Boylan Apartments, Raleigh North Carolina

History of Boylan Apartments

Built in 1935, one-half mile due west of the state Capitol, the Boylan Apartments are Raleigh's earliest garden-style apartment complex. The complex is comprised of three three-story brick Colonial Revival-style buildings arranged around an open courtyard.

The project, led by local businessman Rufus Boylan, was one of the first in the nation to participate in a Public Works Administration program that loaned federal money to private developers. The program aimed to provide jobs for the unemployed at the close of the Depression while creating quality "modern" housing for lower-income residents. The project's controversial three-year road to completion was reported in both local and national newspapers.

North Carolina endured the national economic Depression and Recovery era under Democratic Governors O. Max Gardner (1929 through 1933) and John C. B. Ehringhaus (1933 through 1937). In the years after the panic of 1929, Governor Gardner strongly believed that churches, private agencies, and local governments could provide sufficient relief. The governor's "Live at Home" philosophy encouraged citizens to remain at home through a series of initiatives providing work, food, and other charity. The primary goal of the program was to prevent migration of country folk to the cities and larger towns. The concept was not entirely successful, and by 1933 Governor Ehringhaus was looking for more intensive relief from President Roosevelt's "New Deal." The New Deal established numerous, often overlapping, relief agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Works Progress Administration, and the Rural Electrification Administration. These agencies channeled federal money to the states for public construction projects such as roads, infrastructure, housing, courthouses, post offices, and schools. The programs aimed to provide living wages for the unemployed while improving public facilities.

In September of 1933, the Raleigh Times reported that Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes had awarded twelve million dollars of PWA funds for three low-cost housing projects in New York City, Indianapolis, and Raleigh. This particular award was for the construction of low-income apartments through public-private partnerships known as "limited dividend" corporations. The PWA made loans for the construction of "modern, well-built apartments." The recipient corporations would contribute fifteen percent of the total project costs in cash and/or land. Management of the corporations and the project, from design and construction to completion, came under strict federal oversight. The corporations were limited to a six percent profit on their investment. The buildings were amortized over a period of thirty-three to forty years, when ownership was taken over by the local housing authorities. The Raleigh Times article declared the project would commence construction by October 1^st, 1933. Due to a series of controversies and delays at the local and national levels, it would be three years before work was begun.

In 1933, brothers William and Rufus Boylan founded the Boylan Housing Corporation. Officers of the Corporation were Lawrence E. Blanchard, vice-president, William P. Hodges, secretary, and Mrs. William Boylan and J. M. Broughton, directors. The "limited-dividend" corporation was formed specifically to receive a PWA loan for the construction of a fifty-four-unit, low-income apartment complex on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. The apartments would be reserved for the city's "white-collar" workers, a hard-hit group as state employee salaries were cut by almost fifty percent between 1930 and 1937. Rufus Boylan estimated that construction would employ 150 men for a period of eight months, and that rents would not exceed ten dollars per room per month. The proposed apartments were to be built on the site of the Boylan family home place, the house in which William Boylan resided on Hillsborough Street.

The project had been underway for a full year before the establishment of the corporation. First in 1932, Rufus Boylan had to convince the Raleigh City Council to pass an ordinance providing for city oversight of construction and rents as the PWA would not consider loan applications without municipal oversight. The city commissioners were advised by their attorney that such an ordinance was beyond their powers without action by the state legislature. Undeterred, Boylan approached Governor Ehringhaus and in 1933, the General Assembly passed a law allowing low-income housing in cases of public necessity.

The controversies began immediately. Property owners and landlords in Raleigh strongly objected to the idea of government-sponsored housing. There was no real housing shortage in Raleigh, they claimed, and construction of federally subsidized housing would create an unfair rental market. A petition opposing the City's cooperation with the PWA and the Boylan Housing Corporation was presented to the city commissioners. The commissioners refused to take action on the petition.

However, the protestors pressed the issue and Governor Ehringhaus appointed a board to review all proposed federally-funded housing projects in North Carolina. The North Carolina Housing Board approved the Boylan Apartment project on October 11^th, 1933.

