East College Street on the Courthouse Square

I may never be able to leave Holly Springs.  Two buildings on this block drew my eye–the Art Deco building, and the Italianate (or Renaissance Revival, depending on the reference) at the corner.   The nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places described this block thus (from left to right):

…circa 1875 High Victorian Italianate also known as the First State Bank Building; fenestration on a two-bay facade has been altered with square aluminum windows…

…former Stubbs Department Store, circa 1880, 19th century commercial style building; windows bricked in facade; storefront altered…

…former Holly Movie Theatre, 1930 Art Deco building…

…circa 1890 one-story commercial building with decorative cast-iron ventilator panels and dentiled cornice…

…horizontal and vertical bands on stuccoed brick…

…circa 1875 Renaissance Revival…

…semicircular-arch windows… with stamped metal archivolt trim with keystones…

Need another architectural word of the week here, don’t we?  An archivolt is–are you ready for this–vaulted arch–that little round thingy above the semicircular window.

Similar to many of the buildings in this time period, and including a large number of the buildings on the square, stairways lead to upper floor offices.  In this case, the stairway is external.  The NRHP nomination also had this to say about the square:

The more picturesque Romanesque, Renaissance, and High Victorian-Italianate revival modes, characteristic of the post-Civil War building boom, are the most common stylistic influences on the square.

This section of the block has arched windows next to ones with the stamped metal canopies, which I discovered is due to an interior stairway leading to the second floor.  This block is a circa 1870 two-story fourteen-bay brick commercial building.

…rhythm of the facade is defined by central semicircular-arch windows between two seven-bay sections…the central window corresponds with storefront entrance stairs to second floor…fenestration enriched by stamped-metal cornices…Renaissance Revival dentiled roof cornice surmounted by blind-paneled and arcaded parapet…

Thomas, you are getting way behind here on the architectural words of the week.

However, I did manage to answer my own question from the post about the Bank of Holly Springs about why the window on the upper floor differed from the others.  Close inspection seems to indicate a storefront stairway under the arched window.  That would be consistent with the others on the square, and the style of window over those stairways.  From the description in the NRHP nomination, the building to the right has an altered facade.  It was described at the time of the nomination as also having been circa 1875 Renaissance Revival with:

…rectangular fenestration enriched with stamped metal floriated cornices surmounted by dentiled roof parapet with blind arcade…

The center building is circa 1890 with a pedimented roof parapet.  I love that little balcony.  The building on the right was known as Moore’s Clover Farm Grocery at the time of the NRHP nomination in the 1970s.  Has it been taken over by the bank?  That would be my guess, as I can’t see the Holly Springs Reconditioned Appliances needing something looking like that.