like E.J. Hale's. He was best known as editor and publisher of the Fayetteville Observer from 1825 to 1865, a career which came to an abrupt end when the newspaper offices were destroyed along with many other local buildings during General William Tecumseh Sherman's occupation of Fayetteville in 1865.[13]
Built soon after Hale's residence was the Smith-Lauder House c.1853 just one street west. It was erected as the permanent residence of John Smith, an artisan from Scotland who helped finish the cut stone work on the newly rebuilt North Carolina State Capitol building. George Lauder was another native of Scotland who did the same, and the two "stone cutters" afterward settled in Fayetteville and opened a marble yard.[14] Evidence of their close relationship is apparent, for Lauder was named the guardian of Smith's six minor children (the youngest named "George L.") and executor of his will, responsibilities which he assumed after Smith's death in 1859,[15]
The Smith family, along with their new guardian and a Miss Christina Glow, a niece of Lauder's who came from Scotland to help with housekeeping responsibilities, continued to live in the Haymount residence.[16] Lauder also continued to operate his downtown marble yard, turning out items like tombstones which are still found in graveyards all over Cumberland County. Because of Smith's debts, the sale of the house and lot was necessitated, and in 1878, George Lauder as executor transferred the deed to Miss Glow for $1,500.[17] It remained in the family throughout the early twentieth century.[18]
By the eve of Civil War, the residential character of the lower Haymount district was firmly established. The area was remembered in this way by Mrs. Eliza Tillinghast Stinson in 1910:
"...The corporate limits (of Fayetteville) were at the foot of Haymount, but practically "The Hill" settlement was a part of the town. It was laid off in streets and squares and the residents, my father being one, were almost without exception men doing business in town. Several of our largest dealers and most prominent lawyers lived there, and every morning early, numbers of one-horse rockaways might be seen conveying them down the hill to business, and their daughters to school. The handsome residence surrounded with flowers, immediately to the right as you left behind the town proper, was the home of the late E.J. Hale, editor of the Observer. On the hill were the most beautiful flower gardens and some of the handsomest houses..."[19]
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, building concentration gradually grew more dense. Residential development at the north end of Hillside Avenue was stimulated by the Rose family. George McNeill Rose, noted lawyer, member of the General Assembly for three sessions, and Speaker of the House in 1883,[20] established his home about mid-block on the west side of Hillside Avenue (203 Hillside Avenue, c.1880). The house burned and was rebuilt in 1884. In 1911, George McNeill's son, Charles G., built a Colonial Revival house one lot north of his father's. The original homeplace has been demolished, but Charles G. Rose Jr. still owns and lives in his father's early twentieth century house. Other members of the illustrious Rose family also established homes on nearby parcels; bungalows at 219, 223, and 225 Hillside Avenue were owned by Thomas D. Rose (Charles G. Rose Jr.'s uncle), the Rev. John and Mamie Rose (George McNeill Rose's brother and sister-in-law and Charles G. Rose Jr.'s great aunt and uncle), and Mary Rockwell Rose (Charles G. Rose Jr.'s great aunt). The house at 218 Hillside Avenue was built by Dr. A.S. Rose, a prominent local physician and uncle of Charles G. Rose Jr.[21] The Roses influenced the development of the lower Haymount neighborhood greatly and played an important part in the advancement of the community in general.
Evidences of other turn-of-the century changes also became apparent. By 1889, the (former) Donaldson Academy Principal's House had been purchased by the Edward Lee Clarks. They remodeled the simple two-story frame house with rear ell about six years later to give it its present appearance. Besides increasing floor space by adding upstairs rooms and a kitchen, they added the front two-story wraparound Victorian porch. They were the first to have modern improvements like a sewage and an electrical system.
