Just a little history: Why newcomers can’t find downtown, part one

Wake Forest is a quirky town, not following the usual pattern of a town growing up around a natural trading area like a crossroads and, when it grew enough to name the streets the main commercial area was almost always Main Street.

Not here. And it was because Wake Forest began as a plantation named by Dr. Calvin Jones, became a manual institute after it was bought by the North Carolina Baptist Convention, changed to a college with one large building built in 1838, and only then began thinking about houses for the professors. The college trustees had that as one reason for platting what is now the center of the town; the larger reason was to raise some much-needed money.

The plats surround the college; the street to the north, which ended at a steep embankment, would later be called Faculty Avenue and now the more prosaic North Main Street. And it was later that the street naming settled on “street” for north-south streets and “avenue” for east-west.

In 1840 when the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad was completed, the depot for the area was located at Forestville, which was quickly growing into a commercial center. Forestville is a good mile from the little college, and almost everyone at the college walked down daily to see if there was mail and just to watch the small steam locomotives. They had names like Tornado and Spitfire. The engineer rode on an open platform with no protection from the weather. He and the passengers were subject to the smoke, cinders and sometimes live coals from the short smokestack over the wood fires.

But the important fact was that now farmers and merchants could ship and receive crops and goods quickly. Shortly after the Raleigh & Gaston was complete, it was connected to other railroads, allowing freight and passengers to travel to and from Raleigh, Petersburg and Richmond in Virginia, Baltimore in Maryland and New York City. The first shipment north from Raleigh was four bales of cotton.

The town slowly grew as professors needed homes and everyone needed a general store. Enter Trustee and Rev. James S. Purefoy, who built a store next to the hotel the other trustees had asked him to build for the visitors to the college in 1846, and he owned both. He sold his house in Forestville in 1853 and moved his six children and wife, Mary, into part of the hotel.

The first two houses in town, aside from the house Dr. Calvin Jones built (which was moved to the west to make room for the first college building) and the plantation’s various barns and separate kitchen, were built in 1837 and 1838 along with the original college building, referred to as Old Main. Those two houses, the South Brick House and the North Brick House, were built in Greek Revival style by architect/builder John Berry, and were intended to house faculty members and their families. The North Brick House was torn down in the 1940s to make way for the brick dormitory that still stands, unused because of asbestos, on the part of North Avenue near the railroad.

One of the first houses on the new plats was a log cabin built by John M. Brewer in 1853. A few years later, maybe in 1860, he built a second story in Greek Revival fashion with the front steps leading to the second story.

An even earlier house, 1843 or so, was the Federal-style house Wake Forest College President Samuel Wait built north of the Brewer house. Although Wait demonstrated his faith in the college by the construction, few were to quickly follow his example. The Wait house was subsequently owned by another college president, Charles Taylor, whose family included six daughters and one son, the last child.  Taylor added on to the house, making it look lopsided.

Another house that is not visible was built by Dr. A.H. Taylor about 1840. It was later incorporated into the house built by James Purefoy or was torn down to make way for the Purefoy house in the 1870s. It was still owned by a Purefoy, Emma Purefoy Poteat, until her death in 1939, a year after the death of her husband, Wake Forest College President William Poteat. When the house was owned by a couple named Swett the roofed full-length porch was torn down to make way for Tara-style columns. It is now owned by Wake Forest Baptist Church and houses its offices.

There were two houses south of the college but not in the area platted. Both are still standing and in use. One is the Holding house set back to the east near the railroad and the other is the Royall house which stands on the west side of South Main Street just north of Wake Forest Elementary School.

Those were the only houses in town before the Civil War. The Purefoy store was the only store. There were only pines on the east side of the railroad. The only part of the college to the east was the cemetery with a few graves high up on the hill.

Almost all the students left Wake Forest College to enlist in the Confederate Army and many of the small faculty did likewise unless they were too old. As the war raged in Virginia, wounded soldiers were sent south – sometimes in the cars and sometimes on flatbeds – and many were unloaded at the college. Old Main was turned into a hospital and the overflow patients were treated in wood-floored tents erected on the campus. Although those who died and whose families did not come to claim them were buried in the college cemetery, they were later uninterred and reburied in the Confederate Cemetery in Raleigh.

As the years went on after the war, the college trustees were more and more displeased by the distant depot. They asked the railroad management to place a second depot near the college and were turned down. Finally, in 1874 the railroad agreed to let the college relocate the Forestville depot to the college. It was loaded on a flatbed car and trundled up north a mile or so.

During those years immediately after the Civil War and before the depot was moved, there was some activity on the eastern side of the railroad. William G. Simmons, a college professor who lived in the North Brick House, came from a wealthy family as did his wife. He was an early-day entrepreneur with a store in Forestville and some land across the railroad. Others like John Brewer had turned their land into farms with hired help, and Simmons built several small saddle-bag houses that could hold two families for those farm workers. Today’s Ailey Young House, restored to its original design, was one of those and the only one left from what came to be called Simmons Row.

That farm activity probably led to a rough road along the railroad, though it may already have been there to connect the hamlets of Wake Forest and Youngsville.

But though there was some selling and reselling of the land to the east, there was not any building except Simmons Row that we know of before 1874 and for years later.

(Next week, Forestville and Wake Forest were in competition and the burst of housing construction in the late 1800s.)

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