Commercial DevelopmentThe proximity of the expansion area to the downtown business district limited commercial development within the area. No active stores remain, the last one being the former Sykes-Wilson Grocery (c. 1905) at 318 Culpepper Street which was razed in July 1993. Sanborn maps indicate the existence of several neighborhood groceries throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; all have been demolished or extensively remodeled into dwellings. These included a frame grocery at what would be 308 West Fearing Street by 1902, a small frame store that once sat in front of 401 Harney Street (#366}, and a small frame grocery at 316 Culpepper Street {Sanborn Map 1902, 1908, 1914, 1923, 1931). While the L. F. Ziegler and Sons Funeral Home (#421) was the city's leading white funeral home from 1926 until 1964, and in fact was the successor to a family business that had started in 1856, its location at the southwest corner of the expansion area was an extension of the antebellum commercial district and not part of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century development of new residential areas west of downtown. Since 1943, the area encompassed by the Elizabeth City Historic District Boundary Expansion has remained a largely intact and uncompromised residential neighborhood. Because commercial development remained confined to the city's historic commercial district to the east of the expansion area and along West Ehringhaus Street to the south, the area itself has been spared commercial intrusions into the overwhelmingly residential neighborhood, The expanded district's high degree of architectural integrity is heightened by the fact that there have been less than a dozen demolitions that have resulted in new construction. The vast majority of buildings erected in the past fifty years have been support buildings, mainly garages. |