Factories and blacksmiths: The origins of Cary's lost main street

Chatham Street is considered the modern day 'main street,' boasting a bottle shop, a coffee shop, a few restaurants and a movie theater.

Meanwhile, today Cedar Street is just a short snippet of a road – starting at Academy and ending at Ward, you can drive from one end to the other in less than a minute. But long ago, before Cary was founded, the street was the thoroughfare from Raleigh to Hillsboro (as Hillsborough was colloquially called in the 1800s).

If you look closely, you can see clues from a century ago, back when this unpretentious little side road was the center of industry in the growing town of Cary.

Some of Cary's citizens still remember when Cedar Street was still called Railroad Street – a harkening back to its important past.

Even today, Cedar Street holds a secret perspective on Cary's past – a 'hidden' vista point that provides a glimpse back in time.

Standing on the corner of Cedar, peering across the railroad tracks as a train screeches past, a view as old as the town itself: The Page Hotel, still seated alongside the tracks.

That's the first clue of Cedar Street's historic importance: Its proximity to the railroad. Today, that may not mean much; but in the 1850s, the railroad was the town's lifeline. The road built alongside it would have been the best location for mills and industry, allowing easy access to loading and offloading from trains.

When the father of Cary Frank Page arrived in 1854, he bought land adjacent to the railroad tracks. While his family homestead and old sawmill is gone, buried beneath modern day Town Hall, the beautiful brick hotel still stands today as the Page-Walker Arts & History Center.

Page opened a dry goods store and a post office, serving as Cary's first postmaster. He donated land for an all-important railroad station.

The street became known as Railroad Street.

According to her research, a three-story factory was built in the late 1860s or early 1870s – and stood on the street until 1908.

Old maps show the factory would have stood on the site of the brick fire station that occupies the corner today.

"The factory housed offices and shops – a coffin maker, post office, store rooms and even the mayor's office – where the postmistress Lucy Reavis also sold hats," said Michaels. "I have called it the mini-mall of its time."

An Episcopal Chapel was also inside the halls of the factory.

Railroad Street also had Waldo Drug Store, which Michaels describes as "the Walmart of its day." They sold medicines, perfumes, paint and other items.

There was also a general store and a blacksmith shop, as well as a few other stores and shops.

According to Michaels, the business district ended at Walker Street, and the rest of Cedar was residential and farming.

The Daily News printed a story in 1875 about a cotton factory built by Frank Page – including an illustration.

The Cotton Factory was three-stories tall, originally designed as a hotel. It collaborated with neighboring mills, such as the large works of the Jones family and the Sorrell cotton gin.

Names from Railroad Street's businesses – like Jones, Page, Waldo and Sorrell – are still prominently seen around Cary today.

In the subheading, the paper described the growing town of Cary:

"A new creation. A model village. The home of thrift, energy and morality."

The Town of Cary had only been incorporated for four years at the time.

The paper wrote:

"It is a moral place. Named after one of the great apostles of temperance, Gen. Sam'l H. Cary. All of its inhabitants are tee-totalers by principal."

"It is a healthy place. The soil is a light, sandy floam, the surface of the ground gently undulating...the elevation of the site 200 feet than Raleigh, being the highest point between that city and Haw River, the air pure and invigorating and the water exceptional."

Unfortunately, a great fire destroyed the three-story mill in 1908.

While it's unclear when exactly Chatham Street became the central hub for Cary, it seems likely after the fire – and with the growing popularity of automobiles taking away from the importance of trains – shops and stores likely began slowly migrating down the road to the next intersection: Chatham Street.

Historians are not certain which year Railroad Street was renamed to Cedar Street, but Michaels says her father remembers that in the 1930s, it was still called Railroad.

So the next time you park alongside the quiet side street before hurrying on your way to the shops on Chatham – stop for a moment. Imagine a grand brick factory where the fire station stands today, and a stretch of shops and mills heading down the railroad.

Then, look across the tracks at the grand Page Hotel. That's a view as old as Cary itself.