Downtown Greensboro Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located at

Greensboro Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...

Guilford County, North Carolina Guilford County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population is 541,299, making it the third-most populous county in North Carolina. The county seat, and largest municipality, is Greensboro. Si ...

. When first listed, the district encompassed 96 contributing buildings in the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

of Greensboro. The commercial buildings were built between about 1885 and the 1930s in a variety of popular architectural styles including

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

and

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

. Located in the district is the separately listed

Jefferson Standard Building The Jefferson Standard Building is a 374 ft (114m) skyscraper in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was completed in 1923 as the headquarters for Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. (now known as Lincoln Financial Group) and has 18 floors. Until ...

. Other notable buildings include the Vanstory Building (c. 1885), Kress Building (1929), Woolworth's (c. 1929), Efrid's Department Store (c. 1930), Montgomery Ward (1936), the Carolina Theatre (1927), Center Theatre (1948), the former Belk Building (1939), Ellis Stone/Thalhimer's Department Store (1949-1950), and the former American Exchange National Bank Building (1920). The

Woolworth's Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...

store is notable as the site of the

Greensboro sit-ins The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Comp ...

of 1960. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982, with a reevaluation in 2003, and boundary adjustments in 2023.

Gallery

File:Piedmont Building, Greensboro NC.jpg, Piedmont Building, 2015 File:Dixie Fire Insurance Company Building.jpg, Dixie Fire Insurance Company Building, 2015 File:Center Theater & Porter Drug Store.jpg, Center Theater & Porter Drug Store, 2015 File:American Exchange National Bank, Greensboro NC.jpg, American Exchange National Bank, 2015 File:Carolina Theater.jpg, Carolina Theater, 2015 File:Greensboro Passenger Depot.jpg, Greensboro Passenger Depot, 2015

References

Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Italianate architecture in North Carolina Art Deco architecture in North Carolina Buildings and structures in Greensboro, North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Guilford County, North Carolina {{GuilfordCountyNC-NRHP-stub