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Wake Forest History & Architecture
A Brief History of Wake Forest The Forest of Wake
In 1805, this part of Wake County was designated as the “Forest District”, largely for the widespread forest in the area north of the Neuse River. The area was also sometimes referred to as the “Forest of Wake”. In 1820, Dr. Calvin Jones, originally from Massachusetts bought 615 acres in “Wake Forest Township” from Davis Battle. It is likely that the two-story frame house was already constructed in the center of what later became Wake Forest College and is now the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. When Jones was appointed postmaster for the area in 1823, he combined the two name ref- erences and started heading his letters as coming from “Wake Forest”. In 1832, the North Carolina Baptist Convention was looking for a location to establish an educational institute to train new ministers. Coincidently, Dr. Jones had placed an advertisement in the Raleigh papers offering his farm for sale. The advertisement described the community as “One of the best neighborhoods in the state, the Forest District containing three schools (one classical) and two well constructed and well filled meeting houses for Baptists and Methodists, and has a lawyer and a doctor. The inhabitants, without I believe a single exception, are sober, moral and thriv- ing in their circumstances, and not a few are educated and intelligent.” John Purefoy, a Baptist minister, learned of the Jones property and convinced the North Carolina Baptist Convention to purchase the farm to establish the school it had been planning named the “Wake Forest Institute”. It opened to boys in February, 1834. Early Years By the end of the first year, seventy-two students were enrolled in the institute so architect John Berry of Hillsborough was hired to enlarge the facility. Berry designed three brick buildings – one classroom structure, soon called Wait Hall in honor of the first president, Reverend Samuel Wait, to replace the Calvin Jones House (which was relocated) and two professors’ houses. All three buildings were constructed between 1835 and 1838. The professors’ houses, known as the North Brick House and the South Brick House because of their locations, were first occu- pied by Professors C. W. Skinner and Amos J. Battle. Wait Hall was destroyed by fire in 1933, the victim of an arsonist, and the North Brick House was demolished in 1936 to make way for Simmons Hall, leaving the South Brick House, on the corner of South Avenue and South Main Street, as the only survivor of the early Berry-designed campus buildings. In 1838 the manual institute form was abandoned and the school rechartered as “Wake Forest College”. The Calvin Jones House, 414 N. Main Street
The Calvin Jones House, constructed in 1820, is the earliest house in the Local Wake Forest Historic District.
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