The mission of the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office’s (HPO) statewide architectural survey program is to identify, record, and encourage the preservation of the state’s rich and varied collection of historic buildings, landscapes, and districts. While Caldwell County was the subject of a reconnaissance level architectural survey in 1986 to 1987, which produced dozens of files on historic properties in Lenoir, there had never been a systematic, comprehensive survey of the city.
Given this need, the HPO commissioned an architectural survey of Lenoir in March 2017 to locate, document, and evaluate the city’s historic resources. Following an extensive planning phase and a systematic fieldwork effort, survey files were prepared on over 350 resources, representing a diverse collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century building styles and forms.