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Residential Architecture (2.1)

Significance (2.1.2)

The architectural forms and styles discussed above are significant because they place Elizabeth City's dwellings in both regional vernacular building traditions and in popular national ones. The continued use of traditional one-room-deep and double-pile, side-hall plan, gable-front forms into the early twentieth century, along with the great popularity of the more modem forms and styles of the nineteenth century and twentieth century, illustrates the city's development from a community that followed traditional building trends to one that was as modern and up-to-date as any of comparable size in the state. This development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries indicates that Elizabeth City was little different from hundreds of other progressive cities and towns throughout the country.

Whether traditional or modern, plain or stylish, the houses and multi-family units in Elizabeth City are more powerful and significant as parts of groups and neighborhoods than as individual structures. Together they tell the story of Elizabeth City's development, particularly after the arrival of the railroad in 1881, giving the individual dwellings and their surroundings a sense of place and time. Some houses are individually significant as well. due to their integrity and distinctness of form or style. In addition, others are also important because of their association with local civic and business leaders, such as Isaiah Fearing, D. S. Kramer, Charles O. Robinson, and P. W. Moore, or with architects and builders, such as Joseph P. Kramer, Whitmel Lane, William S. Chesson, Sr. and Jr., and Milton C. Savin.