In addition to local dissent, the Boylans' corporation had to contend with delays at the federal level. During the course of the project Rufus Boylan was reported to have traveled to Washington, D.C. fifty-five times. Due to various hold-ups, the contract between the Boylan Housing Corporation and the PWA was signed on four separate occasions ("Boylan Project"). The most serious delay came in June of 1934 when Secretary Ickes ordered an agency-wide investigation of eleven limited-dividend projects worth twenty million dollars. Ickes suspected that the corporations may have received loans based on inflated land values. Attorneys' and architects' fees associated with the projects also came under investigation. The Washington Post and the New York Times reported that the Boulevard Gardens project in Queens, New York, had been assigned a value eight times greater than its worth five years earlier. The Boylan Apartments, too, came under scrutiny. The value placed on the Boylans' Hillsborough Street property for purposes of the loan is unknown.

The circumstances surrounding the resolution of Ickes' inquest are not certain. What is known is that nine months after the investigation commenced a contract between the PWA and the Boylan Housing Corporation was executed on February 2^nd, 1935. Tragically, William Boylan was found dead in the family home on February 5^th, 1935. Newspaper accounts state that Boylan tripped over a gas pipe in the bathroom while shaving and succumbed to poisoning by the fumes. On March 20^th, Rufus Boylan sent a telegram to his wife from Richmond, Virginia. The telegram states, "Deal Consummated. Bringing Check Home. Phone Broughton Isley." On March 21^st the Raleigh Times reported the first PWA payment of ninety thousand dollars had been deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond and that work was about to begin demolishing the Boylan residence. T. A. Loving, a construction firm from Goldsboro, would then begin work on the site. The total amount of the PWA loan was to be $198,600 or eighty percent of the total project costs of $233,000.

Rufus Boylan's gamble on affordable "white collar" housing paid off. The Boylan Apartments were filled immediately upon completion. The 1935 Raleigh City Directory lists the names and occupations of the first renters who took occupancy of the fifty-four units. Rents were set at thirty-five or forty-five dollars per month, depending on the size of the unit. The city directory lists clerks, salesmen, stenographers, secretaries, office managers and other white collar employees of downtown area businesses. Rufus Boylan and his wife Juanita occupied unit B201. The project architect, H. Colvin Linthicum resided in unit C102. Whether Boylan and Linthicum met the rental criteria or lived there via some other arrangement is unknown. The commercial space on Snow Avenue in the basement of Building E/F was occupied by the Handy Shoppe Confectioner.

The Boylan Corporation retained ownership of the buildings until 1976, when the complex was purchased by the Joyner family.

The Boylan Apartments were designed by the architecture firm of Linthicum and Linthicum in the Colonial Revival style. This family-owned company was founded in Danville, Virginia, in 1850 as the construction firm of William H. and Thomas Linthicum. Hill C. Linthicum studied architecture in Baltimore, and he joined his father, William H. Linthicum, in the construction firm in 1878. About 1891, he established an independent architectural practice and went on to design many buildings in Winston-Salem in the 1890s. Hill Linthicum opened a Durham office around the turn of the twentieth century. In 1912, H. Colvin Linthicum completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and joined his father's practice. The younger Linthicum became a partner before Hill C. Linthicum's death in 1919. Under H. Colvin Linthicum's leadership the firm specialized in the design of schools and National Guard armories in the 1920s and 1930s. The firm was the official architect for school boards in Guilford, Orange, Alamance, Polk, Sampson, Stokes, and Cumberland counties and is known to have designed at least twenty-two armories throughout the state. The firm was also responsible for the design of Raleigh's Rex Hospital, built sometime in the 930s. Given the firm's experience designing substantial institutional buildings, they were a suitable choice for the Boylan Apartments. By 1946, H. Colvin Linthicum, the firm's sole principal, was working out of an office in downtown Raleigh.

Colonial Revival dwellings were a popular choice for Raleigh's upper classes in the 1920s and 930s. Many fine examples are found in the Hayes Barton District located approximately two miles north of the Boylan Apartments. The apartment complex was funded by a loan from the PWA, and therefore, government requirements influenced the appearance and layout of the buildings. One of the objectives of government-sponsored Depression recovery programs was to replace "slums" with "modern" housing utilizing up-to-date trends in urban planning and building design.

The Garden City concept originated in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Garden cities were planned, self-contained communities incorporating parks and green space. Residential areas known as "superblocks" were separated from industrial and commercial zones. Rows of apartment houses were spaced to admit sunlight and create public areas for parks and gardens. Buildings made use of natural light and ventilation, a rejection of the deplorable tenement housing conditions found in urban areas. Transported to America, the concept was first implemented at Clarence Stein and Henry Wright's Sunnyside Gardens (1924 to 1929) and Radburn, New Jersey (1928) communities. The ideology behind these projects was adopted by the U.S. government as the ideal housing type for Recovery Era housing programs.

