Not too long ago I posted a photo with a view of the court house facing Fayetteville St. Here is a more magnified view of the facade.

If you are not a new reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I have a fondness for railroad related items. Raleigh has a rich history with railroading, and it shows in some of the artifacts around town.
I can’t say that I know the purpose of this dilapidated structure. My guess is that it was a direct route in to the warehouse to the last building on West Martin St..

A few notes from their web site:

• The congregation which formed St. Paul’s Church was originally the slave membership of Edenton Street United Methodist Church.
• In 1853, White Methodists bought the Old Christ Episcopal Church, where the Blacks had been worshipping since 1846. The congregation worshipped under other names, but it was in 1848 that “St. Paul Church” was formally established
• In 1854, the Black membership moved the old church to the corner of Harrington and Edenton Streets
• The Black congregation remained under the guidance of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the South, until Emancipation
• In 1865, the membership severed its ties with Edenton Street Methodist Church and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church Conference, a Black denomination founded in 1787 by Richard Allen and organized in 1816
• The birth of the current structure was the result of a long building campaign which began in 1884. The church formally opened in 1901
• The record bears that St. Paul was built by the “first independent Black congregation” formed in Raleigh. It is the oldest Black church in Wake County, North Carolina