Postbellum Buildings: Institutional

Postbellum Buildings: Religious, Fraternal, and Institutional

The present [county] courthouse, 206 E. Main Street, occupies a lovely landscaped square, the Courthouse site since the county seat was established in 1800. Construction of this building, the most significant landmark in the historic district, began twenty years after the second Pasquotank County Courthouse burned in 1862. The design, for which the county paid what the local newspaper considered the outrageous fee of $500,⁵⁹ was conceived by A. L. West, a Richmond architect, and built by D. S. Kramer, prominent local builder.⁶⁰ The completed structure cost $50,000.⁶¹ The two-story brick building, Neo-Classical Revival in style, is three bays wide and seven bays deep. The second story is treated as a piano nobile, emphasized by the shallow pedimented tetrastyle portico on the main (south) facade, which springs from rusticated stone-faced piers abutting the first story, and by its greater height. A cast-iron latticework railing encloses the portico. George Nowitzky, a Norfolk architectural critic, observed in 1887 that the courthouse was “By far the handsomest structure” in Elizabeth City, but that the four columns of the portico were “the great defect of the building, on account of being severely plain when they should be fluted to correspond with the capitals, which are Corinthian, thus giving the impression that the building committee had exhausted their funds before the edifice was completed.”⁶² The facings of the round-arched windows and doors are of Baltimore granite,⁶³ and most of the remaining trim is of wood or metal. The well-designed wooden cupola, the first stage a clocktower and the second a belltower, towers over the historic district. The interior of the first floor, containing offices, is relatively unaltered. The courtroom with jury chambers, occupying the entire second floor of the original main block, is unusually well-preserved, and contains a coffered wooden ceiling with heavy molded cornice, pew-like seating, and sawnwork railings, domestic in character, enclosing the judge's bench and jury areas.

First Baptist Church, 302 W. Main Street, a bright red brick Gothic Revival style building constructed in 1889,⁶⁴ is the most prominent landmark on W. Main Street. The rectangular, steeply gabled building, has a three-story corner tower with a polychromed slate spire and a west annex, of like materials and design, added ca. 1900.⁶⁵ The well-preserved sanctuary features a wooden coffered ceiling with applied, decorative trusses and a rear gallery with a Gothic paneled railing. The church cemetery, located behind the church on the north side of Colonial Avenue, is the only cemetery in the historic district, and contains gravestones dating to 1810, some with interesting carved ornament.

The United States Post Office and Courthouse, ca. 1906,⁶⁶ one of the finest Neo-Classical Revival style federal buildings in the state, occupies the block adjoining Courthouse Square to the east. The intervening street, Pool, was closed off in the early twentieth century, and a large Civil War monument occupies the center of this civic open space. The imposing building, five bays wide and three bays deep, has a rusticated stone first story, tan brick second and third stories, and a deep slate hip roof. Heavy stone window surrounds, a stone modillion cornice and oculus dormers articulate the structure. At the rear corners are lower, compatible additions. The interior is finished with classical appointments of equal quality to those of the exterior, and although much altered, has architectural significance. Materials used throughout include fine woods, cast-iron, and marble. The two grandest spaces are the groin-valted post office lobby on the first floor and the second floor courtroom, containing fully-paneled mahogany walls with Ionic pilasters, a heavy cornice, and pedimented entrances.