2026 Most Threatened Places

Since 2006, the Historic Wilmington Foundation’s Most Threatened Historic Places program has shone a spotlight on our region’s most vulnerable historic places. By highlighting irreplaceable architectural, cultural, and archaeological sites across Wilmington and the Lower Cape Fear region, the program does more than raise alarm; it rallies the community. Every listing sparks public debate, shifts perspectives, and invites the creative solutions needed to save our endangered heritage before it is lost forever.

The Wilmington National Register Historic District

Encompassing over 230 blocks, the Wilmington National Register Historic District represents one of the largest historic districts in the South. Roughly bounded by the Northeast Cape Fear River to the west, 7th Street to the east (with extensions to 14th Street), Harnett Street to the North, and Wooster Street to the south (with extensions to Greenfield Street), the district contains 875 contributing buildings, 38 sites, and 3 structures that document Wilmington’s urban growth from 1737 through the mid-20th century. Some of the architectural styles throughout its residential and commercial corridors include Colonial, Victorian, Queen Anne, and American Craftsman.

The District contains significant historic landmarks, houses of worship, schools, public buildings, and residential neighborhoods characterized by stunning oak tree-lined streets. Today, these cultural assets are under relentless pressure from climate extremes, deferred maintenance, inappropriate alterations, and speculative development. Most critically, the current proposal for the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge Replacement Project Alternative B, a 135-foot fixed span that lands directly inside the district, will cause significant long term direct and indirect damage to contributing historic assets.

Graystone Inn / Bridgers Mansion

Standing at the corner of 3rd and Dock Streets, the Graystone Inn, historically known as the Elizabeth Bridgers Mansion, is a rare architectural jewel in Wilmington. Built between 1905 and 1906, the 15,000-square-foot, 12-bedroom Mansion is one of the city’s few Indiana limestone structures, reflecting the height of early 20th-century luxury. Commissioned by widow Elizabeth Haywood Bridgers using her family’s railroad fortune, the mansion features Italian Renaissance styling, a grand sweeping staircase, Honduran mahogany paneling, and Italian Verdi marble fireplaces.

Over its century-long story, the mansion evolved from an opulent private home into an American Legion post following World War II, and later, a historic bed and breakfast. Its cinematic grandeur hosted Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise and Alan Alda, and featured in hit productions including Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill. After earning a Preservation Award in 2023 following extensive exterior work, tragedy struck: a kitchen fire in June 2023 was followed by a devastating second fire in November 2025. Though currently condemned, the mansion’s massive limestone facade remains intact, awaiting the community support needed to guide this iconic landmark through its restoration.

255 North Front Street, Wilmington

Constructed around 1915, the commercial building at 255 North Front Street carries a rich architectural history. Designed for the Elks by Joseph F. Leitner, the architect behind Wilmington’s original Union Station, the building stands as a contributing property within the Wilmington National Register Historic District. Over the decades, it evolved alongside the city, serving a range of purposes, from a lodge room to the music venue The Soapbox (2001–2013) and a downtown Waffle House (2018–2024).

Today, however, this piece of downtown history is slipping into severe disrepair. First damaged by Hurricane Florence in 2018, the building suffered compounding structural damage that forced its last tenant to close permanently in 2024. Now facing code enforcement actions and city citations, 255 North Front Street risks becoming another lost landmark in Wilmington’s historic downtown.

Murchison Building

Designed by prominent architect Kenneth Murchison and completed in 1914 for the Murchison National Bank, the 11-story Murchison Building stood as Wilmington’s tallest landmark for nearly a century until 2007. A contributing asset within the National Register Historic District, the Building marked a leap forward in local architecture upon its completion, showcasing “modern” steel-frame engineering clad in brick, marble, and terra cotta.

Today, the building remains active with a variety of commercial office tenants, but its historic fabric is fraying. Requiring extensive delayed maintenance and structural care, the Murchison Building highlights a growing challenge across downtown Wilmington: prominent commercial landmarks slipping into systemic disrepair. It stands as a prime candidate for stronger municipal oversight and proactive inspection regulations to ensure historic stewards preserve these architectural anchors before deterioration takes hold.

Threatened Shoreline Historic Places

The historic assets and places at the shoreline of the Cape Fear River are threatened by increased saltwater intrusion, flooding, and erosion as a result of climate change, sea level rise, increased extreme weather, and increased dredging of the River. These baseline conditions will be further compounded if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers executes the Wilmington Harbor 403 Project, expanding the federally authorized dredging depth from 42 feet to 47 feet. In response to these pressing hazards, the Historic Wilmington Foundation includes the following shoreline sites among its 2026 Most Threatened Historic Places:

Orton Plantation’s Historic Earthen Dike System and Rice Fields

Hand-built by enslaved Africans between 1726 and 1750, the historic earthen dike system and restored rice fields at Orton Plantation stand as a powerful, living monument to the skill, labor, and resilience of enslaved African Americans across centuries. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this intricate hydrological system represents one of the most significant cultural and agricultural landscapes in the Lower Cape Fear region.

