Architectural Surveys
M. Ruth Little considers a comprehensive architectural survey, involving a thorough documentation of the built environment, the collection of data, sketch maps, photography, and interviews with owners and residents, to be the foundation of all architectural history. Some of her most substantial survey projects are listed below:
Courthouse Square, Halifax, N.C. Photo by M. Ruth Little, 2009
“Post-World War II and Modern Architecture in Raleigh, NC, 1945-1965.”
https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/WA7242.pdf
This survey of over 18,000 Raleigh buildings, primarily dwellings, was the first comprehensive look at post-war architecture for a city in North Carolina. During the postwar era, suburban subdivisions, filled with the new Ranch and Split-level house types, encircled Raleigh’s old downtown. Ranches had two forms: minimal and rambler, and three styles: archetypal, Colonial, and contemporary. Several Raleigh subdivisions are significant examples of post-war architecture and urban planning and were listed on the National Register after the survey.
“Post-World War II and Modern Non-Residential Architecture in Raleigh, 1945-1975.”
Conducted in 2017-2018, this documented 2,500 commercial, industrial, religious and civic buildings in Raleigh.
The biggest surprise of these surveys was the disconnect between residential and non-residential architecture. Raleigh’s business community preferred Modernism for commercial buildings and conservative Colonial Revival design for their homes. The surveys discovered a link between the Black middle class and Modernism. The early Black middle-class subdivisions of Rochester Heights, Madonna Acres, and Battery Heights were listed on the National Register following the survey. They contain modern Ranches and Split-levels representing the American dream of progress rather than revivalist-style homes representing nostalgia for the Old South.
“A Comprehensive Architectural Survey of Carteret County, North Carolina’s Archipelago,”
2011-2012. N.C. State Historic Preservation Office.
Carteret County stretches along the Atlantic Ocean. The eastern half, “Down East,” is an archipelago of islands separated by marshes and open water. The historic architecture consists primarily of small villages and scattered wooden houses representing an egalitarian culture of farmers and fishermen who preserved a regional British dialect and are known as “Hoi Toiders” (High Tiders). The year-long intensive survey includes data on 434 newly-recorded historic properties and districts and added numerous National Register-eligible properties to the North Carolina State Preservation Office’s archival repository.
During the survey, Ruth Little brought a College of William and Mary field school, taught by Colonial Williamsburg scholars, to Beaufort for two summers to study the so-called “eighteenth-century houses” with historic plaques dated in the 1700s. Most of these houses were “Beaufort-type” one-story frame houses with integral front porches. The first summer survey was documented in a report, “Early Domestic Architecture in Beaufort, North Carolina and Tidewater Virginia”, in 2011. Documentation proved that all but one of the houses dated to the period from 1800 to the 1830s, thus nearly stripping Beaufort of actual eighteenth-century houses.
“From Plantation to Model Affordable Housing Campus: A Report on the Seawell Cemetery Site,” 2020.
Prepared for the Downtown Housing Improvement Corporation (DHIC Inc.), Raleigh, NC.
Older Surveys
Wake Forest Survey Update 2008
Fort Bragg Military Reservation comprehensive survey, 1995-6, update 2001
Snow Hill, N.C. comprehensive survey 1997-8
Moore County reconnaissance survey, 1997-8
Morehead City comprehensive survey, 1997
Beaufort Survey Update, 1997
Chapel Hill Township comprehensive survey (with Kelly Lally) 1992
Iredell County comprehensive survey, 1976
Greensboro comprehensive survey, 1975
Bladen County comprehensive survey, 1975
Caswell County comprehensive survey, 1972-3