The Clarks had one daughter, Etta Bell, and Clark built a home for her one door north upon the occasion of her marriage to Edward J. Monaghan in 1900. Appropriately named the "Wedding Gift House," the Victorian cottage was home to the Monaghans until 1907 when they moved back into Etta Bell's girlhood home.[23] The main house remained in the Clark and Monaghan families until it was sold in 1955.[24]
Fayetteville in general experienced rapid growth in the first decades of the twentieth century. Industrial prosperity and transportation improvements as well as the establishment of Camp Bragg about ten miles west of the city in 1918 largely accounted for this. The growth profoundly affected the lower Haymount neighborhood by stimulating new residential development. Vacant areas were gradually filled in. The area became a favored place for merchants, industrialists, and professionals to build houses in keeping with the fashionable reputation the area had gained in the nineteenth century. Hay Street in particular had its share of new construction, attracting people like Dr. R.L. Pittman at 645 Hay Street, Mr. J.F. Gilmore, associated with Gilmore-Rankin Lumber Company, at what is now 653 Hay Street, and Harry Sheetz, co-owner of the downtown establishment "Sheetz Furniture House," at what is now 709 Hay Street.[25] New construction throughout the decades included modest houses as well, creating a residential mix spanning the years from 1820 to the present.
Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase — 2007
The Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase, in Fayetteville, adds two additional blocks to the west end of the original Haymount Historic District (NR 1983). The original Haymount Historic District contains forty-one contributing historic buildings, all dwellings. The boundary increase, which centers on Bradford Avenue, contains thirteen primary buildings that were built between ca.1847 and 1948 consisting of nine houses, a hospital, a church, an apartment building, and a former nurses' residence that is now the Museum of the Cape Fear. The Edgar Allen Poe House, 206 Bradford Avenue, is listed in the National Register (1983), with two contributing resources, the house and a smokehouse. The Haymount Historic District stands on the west side of the business district of Fayetteville, in Cumberland County. The Haymount Historic District expansion boundaries consist of Hay Street on the north, Fountainhead Lane and the rear property lines of 115 and 207 Bradford Avenue on the east, the south property lines of 207 and 220 Bradford Avenue on the south, and the four-lane Martin Luther King Freeway, constructed in the 1980s, on the west. The addresses included in the expansion are 109 to 207 Bradford Avenue; 801-806 Arsenal Avenue; and 801 Hay Street. Twelve primary buildings and five outbuildings contribute to the area's historic character (82%); one primary building and one outbuilding are noncontributing.
The area west of Bradford Avenue was a part of the U.S. Arsenal, built in 1838 on top of Haymount Hill by the federal government as a rifle factory and munitions depot. At the end of the Civil War, General W.T. Sherman destroyed the complex because it had been operated by the Confederate army during the war. The ruins were a prominent landmark in Fayetteville until the early twentieth century, but the section along Bradford Avenue was subdivided into building lots at the end of the nineteenth century. Behind the Museum of the Cape Fear, a pedestrian bridge spans the Martin Luther King Freeway to access "Arsenal Park," a monument to the destroyed arsenal. The distinctive brownstone used in the arsenal was hauled away by Fayetteville citizens over the years and reused as steps, walls, and rock gardens. It is seen in various yards in the expansion area.
The Haymount Historic District boundary increase includes a short section of Arsenal Avenue, which intersects Bradford Avenue between the 100 and 200 blocks. 802 and 806 Arsenal Avenue are St. Patrick's Catholic Church and rectory, Gothic Revival style 1936 buildings. Arsenal Avenue is interrupted by the Martin Luther King Freeway, but continues on the west side of the freeway. Overall, the Haymount Historic District boundary increase area houses are one- and two-story frame and brick construction set at varying setbacks from Bradford Avenue. There are no sidewalks, and houses are shaded by mature hardwood trees. All of the houses are early twentieth century Colonial Revival in style with the exception of the 1897 E.A. Poe House of Queen Anne style and the McMillan-Rankin House, built in 1851 and expanded into a gable-and-wing form in later years.
The largest and most significant building in the increase area is Highsmith Memorial Hospital, designed by Charles Hartmann of Greensboro in a Beaux Arts modified Spanish Colonial Revival style and completed in 1926. The four-story brick building has the footprint of the letter "Y" with the entrance and administrative wing located in the main shaft of the Y, facing Bradford Avenue, and the patient rooms located in the diagonal prongs of the Y that overlook the rear of the property, facing east toward the central business district. Because the site surmounts Haymount Hill, there is a splendid vista to the rear. Around 1970 the hospital was modernized with front, side and rear additions, as well as replacement windows, therefore it has lost much of its distinctive architecture. Since 1986 it has been the Cumberland County Mental Health Center.
