Live in Five Points
Four National Register districts meet at one Glenwood Avenue intersection and none of them has a local historic overlay, so a 1920s house here can come down without design review, and 894 of the area's 3,107 houses were built in 2000 or later.
Five Points is a cluster of streetcar and early automobile suburbs that grew around the junction of Glenwood Avenue, Fairview Road and Whitaker Mill Road: Bloomsbury, platted in 1914 beside the Glenwood Avenue line, Hayes Barton, laid out to Earle Sumner Draper's design in 1920, and Vanguard Park and Roanoke Park to the southeast. Hayes Barton, Bloomsbury, Vanguard Park and Roanoke Park are all National Register districts, and the City's own page says Register listing requires no design review, demolition included. Only one zoning overlay touches the area, the Five Points East conservation district, which sets lot size, setbacks and height rather than reviewing design. The result is a market in land: the median single-family parcel is assessed at $874,351, the median land value alone at $530,000, and nearly three houses in ten were built after 1999.
Four historic districts, and none of them can stop a teardown
This guide uses the Five Points Citizens Advisory Council area, which the City of Raleigh's GIS still publishes: Peace Street to the south, St. Mary's Street and Oberlin Road to the west, Anderson Drive for most of the north, and on the east an edge that crosses Wade Avenue, Atlantic Avenue and Wake Forest Road. It is a civic district, drawn for the advisory council system the City Council disbanded in 2020 and voted to support again in 2024, not a neighborhood. It holds Hayes Barton (all but a strip on its western edge), Bloomsbury, Vanguard Park, Roanoke Park, Hi-Mount and Glenwood-Brooklyn.
Five Points is an intersection before it is a place: Glenwood Avenue meeting Fairview Road and Whitaker Mill Road, with a stub of Glenn Avenue, northwest of downtown. What grew around it came in on the streetcar. James H. Pou, Jr. bought land astride Glenwood Avenue in 1905. Carolina Power and Light ran its line out the avenue around 1912 and opened the hundred-acre Bloomsbury Amusement Park at the end of it, where the Carolina Country Club is now. Pou platted Bloomsbury in 1914. In 1920, with the city limits pushed out to meet it, Earle Sumner Draper's design for Hayes Barton was surveyed on 175 acres, its streets curving with the ground and the suburb named for Sir Walter Raleigh's birthplace in Devon. Roanoke Park and Vanguard Park filled the wedge to the southeast.
Both big suburbs were sold on exclusion. Bloomsbury's 1914 covenants fixed the race of its occupants and a $2,000 minimum house cost, and the company selling Hayes Barton lots wrote covenants that ensured all-white ownership. The National Register nominations say so plainly.
The boundary here is a civic one. The Five Points Citizens Advisory Council area, one of eighteen the City's map still holds from a system begun in 1974, had 9,913 residents in 2020 across Hayes Barton (all but a strip on its west side), Bloomsbury, Vanguard Park, Roanoke Park, Hi-Mount and Glenwood-Brooklyn. The Council ended its support for the councils in 2020 and voted in February 2024 to restore it. ABC11 counted nineteen councils in 2020; the City's map has eighteen.
Listed is not protected. Hayes Barton, Bloomsbury and Glenwood-Brooklyn joined the National Register in 2002, Vanguard Park and Roanoke Park in 2003, Hi-Mount in 2011. The City's own page calls listing mostly honorary and says design review, demolition included, is not required. None of the six is a local historic overlay of the kind Oakwood has. The one zoning overlay is Five Points East, a conservation district in force since 2004 over Roanoke Park and the eastern edges of its neighbors. It caps a lot at 13,067 square feet and a house at two stories and 35 feet, holds the front setback within 10% of the block's average, and makes a house torn down inside it be replaced to those rules. It does not review design. Everywhere else the base zoning decides.
The parcel file shows the result. Of 3,107 single-family houses in the area, 894 were built in 2000 or later and 206 since 2020, though the pace differs: 88 of Hi-Mount's 196 date from 2010 or later, against 13 of Bloomsbury's 388. The median parcel is assessed at $874,351 on the 2024 revaluation, land is 55% of the total, and at 90.91 cents per $100 the median bill is about $7,949 a year. Hayes Barton is another market: 381 houses at a median of $1,472,361, on 0.3-acre lots, about $13,385 in tax. Wake revalues on 1 January 2027 (citywide figures are on the Raleigh page). The county records sale prices but mixes market sales with other transfers, and no public source publishes a qualified median here, so this guide gives none.
- Check whether the lot is in the Five Points East overlay, whose 35-foot, two-story and lot-size limits bind the neighbors too
- Outside it, assume any neighboring house can come down and be replaced to the base zoning
- Price the land: it is 55% of the area's single-family assessed value, and Wake revalues on 1 January 2027
- If the house contributes to a Register district, ask the State Historic Preservation Office about rehabilitation credits before work starts
- Look up the exact address with the school system, because Hayes Barton alone is split among three elementaries
- Near Young Street on the eastern edge, check the flood map: the City holds FEMA hazard mitigation land there
How Five Points got here
- 1905James H. Pou, Jr. buys land on both sides of Glenwood Avenue, before either a streetcar or a park has reached the area. From 1906 he develops Glenwood, one of Raleigh's earliest streetcar suburbs, south of Five Points.
