The History of Five Points – Raleigh, NC

Before Five Points:
Farmland, the Mordecai Legacy, & a Streetcar Line

Before the 1910s, the land that would become Five Points was largely open country. The area north of Peace Street, then considered the northern boundary of Raleigh, was farm territory crossed by dirt roads linking mills and rural properties. Glenwood Avenue was a two-lane road running through fields.

Much of this land carried a long history. Portions of it had descended, through various sales and inheritances, from the original colonial land grants held by the Lane and Mordecai families the same extended family that built the oldest house in Raleigh in 1785, just to the east. A 300-acre parcel along Glenwood was owned for decades by the Williamson family, who ran it as Fairview Farm, known for cattle breeding and thoroughbred horses. B. Grimes Cowper purchased part of this land in the late 1880s and continued farming operations there well into the early twentieth century.

The first infrastructure that made suburban development imaginable was the streetcar. Carolina Power and Light Company extended the Glenwood Avenue trolley line northward in 1912, running electric cars from downtown Raleigh out through what would become Five Points. To encourage ridership and to sell the vision of living along the line CP&L made a strategic decision common to streetcar companies of that era: it built an amusement park at the end of the route.

Bloomsbury Park:
Raleigh's Lost Amusement Park

Bloomsbury Park opened in 1912 at the northern terminus of the Glenwood streetcar line. When Carolina Power and Light expanded and upgraded it in 1918, the park sat beneath eight thousand glowing electric light bulbs a spectacle in an era when electricity was still a novelty outside city centers. For a nickel fare on the trolley, Raleigh residents could ride out to a penny arcade, a roller coaster, a carousel, and a dance pavilion while the land on either side of the line was quietly being platted for residential development.

The park had an outsized effect on its surroundings. The Raleigh Times, when the park opened in 1912, declared it exactly what Raleigh needed and predicted it would become the most notable amusement point in North Carolina. The rides and pavilion attracted crowds from across the region, gave the streetcar line a reason to run, and gave developers a marketing story: come for the park, imagine living nearby.

The story of Bloomsbury Park ended quickly and unhappily. In 1918, American soldiers training for World War I used the grounds as a camp. By 1920 the park was abandoned, and newspapers were noting that the scenic railway was still standing but the place had been empty for nearly three years. The dance pavilion still standing as of recent decades, in ruins in the backyard of a private home is one of the only physical remnants. The trolley stop platform, partially overgrown near Glenwood Avenue, is another.

One piece of Bloomsbury Park survived intact and found a lasting home: the carousel. Built by Gustav A. Dentzel's Pennsylvania Carousel Company, it is recognized as one of Dentzel's earliest surviving works and one of the foremost surviving examples of his craft in the country. When Bloomsbury Park closed, the carousel was relocated. Today it operates at Pullen Park, where it has been spinning since the 1920s. Every ride at Pullen Park is, in a sense, a ride on a piece of Five Points history.

The Five Neighborhoods and How Each Developed

Five Points is not one neighborhood it is five, each with its own character, architectural vocabulary, and timeline. The Raleigh Historic Development Commission identifies them as Hayes Barton, Bloomsbury, Georgetown, Vanguard Park, and Roanoke Park. Four of the five are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hayes Barton is the crown of the group, and the one that set the tone for everything that followed. In 1919, the Allen Brothers Dan, Frank, and William, of Allen Brothers Realty negotiated with the Cowper and Williamson families to develop 175 acres of Fairview Farm. They formed the Fairview Company with Colonel Albert Lyman Cox and turned to landscape architect Earle Sumner Draper to design the subdivision.

Draper was one of the most accomplished landscape architects working in the American South. He had just finished Myers Park in Charlotte at the time that city's most prestigious residential neighborhood and the Allen Brothers wanted exactly that template applied to their Raleigh property. Draper's signature was letting roads follow the natural contour of the land rather than forcing a grid. He converted ravines into median parks, placed the largest lots at points of prominence overlooking green spaces, and designed the entire neighborhood as what he called a naturalistic landscape an estate setting for people who wanted to live away from the city without actually leaving it.

The name was chosen deliberately. Hayes Barton is the name of the Devon farmhouse in East Budleigh, England, where Sir Walter Raleigh was born around 1552. The city of Raleigh bears his name. Naming the neighborhood after his birthplace was an act of Anglophile branding calculated for a city that prided itself on its connections to English heritage and colonial history. The streets were named after former North Carolina governors Jarvis, Reid, Stone, Vance. The first home broke ground in April 1920. By July 1921, the News & Observer reported ten homes under simultaneous construction and expressed hope that Hayes Barton's activity signaled the end of the building stagnation that had followed World War I.