However, the integrity of this historic engineering marvel hangs in delicate balance. Any breach or failure of the earthen dikes would trigger a catastrophic domino effect: saltwater intrusion would permanently sterilize the historic rice fields, collapse the property’s fragile freshwater ecosystem, and erase an irreplaceable piece of African American heritage.

Eagles Island’s Archaeological Assets

Eagles Island is an archaeological treasure trove. Historic assets on and around Eagles Island include remnants of an 1850s railroad depot, early agricultural engineering, and a famous ship graveyard. Notable historic artifacts include:

• Pre-Civil War trainyard ruins
• Foundations of an 1840s / 1850s village
• Sunken remains of vessels, including:
• The John Knox Ferry
• The Waccamaw (a steamboat that caught fire in 1895)
• The Argonauta Tugboat
• Remnants of an 18th and 19th-century rice cultivation, including vestigial canals and ditch networks once maintained by the enslaved Gullah Geechee West Africans

37 wrecks and abandoned vessels along the Eagles Island shoreline have been documented, providing an important archaeological record of Wilmington’s industrial past. The Eagles Island Ship Graveyard is part of the Wilmington National Register Historic District and is referred to as the Wilmington Historic Shipwreck District. The submerged vessels are protected by the 1988 Abandoned Shipwreck Act and North Carolina’s Archaeological Resources Protection Act. Finally, Eagles Island contains remnants of the Gullah Geechee culture and is part of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. All of Eagles Island’s important historic assets are threatened.

Brunswick Town / Fort Anderson’s Submerged Archaeological Assets

Brunswick Town was a major pre-Revolutionary port on the Cape Fear River that was razed by British troops in 1776 and never rebuilt. During the Civil War, Fort Anderson was constructed atop the Colonial village site and served as part of the Cape Fear River defenses below Wilmington before the fall of the Confederacy.

This site is rich in historic assets, including those that rest along the shoreline of the Cape Fear River. Among numerous artifacts that shed light on colonial life, trade, maritime activity, and military conflict at the site, there are:

• Colonial-era shipwrecks
• Remnants of the Colonial wharf and port infrastructure
• (2) Timber-crib wharves,
• A causeway over the historic marsh

The entire site, including the shoreline whose assets are threatened, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Threatened Historic Places in Pender County

Pender County Rosenwald Schools

Born from a landmark partnership between educator Booker T. Washington and Sears, Roebuck & Co. president Julius Rosenwald, the Rosenwald Fund helped construct 18 school buildings across 15 Pender County campuses between 1917 and 1932. These schools provided high-quality education to rural African American children during the Jim Crow era. Built from standardized Tuskegee Institute blueprints, the buildings featured massive, multi-paned windows designed to maximize natural light and airflow in un-electrified rural areas, along with movable partition walls that allowed classrooms to double as community halls.

Today, Pender County retains six to eight surviving Rosenwald structures, one of the highest concentrations remaining in the region. While the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling led to integration and the eventual closure of these wood-frame schoolhouses by the late 1960s, a few found second lives: the 1922 Canetuck School now serves as a community center, and the Sloop Point School houses a local Masonic Lodge. However, many others have been lost, such as the Pender County Training Center School, demolished in 2007. Remaining sites like Union Chapel, Scotts Hill, Halfway Branch, and Lee’s Chapel suffer from severe abandonment, coastal weather decay, and deferred maintenance, making community support essential to save these monuments of African American educational history.

The Beatty Corbett House

Perched on the east bank of the Black River near Ivanhoe, the Beatty-Corbett House stands at the historic tri-point where Pender, Sampson, and Bladen Counties meet. Built in 1850 as a two-story Greek Revival home on a once-vast 10,000-acre plantation, the structure grew alongside the fortune of its owners. Around 1900, the estate was expanded with a Classical Revival north addition featuring a grand pillared portico, financed by the region’s booming 19th-century naval stores and timber trade. Later owner William Murphy Corbett operated a sawmill and shingle factory, shipping raw materials down the river to the bustling Port of Wilmington. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, the 4,600-square-foot mansion also captured Hollywood’s eye, serving as a cinematic backdrop for productions like Rambling Rose (1991). Today, however, the 176-year-old home is in severe disrepair. Battered by time and coastal storms, this architectural cornerstone of North Carolina’s industrial and agricultural history urgently requires stabilization and restorative care before it is lost.

St. Helena Orthodox Church

Nestled at 2648 Front Street in St. Helena near Burgaw, the St. Helena Orthodox Church, officially Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church, is a rare cultural gem in Southeastern North Carolina. Built in 1932, it stands as the oldest Russian Orthodox Church in the state. Constructed in the traditional Byzantine architectural style and crowned with a gleaming golden onion dome, the church was established to serve the Eastern European immigrants who settled in Hugh MacRae’s early 20th-century agricultural colonies.

Recognized for its distinct heritage, the sanctuary was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. Despite its striking architecture and historical significance, the church faces an uncertain future. Driven by a dwindling congregation and aging membership, this singular piece of immigrant history lands on the Most Threatened list not from physical destruction alone, but from the urgent need for long-term stewardship and preservation support.