16 cool building details to check out in downtown Wilmington
Next time you're in downtown Wilmington's historic 1937 post office, take a second to look up at the ceiling by the Chestnut Street entrance, by the stairway. There, you'll see plaster bas-relief artworks by Thomas Lo Medico that are recognized as historically and artistically significant.
In the late 1990s, I took a Wilmington architecture class with historian Ed Turberg, who died in 2019. Turberg said one thing that distinguishes older brick buildings downtown from newer ones is that the older ones, like St. John's Lodge (now the Wilmington Children's Museum) from 1805, have brick patterns that go "short-long-short-long." Newer brick buildings tend to have most of the bricks go long ways.
Duck down Wrights Alley in downtown Wilmington to see what happened when Oscar-nominated actor Dennis Hopper took paint brush to brick wall and created what just might be a self-portrait of his famous mug.
A cool detail on the Stemmerman's building at Front and Orange streets, which dates to before 1866 and is the current location of The Little Dipper restaurant, are these cast iron vent covers at the roofline.
Located at 32 N. Front St., there's some fine stone work with good information at the top this building, which was was built for William French in 1870 and sold to Isaac Shrier in 1914. Mostly used for retail over the decades, including as Lenny’s Men’s Clothes from 1977-2006, it was renovated in 2008 by Monteith Construction and is now the office of Tilia Fiduciary Partners.
Located at 402 S. Third St., this unique 1887 house has all kinds of fun details in the house's gables. It was designed by Wilmington architect James F. Post and built by Black Wilmington craftsman John Harriss Howe.
You can't miss the golden, onion-shaped domes atop the 1876 Temple of Israel at Fourth and Market streets. Built in the Moorish style, there's not another structure like it in the city.
All kinds of fine details in this building at 213 Princess St., originally built in 1906 as an office for architect Henry E. Bonitz. The curved window is especially cool.
Located just on the other side of the Prost German restaurant's outdoor beer garden in Church Alley, this whimsical face carved in mortar has greeted passers-by since at least the mid-1990s, when the building was inhabited by gay nightclub Mickey Ratz.
A collection of five connected buildings at 121-129 Princess St. that all date to around 1900, the inscription at top announces the site as the former home of the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Co. These days, it's home to the Michelin-recommended manna restaurant and the Wilmington Yacht Club music hall and event space.
Take a peek at the distinctive, castle-like roofline of the handsome Mugge Building at Second and Princess streets, which houses the Bespoke bar and coffee shop, and you'll see the number 1891. If your guess is that's when the building was built, you'd be right. The structure has a long history in the service industry, and was originally home to the Astoria Café and a saloon.
This rather unassuming building at 222 S. Fourth St. is much older than it looks. In fact, the Sutton-Hedrick House is over 200 years old, and dates to about 1820. One cool detail about the house, which also has wild-looking chimneys, can be found above the front door: a rectangular transom with a distinct oval pattern.
At the top of this 1906 building at 112 Market St., designed by architect Henry Bonitz, note the "Ahrens Bros" inscription in stone. A former drug store and appliance store, it currently houses the Rocket Fizz chain candy shop and apartments.
While many have no doubt clocked the pair of stern, long-legged eagles that adorn the facade of this 1952 building at 301 Walnut St., a building Wrenn calls "a stylistic maverick in Wilmington," most don't know that it was the original home of the Wachovia Bank and Trust Co. downtown.
The crest on the Masonic Temple at 21 N. Front St. downtown Wilmington pays enduring tribute to its origins as a Masonic lodge.
This mural for Wild Turkey whiskey on the historic Cape Fear Hotel, which can be found on South Second Street between Chestnut and Grace streets, isn't actually a faded ad from bygone days. Rather, it was painted for a scene in "George and Tammy," the limited series about country singers George Jones and Tammy Wynette that shot in Wilmington in 2021 and 2022.
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