This unique building is Fayetteville’s, North Carolina, Market House. It was originally built in 1700,s back then known as the State House before it was destroyed in a massive city fire.
There is an old Market House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was registered as one of 40 national monuments in Cumberland County. In 1789, the United States Constitution was ratified by the sitting General Assembly when they met in the offices upstairs the old State House. Other than the ratification of the constitution, additional historical laws were constituted here, for example, UNC-Chapel Hill was the first chartered public university in the U.S. that started to instruct. Apart from that, the Assembly seated the Western Lands to form the State of Tennessee.
The building had its significance as a place the General assembly and the town’s Commissioners would meet, and the first floor vendors conducted commerce. The Market House, also called State House, was a hub that was strategically located in the center of the city’s four main streets; Hay Street, Gillespie Street, Person Street, and Green Street.
The city roundabout replicated the engineering of a European style transportation system. Slow horse-drawn wagons were the transportation and logistics carriers that entered the one-way, dirt, circular road with the option to exit the four secondary roads.
Bruce J. Baws, historian and Fayetteville’s museum director for transportation and local museum said, "Hay street extended out to the trade roads and people would come from far and wide into Fayetteville to do business. Products coming out of the market square would go to the Cape Fear River, and products would be taken to the river to be transported downriver to Willington the principal port city."
Meat and goods were traded on the first floor under the breezeway arches of the State Market House, however, a dedication plaque inside the building recognized Slaves that were sold there.
Similar to its past when the Civil Improvement Society, now known as Fayetteville Woman's Club, protected it from being destroyed; 114 years later the market house was under another threat of being burnt to the ground.
Just after Memorial Day in Fayetteville, a group of protesters joined a national debate by symbolically assembling around the Market House and accused the Police Department of racial abuse and injustice against minorities while threatening to burn the building.
As a gesture of good faith extended by the Fayetteville’s City Council to the Human Rights organizers, the City Council granted permission to paint a Muriel around the traffic circle of the Market House.
The Market House in Fayetteville stood the test of time and transitioned into a modern city which unexpectedly plunged into failing businesses and vulnerable communities. Cumberland County residents can barely cope with the reality of a current health pandemic keeping them under curfew and at times on lockdown to control the spread of COVID.
Last year two blocks away from the Market House, the Woodpeckers Baseball Stadium opened, as well as, a New Amtrak Train Station. Now empty sidewalks yearned for bustling pedestrians, conversations, and laughter. Yet again, loneliness seems to accompany the old Market House as it remains strong and resolute weathering the storm..
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