1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raleigh

RALEIGH, the capital of North Carolina, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Wake county, about 145 m. N. by W. of Wilmington. Pop. (1890) 12,678; (1900) 13,643, of whom 5721 were negroes; (1910, census) 19,218. Area 4 sq. m. It is served by the Southern, the Seaboard Air Line, the Raleigh & Southport, and the Norfolk Southern railways. The city lies about 360 ft. above sea-level on ground sloping gently in all directions from its centre, where there is a beautiful park of 4 acres known as Union Square, in which is the State Capitol and from which extend four broad streets. On the western border of the city is Pullen Park (about 40 acres), including the campus of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts; it was named in honour of the donor, R. Stanhope Pullen, who was also a benefactor of the college. The State Capitol (1840) is surmounted by a dome and modelled to some extent after the Parthenon and other buildings of ancient Greece; the first Capitol (begun in 1794) was burned in 1831. In the vicinity are the Governor’s Mansion, the Supreme Court Building, the State Library, the building of the State Department of Agriculture, housing the State Museum (of geology, mineralogy, agriculture and horticulture, botany, zoology, ethnology, &c.), and the Post Office. Elsewhere are the County Court House, the State Hospital for the Insane (1856), founded through the efforts of Dorothea Lynde Dix, situated on Dix Hill and having in connexion with it a colony for epileptics; a state school for white blind, deaf and dumb (1845), and a state institute for negro deaf mutes and blind (1867); the state penitentiary (with a department for the criminal insane); a National Cemetery and a Confederate Cemetery; a Methodist Orphanage (1900) and a Roman Catholic Orphanage, the St Luke’s Home for old ladies (1895; under the King’s Daughters), a State (Confederate) Soldiers’ Home (1891), and three private hospitals and the Rex public hospital (1909). Raleigh is the seat of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (1889), in connexion with which is an agricultural experiment station; of three schools for girls—Peace Institute (Presbyterian, 1857), St Mary’s School (Protestant Episcopal, 1842) and Meredith College (Baptist, 1891); of the medical department of the University of North Carolina; and of two schools for negroes—Shaw University (Baptist, 1865), with 530 students in 1908–1909, and St Augustine’s School (Protestant Episcopal, 1868), a training school, with 466 students in 1908–1909. In 1908 the State Library (founded 1841) contained 39,000 volumes, the Supreme Court Library (founded 1870) about 17,000 volumes and the Olivia Raney public library (founded 1901) 9250 volumes. The city is the see of a Protestant Episcopal bishop. The principal industrial interests are trade in leaf tobacco and cotton raised in the vicinity, and the manufacture of cotton goods, phosphate fertilizers, foundry and machine-shop products, wooden-ware, &c. The Seaboard Air Line and the Raleigh & Southport railways have repair shops here. In 1905 the factory product was valued at $1,086,671, 14.7% more than in 1900. Electric power is conveyed to the city from Buckhorn Falls, on the Cape Fear river, about 26 m. south of Raleigh, and from Milburnie on the Neuse river, 6 m. distant.

In 1788 the site of the city, then known as Wake Court House, was chosen for the capital of the state; and in 1792 the city was laid out and named in honour of Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1794 the state legislature met here for the first time. Raleigh was incorporated in 1795 and was reincorporated in 1803; its present charter dates from 1899. General William T. Sherman’s army, on its march through the Carolinas, passed through the city on the 13th of April 1865. Raleigh was the birthplace of President Andrew Johnson; the house in which he was born has been removed to Pullen Park. By an extension of its boundaries the city nearly doubled its area and increased its population in 1907.