The hospital constructed an unornamented two-story brick nurses' residence about 1948 across the street at the corner of Arsenal Avenue. Because this was remodeled into the Museum of the Cape Fear about 1990 by adding a bold entrance pavilion and covering much of the wall surface with concrete panels, it is noncontributing.
The rest of the boundary increase area buildings retain a high degree of integrity and convey the quiet domestic character found throughout the Haymount Historic District. Across Bradford Avenue from Highsmith Hospital stands the twelve-unit stuccoed Colonial Revival style Devereux Apartments. Its diagonal placement facing the intersection of Hay and Bradford streets provides a Beaux Arts graciousness. Facing the Museum of the Cape Fear is the small, picturesque Gothic Revival chapel of St. Patrick's Catholic Church. Built in 1936, the brick chapel has a similarly detailed brick rectory beside it on Arsenal Avenue.
The three oldest houses in the expansion area are local landmarks: the McGary-Small House, 207 Bradford Avenue, ca.1847; the McMillan-Rankin House, 110 Bradford Avenue, ca.1851; and the E.A. Poe House, 206 Bradford Avenue, 1897. While the McGary-Small House has its original heavy timber frame, the only visible fabric from its period of construction is a Federal style mantel on the interior. The exterior was remodeled in the Colonial Revival style in the early twentieth century. The nine-over-nine sash windows may be early as well. The McMillan-Rankin House has a ca.1851 core that is concealed by later nineteenth century additions that give the house a vernacular Queen Anne style. The Poe House is a remarkably intact large two-story frame house of Queen Anne style, with a high hip roof and a wraparound porch and balcony with intricate detailing. The house is now owned by the adjacent Museum of the Cape Fear and operated as a house museum.
The remaining five houses, built between ca.1910 and ca.1938, are Colonial Revival in style. The Edwin Williamson House, 212 Bradford Avenue, is a large ca.1910 weatherboarded (now vinyl sided) house with such authentic colonial details as a triglyph and metope cornice, a pedimented entrance, and large wooden sash windows. The W.W. Horne House, 115 Bradford Avenue, is a mid-1920s large weatherboarded two-story house. The asymmetrical facade has an off-center entrance with a porch and an adjacent large arched sash window illuminating the stairwell. The contemporaneous E.J. Wells House, 111 Bradford Avenue, is a two-story brick house with a fine stone pedimented entrance. The two southernmost houses in the Haymount Historic District were built by the physician brothers who operated Highsmith Hospital. Both houses are set very far back from the street and have high front retaining walls and a central shared driveway built of the local brownstone known as "Arsenal stone" because it is the material from which the U.S. Arsenal was built in the 1830s. It is likely that this stone was recycled from the arsenal ruins. Dr. J. Frank Highsmith Jr.'s house at 218 Bradford Avenue is a two-story brick house with a two-story front portico built about 1936. Dr. William C. Highsmith's house, built about 1938 at 220 Bradford Avenue, is a two-story frame house with an arched entrance porch and paneled aprons beneath the lower facade windows.
Boundary Increase Significance
The Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase adds an important street of mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century properties to the Haymount Historic District [1982]. The area, centered on Bradford Avenue, is a section of the Haymount neighborhood that is one of Fayetteville's oldest and most intact residential areas. It contains a range of residential and church architecture, from the 1897 Queen Anne-style Poe House, to the Colonial Revival style Rankin, Williamson, Welles, Horne, and Highsmith Houses, and the Gothic Revival-style St. Patrick's Church. The residential area of Haymount, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, developed in the early 1800s on a picturesque elevated bluff west of central Fayetteville. The prominence of early residents earned the area a fashionable reputation that continued into the early twentieth century. The thirteen boundary increase area buildings consist of nine dwellings built from ca.1847 to the 1930s, the Highsmith Hospital and Nurses Residence built in 1926 and ca.1948, the 1938 St. Patrick's Catholic Church, and the 1940 Devereux Apartments.
