The sixteen-block Town of Halifax Historic District, containing the courthouse square with an imposing Neoclassical Revival-style courthouse built in 1909, an adjacent dense commercial block, churches, a Masonic Lodge, and some sixty houses, makes up the core of one of 
the most compact, diverse, and well-preserved historic towns in northeast North Carolina. The district meets National Register Criterion A for its local significance under the theme of Commerce as a well-preserved river trading center, with a later railroad and highway goods 
transportation links, in the Albemarle Sound region of North Carolina. The district meets Criterion C for its diversified nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban architecture typical of the Albemarle Sound region, including Federal-, Greek Revival-, Gothic Revival-, Italianate-, Neoclassical Revival-, Craftsman-, and Ranch-style buildings. Its period of significance begins ca. 1783 with the construction of the earliest building, and continues through the 1961 construction of the Halifax Post Office, which continues the earlier Colonial Revival architectural pattern in the historic district. 
The historic district’s contributing resources span nearly two centuries, from ca. 1783 to 1961, during which time the town served first as the center of the wealthy plantation culture of the Roanoke Valley, and continued as the county seat of Halifax County. The district represents the western two quadrants of the original 1757 colonial town established as the county seat at the head of navigation of the Roanoke River, as well as the 1816 town expansion. Most of the original town, which abuts the district on the northeast, is within the Historic Halifax State Historic Site property, where the town’s oldest buildings have been preserved and restored by the Historic Sites Division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. The historic district contains eighty-two principal resources and thirty-two secondary resources constructed between ca. 1783 and 1961 that contribute to its architectural and historical character. Ten primary resources and thirty-three secondary resources are noncontributing because they were built after 1961 or have been significantly altered. A total of seventy-three percent of the total resources are contributing. The architectural range of historic resources includes statesman William R. Davie’s ca. 1783 house, the ca. 1820 Royal White Hart Masonic Lodge #2, the Carpenter Gothic-style St. Mark’s Episcopal Church of ca. 1855, Judge Walter Clark’s Italianate-style brick law office of ca. 1872, the Romanesque Revival-style Clerk’s Office of the 1880s adjacent to the courthouse, the 1880s Gothic Revival-style Church of the Immaculate Conception, and the 1909 Halifax County Courthouse. The Town of Halifax National Register Historic District was prepared in conjunction with Longleaf Historic Resources in Raleigh, NC and was listed the National Register of Historic Places in June of 2011. For a downloadable version of the nomination go to: http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/nr/HX1641.pdf
