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Neighborhood Descriptions
Boylan Heights
In 1907, the heirs of William Montfort Boylan sold his mansion and its surrounding one hundred and eighty acres to the Greater Raleigh Land Company marking the birth to one of Raleigh’s first 20th century suburban neighborhoods, Boylan Heights. The neighborhood is loosely bounded by W. Morgan St. to the north, Florence St. and DuPont Circle the east, Dorothea Dr. to the south and CSX railway to the west. Houses throughout the neighborhood represent a number of architectural designs including Colonial Box, Queen Anne/Colonial hybrids and one-story wood frame bungalows.
Pedestrian in mind, the scale of Boylan Heights, originally established by the sidewalks, streets, trees and service alleys, is still maintained and the wide, curving sweep of Boylan Avenue from Montfort Hall presents an avenue of trees and receding house facades. This sort of grand entry focuses the neighborhood in a way that is found specific to Boylan Heights. Its maturity and simplicity, and its housing stock reflect the original owners and their ambitions-to have a place of quiet and security in the city.
Cameron Park
One-hundred and ten acres of the Cameron family estate was divided and improved in two phases between 1910 and 1927 marking the beginning of what now is called Historic Cameron Park. Roughly bounded by St. Mary’s St. to the east, Hillsborough St, to the south, Oberlin Rd. to the west, Peace St. to the north and wedged between Boylan Heights and Glenwood-Brooklyn, Cameron Park completes the western border of downtown.
Cameron Park has an architectural fabric that derives from an underlying consistency from the persistence of the same house types found in the preceding neighborhoods of Glenwood-Brooklyn (1905) and Boylan Heights (1907). This is reflected largely in the predominately large colonial, classical revival and neo-Georgian homes with some picturesque bungalows. Other influences include Mission style and Tudor-Revival.
Glenwood-Brooklyn
The incorporation of the Glenwood Land Company in May 1905 marks the beginning of Glenwood-Brooklyn Historic neighborhood. The Glenwood-Brooklyn area was the first of several neighborhood developments that launched Raleigh’s western and northern expansion during the early twentieth century. Although conceived between 1905 and 1907, the basis of architectural significance has been extended through 1951. The neighborhood occupies approximately 80 acres of land and is roughly bounded by Fletcher Park to the north, St. Mary’s St. to the west, N&S Railways to the east and W. Peace St. to the south.
When development commenced in 1907, vernacular and Victorian genre known as the Queen Anne style, dominated the domestic architecture of the region along with the few working-class house types known as the shotgun. Craftsmen and Colonial Revival style houses also are found throughout the neighborhood laying the architectural foundation for the shortly followed developments of Cameron Park and Boylan Heights.
Mordecai
Located just northeast of downtown, Mordecai Place Historic District is loosely bounded by CSX Railway to the west and north, Old Wake Forest Rd. to the east, N. Blount St. to the south and Oakwood Historic District to the southeast. The name Mordecai Place commemorates the location of the early-twentieth-century residential development of the former estate of the Mordecai family whose late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century house still stands within the southern portion of the neighborhood. The district also includes the birthplace of America’s seventeenth president, Andrew Johnson.
Mordecai Place Historic District includes approximately fifteen blocks of mostly single-family houses constructed between 1916 and 1947. The district displays a broad range of architectural designs such as I-houses, bungalows, Cape Cods, Spanish Mission and various period revivals. Contributing work to the neighborhood includes notable architects such as Rose and Linthicam, William Nichols and James S. Salter.
Oakwood
Oakwood, a twenty-block area representing the only intact nineteenth century neighborhood remaining in Raleigh, is composed predominately of Victorian houses built between the Civil War and 1914 and was originally part of Moses Mordecai’s estate purchased in 1819. Oakwood also shares its name and eastern border with historic Oakwood Cemetery which is the resting place of notables such as NC governors Aycock, Swain, Holden and Worth. Other boundaries loosely border N. Boundary St./Watauga St. to the north, Linden St. to the east, E. Jones St. to the south and N. Person St. to the west.
Architectural significance within the neighborhood has been classified as Classical Revival, Second Empire, Bungalow/Craftsmen and Queen Anne. Although most of the homes in Oakwood reflect individual tastes and differences in architecture, there are many common features. The architectural styles were modified for a southern climate. More than ninety percent of the homes in the region, for example, have at least one porch.
East Raleigh-South Park
The East Raleigh-South Park Historic District occupies approximately 30 blocks and is loosely bordered by E. Hargett St. on the north; Bragg St., Branch St. and E. Lenoir St. on the south; Camden St., S. Swain St. and S. East St. on the east; and S. Blount St. and S. Wilmington St. on the west. Most of the houses were built from 1900-1940 with approximately twenty percent dating back to the nineteenth century.
The East Raleigh portion of the district is composed of portions of the historic neighborhoods of Smith-Haywood and St. Petersburg which developed just after the Civil War. Two of the most distinctive types of houses are the Shotgun and the Triple-A, which together compose one-third of the district. Front gable and side-gabled house can be found throughout the neighborhood as well, specifically the South Park region.
Most porches in the neighborhood serve as a forum for the artistic expression of the people who live there. Some of these expressions include brackets, spindle friezes, detailed balustrades and turned or jigsaw-cut millwork which, in turn, have been termed by some scholars as Folk Victorian design.