The Bradford Avenue area was the most significant section of Haymount prior to 1865, when the street served as the main entrance to the U.S. Arsenal constructed in the 1830s. Although destroyed in 1865, stones from the complex are reused as retaining walls and in landscaping along Bradford Avenue. The Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase is eligible for the National Register for its health/medicine significance and also for its architectural significance to the city of Fayetteville. The period of significance begins ca.1847 with the construction of the McGary-Small House and continues to ca.1957 to take into account the continuing importance of the medical services provided by Highsmith Hospital.
Historical Background
Construction of the United States Arsenal in 1838 on a 100-acre site on Haymount Hill constitutes the background of the Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase. Bradford Avenue, originally named Adam Street, served as the eastern front boundary of the arsenal. The complex of brick and stone buildings, surrounded by high walls with octagonal brick and stone towers at the four corners, included a weapons and ammunition depot and a rifle factory. The arsenal was one of the most important federal government buildings in North Carolina during the antebellum era. Major James A.J. Bradford commanded the arsenal post. At the start of the Civil War the arsenal was captured by North Carolina forces for the Confederacy. In 1865 General W.T. Sherman destroyed the entire complex. Beginning in 1873, the U.S. government sold the property to a number of Fayetteville individuals. Streets were laid out, lots subdivided, and the arsenal site gradually developed as an extension of the Haymount residential area. Bradford Avenue was named for Major Bradford.[26] From the east side of Bradford Avenue is a panorama of Fayetteville's center city that made the area a very appealing residential location. The Donaldson Academy was constructed at the corner of Hay and Hillside streets in the Haymount Historic District in the 1830s, adding further appeal to Haymount as a residential development.
The earliest building in the boundary increase is the McGary-Small House, 207 Bradford Avenue. The lot, located across the street from the arsenal property, was purchased about 1847 by Samuel W. Tillinghast, who built a two-story frame house there. In 1849 a young law student, William McGary, became the owner. The house has had numerous owners, including David A. Ray, a promoter of the Fayetteville and Warsaw Plank Road, who owned it from 1859 to 1869. His daughter sold it in 1876 to Dr. John Small, an early Fayetteville dentist, who owned it until 1920.[27] In the early twentieth century the house was remodeled in the Colonial Revival style and its full front porch was replaced by a columned entrance porch. It harmonizes architecturally with the early twentieth century Colonial Revival style houses along Bradford Avenue.
About 1851 John Waddell Jr. constructed a one-story side-gabled frame house at 110 Bradford Avenue. After several interim owners, Daniel McMillan purchased the house in 1872 and apparently added the projecting south wing. About 1890 his son Benjamin added the bay window beside the entrance and a rear addition. In the early twentieth century, probably after banker Claude Rankin purchased the house about 1915, the entrance with diamond-paned sidelights and transom and the current porch with slender classical columns were added. The Rankins owned the house until at least the 1980s.
Lot Number Two of the arsenal property (206 Bradford Avenue) passed through two owners before C.D. Sedberry deeded it to Josephine Poe, wife of Edgar Allen Poe, in 1896. In 1897 the Poes completed their large two-story Queen Anne style frame house on the lot. Supposedly designed by a Pennsylvania architect, the house was erected by well-known local builder Ruffin Vaughn.[28] Its symmetrical hip-roofed frame main block is enlivened by a wraparound porch and balcony with richly elaborated posts, railings, and friezes. Poe operated the E.A. Poe Brick Company which was one of the largest in the region until the early 1940s. The Poes raised seven children in the house.[29] Their daughter Elizabeth Poe lived there until the 1980s. Since then the Museum of the Cape Fear, a regional history museum, has owned the property and operates it as a house museum (NR, 1983).
