History of Our Residents
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Information from the National Register of Historic Places:
Architects | Development Companies | Residents | History of Winston-Salem | Ludlow's PlanThe Park | Streetcars
The developers of Washington Park were among the countless entrepreneurs who became wealthy during this period. Much of the wealth garnered by the city's successful industrialists was poured into large and grand houses. Indeed Winston-Salem has had three areas known as Millionaire's Row. The first was on Fifth Street in Winston, in the 1880s and 1890s. The second was in West End, Winston's first streetcar suburb whose development immediately preceded Washington Park's. Ultimately the title passed in the 1910s and 1920s to Cascade Avenue, a residential boulevard lined with elegant houses of several prominent industrialists running through the center of Washington Park.
In most of the Washington Park Historic District, houses are in gridded blocks on rolling land; to the northeast they are on curvilinear Park Boulevard which follows the ridge overlooking the Washington Park. On the south side of Cascade the large parcels which continue through the block to Banner Avenue contain some of the city's largest and most architecturally developed pre World-War 11 houses. Throughout the neighborhood but concentrated on Cascade Avenue, buyers would purchase several lots, determining individually what size their parcel would be. Houses built on the first three blocks of Cascade had much larger lots (and larger houses) than elsewhere in the district. The economic difference between those on Cascade Avenue and the rest of neighborhood did create some social segregation but was accepted, not with pain but as a fact of life.
Among the wealthy residents of Washington Park were Henry E. Fries (104 Cascade Avenue), head of the gas company, president of the Winston-Salem Southbound Railway and mayor of Salem. In 1884 he was the moving spirit behind the NC Industrial Exposition in Raleigh, and in 1885 he organized and served as president of Southside Cotton Mills. He was a member of the three-man committee that helped plan the NC College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now NCSU) and for 53 years was a trustee of what is now Winston-Salem State University. At his death it was said he had done "more than any man in our city--probably in our state--to promote harmony between the races."
The Winston-Salem Journal of January 3, 1911, reported that Burton Craige of Salisbury had been appointed counsel for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The paper stated that "in the profession he is looked upon as one of the leading lawyers in the state..." Mr. Craige considers Winston-Salem the best city in the state, and this he says was the chief inducement that determined him in making this his home for the future. Craige lived at 134 Cascade Avenue.