While much smaller in scale than many of the apartments built under the auspices of the PWA, the Boylan Apartments were required to demonstrate principles of the Garden City Movement. The buildings were arranged around a center courtyard of shared public space. The PWA mandated that the large oak trees on the parcel not be taken down during construction and that two-thirds of the site remain open space. The interior layout insures that each room has windows for light and ventilation. The apartments also boasted electricity, plumbing, and modern appliances such as Magic Chef gas ranges and Electrolux refrigerators.

The Boylan Apartments compare favorably with other apartments, both privately and federally funded, constructed in Raleigh between 1934 and 1941. Cameron Court Apartments, (1938, 804 West Morgan Street), are immediately adjacent to the west of the Boylan Apartments. Many people assume the two apartments are one large complex, and there are physical similarities. Both complexes are comprised of three-story, red brick buildings and feature open courtyards. However, the buildings comprising Cameron Court are arranged in a zigzag pattern. The buildings are further differentiated from the Boylan Apartments by their flat, parapeted rooflines.

West of Cameron Court at 1101 Hillsborough Street is Grosvenor Gardens (1939), another courtyard-style apartment project comprised of three three-story buildings with a total of fifty-five one-room efficiency units. Grosvenor Gardens was built by private developer Sidney J. Wollman in 1939. The complex is a more fully-realized Georgian Revival endeavor than Cameron Court, with a gabled roofline, shutters, a semicircular two-story entry portico, and an elaborate garden designed by landscape architect G. Robert Derrick.

The Raleigh Apartments (1020 West Peace Street), built in 1938, are six four-story brick buildings containing 150 units. The buildings are arranged around a center courtyard and connected by walkways. Designed by Kinston, North Carolina-based, modernist-influenced architect A. Mitchell Wooten, the Raleigh Apartments have an austere appearance with flat rooflines and an absence of exterior detailing.

Raleigh Architect William Henley Deitrick designed two low-income apartments, both demolished, for the Raleigh Housing Authority in the late 1930s: Chavis Heights (1940-41) for blacks, and Halifax Court (1940-41), for whites. These complexes represented Raleigh's most fully actualized examples of the "superblock" concept. Comprised of rows of two-story brick buildings, these flat-roofed apartments were devoid of applied detail with the exception of simple flat entry canopies. Both complexes utilized the idea of community space and featured playgrounds and garden plots.

Raleigh is fortunate to have several surviving Recovery Era apartment complexes. The Boylan Apartments stand apart from the other complexes for several reasons. Built in 1935, the Boylan Apartments were the first large apartment complex constructed in the city and also the city's first publicly-funded apartment. The project was one of the earliest limited-dividend, public-private projects approved by the PWA.

Historic Boylan Apartments Property Description

The Boylan Apartments are located at 817 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, North Carolina's capital city. The 1.14-acre parcel is bounded by Hillsborough Street on the north, West Morgan Street to the south, and Snow Avenue to the west. The east parcel boundary is shared with a bank.

The three-building complex is situated between the state Capitol at the terminus of Hillsborough Street one-half mile east, and the campus of North Carolina State University one-half mile to the west. In the vicinity are single-family residential dwellings and low-rise commercial buildings. On the north side of Hillsborough Street, directly across from the Boylan Apartments, is the sylvan campus of the private Saint Mary's School. On the west side of Snow Avenue is Cameron Court, a brick apartment complex dating from the 1940s. A large, circa 1970s bank owned by the State Employees Credit Union flanks the apartment's east boundary.

The parcel slopes downward from north to south. A stone retaining wall runs along the property's south side on West Morgan Street. No significant landscape features are present within the courtyard. Mature oaks and crepe myrtles are planted along the Hillsborough Street facade of Building A/B.

The apartment complex consists of three three-story brick buildings arranged in a "U" shape plan with the open part of the U on the west side. This arrangement creates a large, semi-enclosed grassy courtyard. A set of concrete steps rises from the sidewalk along Snow Avenue to the center of the courtyard. Curvilinear concrete walkways connect the steps to each of the buildings. Each building is entered via two ground-level entries. Each entry is designated by a letter. Building A/B fronts Hillsborough Street, with the rear elevation facing the interior courtyard. Building C/D faces west; its facade is oriented toward the courtyard. Building E/F is also oriented inward toward the courtyard and faces north. It is situated just a few feet from the south lot line.