Haymount snowballed in popularity after the turn of the twentieth century as merchants, businessmen, and industrialists and professionals moved out of downtown Fayetteville into the scenic suburb. Fayetteville families erected four fashionable dwellings along Bradford Avenue in the 1910s and 1920s. Textile manufacturer Edwin H. Williamson, one of the owners of the Holt-Williamson Manufacturing Company near the Cape Fear River in Fayetteville, built a large, refined frame house at 212 Bradford Avenue about 1910. The house stands on the location of the main driveway into the arsenal. The house is shown on the 1914 Sanborn Map, the earliest one that includes Haymount.[30] Such classical features as the pedimented entrance surround, diamond-paned flanking windows, a very large sash window above the entrance, a late medieval jettied overhang, curved rear entrance, and attached garage at the rear marks the house as the work of an architect playing with architectural features of various eras. The Horne House, 115 Bradford Avenue, and the Wells House, 111 Bradford Avenue, are mid-1920s representative examples of the Colonial Revival style. Warren W. Horne operated Horne's Drug Store on Hay Street in downtown Fayetteville with his father and brother. His large two-story weatherboarded house is distinguished by an entrance porch, a tall round-arched window lighting the stairwell, and wide corbelled eaves. Next door, cotton broker Edwin J. Wells built a two-story brick house with an entrance fanlight and a lovely arched stone pedimented surround.
Highsmith Hospital, the largest and most significant building in the Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase, has a long and distinguished history in Fayetteville. Dr. J. Franklin Highsmith and Dr. J.H. Marsh opened the first organized hospital in the city in 1896.[31] Dr. Highsmith's sons were physicians as well. In 1926 Dr. Jacob F. Highsmith, Jr. and Dr. William Highsmith constructed a large architecturally-sophisticated 100-bed hospital on Haymount Hill, at the southeast corner of Hay Street and Bradford Avenue, to replace their father's hospital on Green Street in the town center. They hired prominent Greensboro architect Charles C. Hartmann, designer of the Jefferson Standard Building, the premier Beaux Arts skyscraper in Greensboro, in 1923, to design their hospital. The four-story brick hospital with a Spanish Colonial-style rooftop campanile and radiating wings overlooked the city. The new hospital made the intersection the most prominent spot in Haymount. Until about 1960, when Cape Fear Valley Hospital was built on the outskirts of Fayetteville, this was the only community hospital in Fayetteville. In 1963 the hospital changed its name to Highsmith-Rainey Memorial Hospital in honor of Dr. Jacob Franklin Highsmith and Dr. William Thomas Rainey. Dr. Rainey practiced medicine for forty years at the hospital until his death in 1961.[32] Haymount, particularly Bradford Avenue, became the location of choice for doctors' offices and their residences. About 1970 the hospital was modernized by adding a four-story front addition with International Style porch, stairwell additions to the rear of the wings, and the total remodeling of the interior. The monumental form, red brick walls, and the colorful terra cotta and tile campanile still convey the 1920s splendor of Highsmith Hospital, but it has lost much of its architectural integrity.
The Highsmith brothers were living on Green Street, close to the house of their parents and of other family members and to the original hospital, in 1926. By 1937 J. Frank Highsmith Jr. had constructed a house on a large lot at 218 Bradford Avenue. J. Frank's house is set well back from the street. The two-story brick house has a full facade portico reminiscent of George Washington's Mt. Vernon. Two sets of French doors open onto the portico beside the central entrance. William Highsmith's house next door at 220 Bradford Avenue, also set far back from the street, was completed by 1939. It is also Colonial Revival in style, but very different from his brothers. The weatherboarded two-story house has a classical entrance porch and a concrete terrace across the facade. The brothers built a retaining wall out of the distinctive dark brown sandstone used in the arsenal buildings across the front of their lots, with a shared driveway, also with retaining walls, in the center.
In 1936 the congregation of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, which had met in downtown Fayetteville on Bow Street since 1832, built a new church and rectory at 802 and 806 Arsenal Avenue, at its corner with Bradford Avenue. In 1938 the church opened St. Patrick's Parochial School in Haymount.[33] The congregation built in the Gothic Revival style, but constructed a church of side-gabled form rather than a front-gabled sanctuary. The small building has rich red brick walls, slate roofs, and a tall entrance with a corbelled brick arch. The rectory next door has similar brick walls and an arched entrance.
