Milton Historic District
By 1857 Milton had five tobacco factories. No fewer, than thirteen tobacco warehouses, prize houses where the raw tobacco was packed into hogsheads, and tobacco plug and smoking factories appear on the 1893 Sanborn Insurance Map. By 1925 not one remained in business and most of the buildings had disappeared. Claude Allen's Plug Tobacco Factory on the east side of Bridge-Warehouse Street is the only existing factory building. The factory is a late nineteenth century vernacular Victorian one-story frame structure now used as a barn. Across the gable-end facade is a loading dock with a shed roof, and along the south side of the building is a lean-to storage shed. The only exterior ornament is the small, decorative louvered ventilator window in the upper facade. The interior is a large, unpartitioned space with machinery, work tables, plug molds and packing crates scattered about. The factory office, a miniature version of the factory, stands in the side yard.
Source: National Register of Historic Places Inventory--Nomination Form, Milton Historic District, 27 August 1973.
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Most of the large planters in the area continued throughout the nineteenth century to occupy their plantation houses on rich holdings along the Dan River and Country Line and Hyco Creeks while they speculated on Milton property. Milton functioned primarily as a market for their raw products, and the early fabric of the town is predominantly commercial, industrial, and small-scale domestic. The dominant Milton house-type of the antebellum period is the modest raised cottage, consisting of a brick story with an upper frame story containing the main entrance. Four examples of this type remain, all located on the east side of Bridge-Warehouse Street--the Wooding Place, the Oliver House, the Gordon House, and the house immediately north of the Baptist Church, which perhaps was built as the parsonage. These dwellings, which appear to date between 1840 and 1860, contrast with the more pretentious Main Street residences, and probably represent the commercial class. John Wooding, believed to be the builder of the Wooding Place, operated the town brickyard, while Field Gordon, probable builder of the Gordon House, owned a saloon in Milton. Two of the raised cottages have hip roofs; two have gable ones. The architectural trim is simple, with large windows, plain eaves and Victorian porches of varying designs, several supported on masonry piers. The interiors exhibit center-hall plans and have plastered walls, simple trim, and typical large Classical Revival mantels.
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The present business district of Milton consists of a block of seven brick Victorian row stores built in the 1880s which form one of the best preserved late nineteenth century commercial districts in North Carolina. The two stores on the western end are one-story and the five easternmost buildings form a cohesive group, each two stories high, with segmental-arched windows at the upper level. Each storefront, containing a central entrance with flanking display windows and a side entrance to the upper story, is distinguished by a different combination of playful Victorian wooden ornament consisting of paneled, boxed, and chamfered pilasters, diagonally sheathed dados, and bracketted cornices. Each upper cornice is accentuated by a different brick corbel course design. Most of the stores have shed facade porches supported on plain bracketted posts which form a nearly continuous pedestrian covered walkway. The easternmost building served as the movie house, while the other stores contain small retail establishments.
Source: National Register of Historic Places Inventory--Nomination Form, Milton Historic District, 27 August 1973.
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The Baptist Meeting House, which sits on a terraced site on Warehouse Street, is a two-story brick building with a pedimented facade. The verticality of the block is accentuated by the fragility of the fretwork lintel ornament of the double facade entrances and the windows, reflecting Asher Benjamin's stylized classical patterns. The interior, essentially unchanged, features a baptismal niche enframed by a handsome wooden classical proscenium arch and a rear wooden balcony supported on Doric posts. The pulpit and pews resemble in design and plasticity the idiom of Tom Day and quite possibly were executed by him. In the finest community spirit, the church was erected by the citizens of Milton, who were called to the "church raising" by a notice in the Milton Gazette and Roanoke Advertiser, dated January, 1828:
"It is requested that those who hold subscriptions for building a Baptist Meeting House in Milton will report to the Commissioners in this place the amount subscribed on or before the first Thursday in March next at which time and place all those who may wish to encourage and aid in the said building are requested to attend, especially those who are to furnish labour and materials."(Milton Gazette and Roanoke Advertiser, Vol. VL, No. 44, Feb. 28, 1828.
Source: National Register of Historic Places Inventory--Nomination Form, Milton Historic District, 27 August 1973.
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