The houses that went up in Hayes Barton during the 1920s were substantial. Georgian Revival, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Dutch Colonial Revival the full repertoire of period eclectic architecture popular among upper-middle-class American homeowners of that decade. Local contractor Howard E. Satterfield, a former mechanical engineering professor at NC State College who had transitioned to homebuilding, constructed many of the finest early homes. He became one of the most sought-after builders in Raleigh precisely because of his attention to quality in Hayes Barton.

Bloomsbury and Roanoke Park developed through the 1920s with a somewhat less grand character than Hayes Barton Craftsman bungalows, Classical Revival Foursquares, and modest homes with good bones that suited the government workers, railroad employees, and small business owners who formed the backbone of Raleigh's professional class. Bloomsbury's Flat Iron Building, at the corner of a triangular block along Glenwood, housed a grocery that served both neighborhoods.

Vanguard Park and Georgetown came later. Vanguard Park was platted as early as 1915 but sat largely undeveloped until the mid-1930s, when the economy recovered enough from the Depression to drive construction. Georgetown developed primarily after World War II. The homes in these two neighborhoods tend to be more modest Craftsman-style houses, reflecting the tighter budgets and more practical sensibilities of their eras.

Together, the five neighborhoods were nearly fully built out by 1950, spanning four decades of construction from just before World War I to just after World War II.

The Commercial Heart:
Glenwood Avenue and the Five Points Intersection

The intersection itself where Glenwood Avenue, Fairview Road, and Whitaker Mill Road converge became Five Points' commercial center as the neighborhoods filled in. Through the 1920s and 1930s, a row of shops along Glenwood served the surrounding residents: the grocery in the Flat Iron Building, later the A&P that opened in 1936 as the largest in the chain, pharmacies, and neighborhood businesses of every kind.

The Hayes Barton Pharmacy and Grill opened in 1929 and has operated in one form or another ever since. Today it continues as the Hayes Barton Café, known across Raleigh for its award-winning cakes and its deliberately preserved nostalgic interior. It is one of the oldest continuously operating commercial establishments in the Five Points area and a reliable answer to the question of where to take out-of-town visitors who want to understand what the neighborhood feels like.

The A&P building at 1620 Glenwood Avenue has had a longer and stranger afterlife. In 1942 it was converted into the Colony Theatre, opening on April 1 of that year with seating for 603. For decades it was the neighborhood's movie house  a place where families from Fuquay-Varina and other surrounding towns drove in on weekends to see first-run films. Mary Poppins had its Eastern North Carolina premiere here in January 1965. The Colony ran mainstream Hollywood fare through the 1960s and 1970s, then shifted to martial arts films and eventually closed in 1981. In 1983 it reopened after renovations as the Rialto Theatre, shifting its programming toward foreign, independent, and art films. It is today the oldest continuously operating movie theater in Raleigh. The Rialto also hosts live performances, Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screenings, and has under recent ownership become a genuine neighborhood cultural anchor again.

Five Points Today Inside the Beltline and Still Thriving

Few Raleigh neighborhoods have aged as gracefully as Five Points. The combination of Earle Sumner Draper's thoughtful street design, the quality of construction from the 1920s boom, the walkable concentration of commercial uses along Glenwood, and the neighborhood's location inside the Beltline within two miles of downtown has insulated it from the decline that struck many mid-century suburbs in the late twentieth century.

The historic overlays covering four of the five neighborhoods restrict demolition and major alterations, which has kept the architectural character intact even as individual homes are updated and renovated.

The commercial corridor on Glenwood continues to evolve. Breweries, coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques have filled in alongside the longtime anchor establishments. Farmers markets, neighborhood events, and the kind of foot traffic that comes naturally when enough people live within walking distance of the same streets have given Five Points the feel of a genuine urban village something most of Raleigh, designed around the automobile, has rarely achieved.

Lake Boone Dentistry: Neighbors to Five Points Since 1971

Lake Boone Dentistry has been serving Raleigh families since 1971, the same era when Five Points was settling into the mature, established neighborhood it remains today. Our office at 2310 Myron Drive is a short drive from the Five Points intersection close enough that we've cared for generations of Raleigh families, Hayes Barton homeowners, and Glenwood Avenue regulars over the decades.

If you're a Five Points resident looking for a dental home, we'd be glad to meet you.

Call us at (919) 781-8610.