On a corner lot across Bradford Avenue from the hospital, a twelve-apartment building named the Devereux Apartments was constructed in 1940. The two-story stuccoed brick building with a handsome classical entrance is set diagonally on the lot so that it faces the intersection rather than directly on Hay Street. City directories of the 1940s and 1950s show that its residents were a mixture of single men and women and couples.
Across the street from St. Patrick's, Highsmith Hospital built a nurses' residence in the late 1940s. The large two-story brick flat-roofed building has two-over-two wooden sash windows. In the 1980s the building was substantially remodeled with new wall materials and an added entrance portico to serve as the Museum of the Cape Fear, a regional history museum. Metal screens that hide the original windows add to the transformation of the building. The dormitory has lost its original architectural integrity, but in its new role as a museum educating the public on the rich history of Fayetteville and the Upper Cape Fear region, it is an important addition to the neighborhood. At the west edge of the lot, a pedestrian bridge crosses the Martin Luther King freeway to Arsenal Park, a four and one-half acre green space that commemorates the site of the U.S. Arsenal.
During the second half of the twentieth century, Bradford Avenue continued to be a quiet residential street. In the early 1980s the Museum of the Cape Fear was created. In 1983 a portion of Haymount was listed in the National Register as the Haymount Historic District, but Bradford Avenue was not included because it did not contain a dense concentration of historic properties that were over fifty years old. Given the passage of time, the area is now an eligible boundary increase. In 1986 Highsmith Hospital, by then superseded by the much larger and newer Cape Fear Valley Hospital, closed its doors. The complex became the Cumberland County Mental Health Center. In recent years the Devereux Apartments were converted into offices, named Devereux Offices. The McGary-Small House has been restored as an architecture studio on the first floor, with architects' living space on the second floor. Three of the houses have been designated Local Landmarks: the Poe House, the McGary-Small House, and the McMillan-Rankin House. Currently the lots on the east side of the 200 block of Bradford Avenue, outside the boundaries of the increase area, are being developed with a group of condominium buildings. These new buildings are not visible from the Haymount Historic District, however, because the lots slope down from the street and are screened by heavy tree cover and shrubbery. The addition of the Bradford Avenue area will extend the district to incorporate most of the remaining historic resources associated with the original Haymount suburb. Only a few other early twentieth century neighborhoods are located in Fayetteville, including an area of bungalows known as Pershing Heights and another bungalow development called Haymount Heights, both located in northwest Fayetteville.[34]
Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Architecture in the Haymount Historic District and the Boundary Increase area
Fayetteville, located at the upper end of the Cape Fear River, the major navigable river in North Carolina, was one of the largest and most commercially significant towns in the state from its establishment in the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century. Dwellings in nineteenth century Fayetteville were concentrated around the central business district on the streets extending out from the Town Hall and Market House (National Historic Landmark, 1970) at Market Square. Hay Street, Green Street, Gillespie Street, and Person Street extend out from the Market House. A series of destructive fires and the desire to live in residential suburbs led to the gradual exodus from the town center out into suburban neighborhoods. Only isolated nineteenth century houses have survived in the town center.
One of the most desirable suburbs was Haymount, located at the foot of Hay Street about one mile from Market Square. The Haymount Historic District is the oldest section of Haymount, but constitutes only the earliest portion of the entire neighborhood. Located west of the Martin Luther King Freeway is the small village of Belmont, developed by the Confederate army during their occupation of the U.S. Arsenal in the Civil War. Several intact antebellum houses stand in the Haymount Historic District. Two antebellum houses, the McGary-Small House and the McMillan-Rankin House, are located in the Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase, but enlargements and alterations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have concealed their antebellum character. Houses built in Haymount in the late 1800s include both small and large frame Victorian dwellings, from the Etta Bell Clark Monaghan House, 119 Hillside Avenue, a pyramidal cottage with Queen Anne wraparound porch built about 1900, to the large two-story Queen Anne style house built in 1897 at 206 Bradford Avenue for the Edgar Allen Poe family. The McMillan-Rankin House, 110 Bradford Avenue, although built ca.1851, was remodeled ca.1890 into a one-story gable-and-wing house with late Queen Anne character that is the last manifestation of Victorian design in the boundary increase area. Early examples of the Colonial Revival style, which retained its popularity in Fayetteville throughout the first half of the twentieth century, are the Charles G. Rose House, 215 Hillside Avenue, and the Edwin Williamson House, 212 Bradford Avenue, ca.1910. Both are two-story frame houses with leaded glass transoms and large sash windows.
