The 7-story hotel, built during a period of growth for “Bigger, Better Burlington, is one of two structures that dominate the skyline of Burlington. The town originated as Company Shops but developed into a business and textile manufacturing center. The hotel was built by a local corporation to boost the community’s stature and prosperity and designed by architect Charles C. Hartmann, was an important Greensboro architect from New York. He had gone to Greensboro to supervise construction of the O. Henry Hotel and is best known for his classically organized Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company in Greensboro. The brick structure follows the classical base-shaft-capital organization popular for tall buildings in the first half of the 20th century, with elaborate terra cotta ornament, especially at the seventh story. Hartmann’s 1923-1924 plans for the hotel reportedly survive. The Clayton News of July 9, 1925, noted that workmen were putting down carpets and placing furniture in advance of the opening of the new hotel planned for July 10. With elegant public spaces including a fine ballroom, it was a prestigious center of local social life into the mid-20th century. It closed in 1974 and has been renovated for a new use. See Claudia P. Roberts, Alamance Hotel National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1983.

The long, red brick building that occupies the north end of the original quadrangle features arched openings and restrained classical detailing. It is one of the original six buildings constructed on the Meredith Campus in keeping with the plan developed by the architects Wilson, Berryman, and Kennedy. It was named for the wife of a donor who subsidized a renovation in 1969.

The residence hall is one of four red brick, classically detailed residence halls built as part of the original campus, with a central, pedimented entrance pavilion.

It is not established which buildings at present ECU Beaman constructed, but it is likely that he built those designed in the late 1920s by George Berryman as well as others.

The residence hall is one of four red brick, classically detailed residence halls built as part of the original campus, with a central, pedimented entrance pavilion.

The large and beautifully detailed Georgian Revival style house was built on a prime location at the corner of White Oak and Beechridge roads for Beaman as his family home.

The centerpiece of the six initial buildings at Meredith is the symmetrical, 3-story brick Johnson Hall, which commands the axial entrance drive from the main, Hillsborough Street entrance. The most imposing building on the campus, it was built as the administration building anchoring the south end of the original quadrangle. Along with the other structures of 1923-1926 and later, it repeats the reassuring vocabulary of red brick, white-trimmed classical buildings employed for many campuses in North Carolina and elsewhere. Various alterations were made in 1956, 1958, and 1960. It was called the administration building until 1931 when it was named for a longtime trustee and leader, Livingston Johnson. These six buildings, including the architecturally related residence halls and a dining hall (see below) , constituted the principal architecture of the campus until the first of a new generation of buildings was erected in 1950.

The Lawyers Building was a multi-storied office building noteworthy for the famed State Theater at ground level, which showed both movies and vaudeville. This building was one of several large building projects in downtown Raleigh in the 1920s.

Listed in Manufacturers’ Record (April 13, 1916). The hotel was constructed after a larger facility that was probably planned by Joseph F. Leitner was cancelled because of financial problems (The Robesonian, June 22, 1914, Jan. 10, 1916, Aug. 31, 1916).

The Manufacturers’ Record of April 13, 1916, noted that the Lumberton Hotel Company had let a contract to J. E. Beaman of Raleigh to build the hotel designed by Frank B. Simpson. There is no known hotel of this era in downtown Lumberton now.

The Raleigh News and Observer of July 25, 1922, reported that plans for the 10-story Odd Fellows Building at the corner of Salisbury and Hargett Streets had “gone a step further in the retention of G. Lloyd Preacher & Co., Atlanta, architects to prepare plans for the structure,” with one Nicholas Mitchell, “in charge of the Raleigh office of the company” producing the plans. It was to follow a classically influenced design, with the top to feature “details from an ancient temple.” Like many other skyscrapers of the era, it followed a classical base-shaft-capital organization, with pilasters and modillions at the base and cap. The building was completed in the spring of 1924. The Odd Fellows Building and the Cape Fear Hotel in Wilmington are the two known examples in North Carolina of buildings designed by G. Lloyd Preacher’s prolific and well-known Atlanta firm. Preacher had established his firm in Atlanta in 1922 and in 1923 opened his first out-of-state office in Raleigh.

The 8-story building is one of the modest 1920s skyscrapers that redefined downtown Raleigh’s skyline. It was commissioned by William Allen Erwin (1856-1932), a relative of the Alamance County Holt manufacturing family who worked with the Duke family in their entry into the textile industry and became an industry leader himself. It was built in part as a philanthropic investment, for the some of the proceeds from rentals to physicians, dentists, and various corporations were diverted into a trust that benefited the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, which Erwin had built and given to the Episcopal Diocese (see Hobart Upjohn). The gala opening of the building was in December, 1925. The architects and the contractor were identified in the December 19, 1925, News and Observer.

Beaman’s company reportedly built more than two dozen structures in the 1920s at the large campus. These have not been specifically identified. The Dix Hill National Register of Historic Places nomination, which encompasses only some of the buildings on the large campus, notes a few from the 1920s, of which some were planned by Charlotte architect Charles C. Hook but does not cite the contractor. Additional research may yield more information.

The residence hall is one of four red brick, classically detailed residence halls built as part of the original campus, with a central, pedimented entrance pavilion.

The residence hall is one of four red brick, classically detailed residence halls built as part of the original campus, with a central, pedimented entrance pavilion.

The only skyscraper in Elizabeth City, the handsome 7-story brick building was designed by hotel architect William Lee Stoddart of New York. Local tradition cited in the Elizabeth City Historic District National Register nomination named John Beamon (sic) of Raleigh as architect, but it is likely that he was the contractor and was on site and thus was well remembered locally. (Ruth Little-Stokes, Virginia Dare Hotel and Arcade National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1976.) Thomas Butchko’s further research identified Stoddart as the architect. See Butchko, On the Shores of the Pasquotank (1989).