The Boylan Apartments are sturdy utilitarian structures with applied Colonial Revival details rendered in wood, stucco, and concrete. These details stand out, in color, texture, and style, from the plainness of the brick massing. Building A/B will be described in detail here; buildings C/D and E/F are identical except where noted.

Building A/B is a three-story, five-bay structure of common bond brick with brick quoins at the corners. A brick water table delineates the foundation, and a concrete belt course separates the first and second stories. The side-gable roofline of the center three bays runs the building's length, parallel with Hillsborough Street. Two brick chimneys with corbelled caps project from the ridgeline.

Anchoring each end (east and west) is a front-facing pedimented bay that projects slightly from the main block. Each pedimented bay is four windows across. Entablatures are clad with smooth, bright white stucco, which contrasts with the red brick below. Round vents are centered in each pediment. Dentil molding is applied within the pediment, and also above the plain flat cornice, which runs the length of the building.

Adjacent to the pedimented end bays are the entry bays, which are three windows across. The building's central bay is four windows across. The three bays of the main block are delineated by square copper downspouts. The "four-three-four-three-four" fenestration pattern gives the building its classical symmetry and corresponds to the apartments' interior arrangement. Original metal windows remain. A fixed four-light transom surmounts two eight-light casements that open outward. Many of the casements retain the original crank mechanism and are still functional. The black painted metal sashes are set in openings with jack arches and concrete keystones above and concrete sills below.

The facade features two pedimented Federal-style entrances. Each broken bed pediment is supported by fluted pilasters. A carved elliptical sunburst with a keystone is set into the pediment above the door. Dentil molding embellishes the pediment and pilaster capitals. The original six-paneled wood doors with brass are present. Doors are flanked by sidelights with leaded glass tracery.

The massing of the rear elevation is identical to that of the facade; two front-facing bays connected by a long side-gable main block. Decorative details and fenestration patterns continue from the front to the side and rear of the building. However, there are no entrances on the rear elevation, and narrow casement windows mark the interior location of the bathroom in the two-bedroom units. A metal fire escape, accessed by solid metal doors on each floor, is centered on the rear elevation. Fire escapes are on each side elevation as well.

Due to the slope of the lot, Building E/F is constructed upon a full basement. Therefore, on the west elevation, a basement storefront was included. Five banded, wood and glass full-view doors span the storefront. Above the doors is a green metal awning. This awning is not original, but documentary photographs do show an awning here. On either side of the doors are large plate-glass display windows.

Each building comprises of eighteen one and two-bedroom units. There are six units on each floor, four one-bedroom units and two two-bedroom units. A metal stair with balustrade of square metal balusters leads landings on the second and third floors. Each double-loaded corridor services three apartments accessed via non-original wood louvered entry doors. The walls of the landings and stairwells are painted brick. Asbestos tiles cover the floors.

There are two floor plans: the one-bedroom plan and the two-bedroom plan. In addition to bedrooms, each apartment has a hall, living room, kitchen, eating area, and bathroom. Floors are oak, and smooth plaster covers the walls and ceiling. Interiors retain original paneled doors, hardware, and Colonial Revival door surrounds. The six-panel doors have two square panels above four longer rectangular panels. Due to the thick exterior walls, the metal windows are set into deep, trimless recesses with deep sills and an apron below. Although the floor plans are unaltered, the kitchens and bathrooms are thought to have been updated in the early 1970s. The narrow galley kitchen has plain wood cabinets with flat-front doors and drawers without handles or pulls. The countertops are Formica. Sheet vinyl covers the floors. The bathrooms retain original enameled tubs, but the original sinks have been replaced with a sink on a wooden box vanity.

Each building has a basement with a concrete floor and exposed brick walls. Ceilings are comprised of the first-floor joists. The basements are generally used for storage and utility systems. The south end of building C/D has been made into what originally was the superintendent's apartment. Behind the apartment, near the center of the building, is a communal laundry room. The west end of Building E/F houses the complex's commercial unit. The interior is an open space supported by thick square posts. The walls are covered with Sheetrock. Exposed plumbing pipes and wiring run between the first-floor joists that form the ceiling. The original appearance of this semi-finished space is not known.