Endnotes
References
Coon, Charles L. Public Education in North Carolina 1790-1840 as quoted in Lucile Johnson, "Donaldson Academy- An Early Fayetteville School," Fayetteville Observer-Times. 7 March 1976, 2E.
Cumberland County Records: Deeds, List of Taxables 1824-1829, Wills.
Fayetteville city directories. Local History Room, Cumberland County Public Library, Fayetteville.
Hope Mills, North Carolina. Big Rockfish Presbyterian Church, RFD 1 Susanne A. Colton, unpublished document.
Jasperse, Linda. Fayetteville Comprehensive Historic Architecture Survey files, N.C. Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh.
Jasperse, Linda. Historic Resources of Fayetteville, North Carolina (Partial Inventory: Architectural and Historical Resources only). 1982. N.C. Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh.
Jasperse, Linda. Haymount District National Register Nomination. 1983. N.C. Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh.
Jasperse, Linda. E.A. Poe House National Register Nomination. 1983. N.C. Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh.
Johnson, Lucile. "Donaldson Academy — An Early Fayetteville School." Fayetteville Observer-Times, 7 March 1976.
Johnson, Lucile. "Robert Strange Town House — A Home For A Bride." Fayetteville Observer, 2 November 1969.
Johnson, Lucile. "The Story of the 'Principal's House.'" Fayetteville Observer, 1 February 1976.
Junior Service League of Fayetteville, Inc. A Guide to Historic Fayetteville and Cumberland County. Fayetteville, N.C.: Highland Printers, 1976.
McGary-Small House Historic Landmark Designation Report. 1982. Author Unknown.
Monaghan, John and Miss. Fayetteville, North Carolina. Interview by Dru Haley, 11 November 1978.
North Carolinian. 6 January 1849.
Oates, John A. The Story of Fayetteville and the Upper Cape Fear. Charlotte, N.C.: The Dowd Press, Inc., 1950; reprinted. Raleigh, Litho Industries, Inc., 1972.
Oates, John A. The Story of Fayetteville and the Upper Cape Fear. Fayetteville, N.C.: The Fayetteville Woman's Club, 1972.
Parker, Weeks. Fayetteville, North Carolina, a pictorial history. Norfolk/Virginia Beach: The Donning Company, 1984.
Raleigh, North Carolina. Division of Archives and History. Survey and Planning Branch. Jessie W. Brandt, letter in file marked "Smith Lauder House." February 1961.
Rose, Charles G. Fayetteville, North Carolina. Interview by Linda Jasperse, 3 March 1982.
Sanborn maps, 1914, 1923, 1930, 1950.
Stinson, Eliza Tillinghast. "Taking of the Arsenal." J.E.B. Stewart Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. War Days in Fayetteville, North Carolina: Reminiscences of 1861-1865. Fayetteville, N.C.: Judge Printing Co., May 1910.
Turberg, Edward. Rankin House Historic Landmark Designation Report. 1984.
Wilmington Advertiser, 7 January 1835.
‡ Linda Jasperse, City of Fayetteville, Consultant for Survey and Planning Branch, Haymount District, Cumberland County, NC, nomination document, 1982, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
‡ M. Ruth Little, Longleaf Historic Resources, Haymount Historic District Boundary Increase, Cumberland County, N.C., nomination document, 2006, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Arsenal Avenue • Athens Avenue • Bradford Avenue • Brandts Lane • Hale Street • Hay Street • Hillside Avenue