- 1912Glenwood Avenue becomes a streetcar corridor, and Carolina Power and Light opens the hundred-acre Bloomsbury Amusement Park north of Five Points, lit by eight thousand bulbs, as the attraction at the end of the line. The site is now the Carolina Country Club.
- 1913The first of the subdivisions that become Roanoke Park is recorded; the last follows in 1926, and the Roanoke Park plat itself is dated 1923.
- 1914Pou has Riddick and Mann lay out Bloomsbury. Its deed covenants fix the race of occupants, a minimum house cost of $2,000, setbacks and a ban on commerce except for one triangular lot, where the Flat Iron Building went up about 1922.
- 1920The city limits are extended north and west over the Hayes Barton and Bloomsbury tracts. Hayes Barton, 175 acres on Earle Sumner Draper's design, is surveyed that summer, named for Sir Walter Raleigh's birthplace in Devon, and sold under covenants that ensured all-white ownership.
- 1974Raleigh sets up its Citizens Advisory Councils, the system whose Five Points area is the boundary this guide uses.
- 2002Hayes Barton, Bloomsbury and Glenwood-Brooklyn are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Vanguard Park and Roanoke Park follow in 2003 and Hi-Mount in 2011. None is made a local historic overlay.
- 2004The Five Points East neighborhood conservation overlay takes effect under zoning case Z-50-2004, covering Roanoke Park and the eastern edges of Vanguard Park, Bloomsbury and Hayes Barton.
- 2020The City Council votes in February to end its support for the advisory councils. Nine of the eighteen keep meeting informally.
- 2024The Council votes unanimously in February to recognize and restore support for the advisory councils and their umbrella group.
A playground on Cherokee Drive and the fields at Fred Fletcher
The City's parks inside the area are small and scattered. Roanoke Park on Cherokee Drive is 1.6 acres, with two playgrounds, a basketball court and a boardwalk. Fred Fletcher Park, 21.4 acres on Clay Street at the south end, has a softball field, a multipurpose field, tennis and basketball courts, a water garden and an amphitheater. Fallon Park and Kiwanis Park serve the north, and Jaycee Park, just west on Wade Avenue, adds three lighted ball fields and six lighted sand volleyball courts.
What the map does not show: Potomac Park, the stream-side median at the heart of Draper's plan for Hayes Barton, is not on the City's park list; it is part of the street design. And the open space at Young Street on the eastern edge is FEMA hazard mitigation land, not a park.
Elsewhere in Raleigh, not Five Points
26 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 26 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from the Five Points intersection, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model: honest ranges, not routed times. The area runs about three and a half kilometers north to south, so from its edges add a few minutes.
Every gym within reach
The City runs two centers within reach: the Five Points Center for Active Adults on Noble Road, for people 50 and over, and Jaycee Park on Wade Avenue, with a gymnasium and a weight room. The nearest YMCA is the Alexander Family YMCA on Hillsborough Street, where the downtown branch sends its swimmers.
- Jaycee Park, 2405 Wade Avenue: a weight room at $15 a month, locker rooms included
- Five Points Center for Active Adults, 2000 Noble Road: a fitness room for people 50 and over, weekdays
- Alexander Family YMCA, 1603 Hillsborough Street: the nearest YMCA pool
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Five Points Center for Active Adults open | The City's center at 2000 Noble Road for people 50 and over: a fitness room, a dance studio and classes, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. | 4–5 min |
| Jaycee Park open | The City's community center at 2405 Wade Avenue: an air-conditioned gymnasium and a weight room at $15 a month, locker rooms included. | 5–7 min |
| Alexander Family YMCA open | 1603 Hillsborough Street, the nearest YMCA branch, and one of the two where members of the downtown Poyner branch swim. | 6–9 min |
The free option is Fred Fletcher Park's fields and courts, and the curving streets of Hayes Barton, which follow the ground rather than a grid.
One middle school, one high school, six elementaries
The Wake County Public School System assigns one base school by address. For 2026-27 every block in the area goes to Oberlin Middle and Broughton High, both magnet schools on the traditional calendar. The elementary is decided street by street: Joyner takes the largest share, north and east of the intersection; Underwood, a short walk south on Glenwood Avenue, takes all of Roanoke Park; Root and Lacy split Hayes Barton with Underwood; and Wiley and Partnership serve the blocks south of Wade Avenue.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Joyner Elementary School | Wake County Public School System | Base school for 3,927 of the area's 9,913 residents on the 2020 blocks, including most of Bloomsbury and Vanguard Park. A magnet school on the traditional calendar. |
| Underwood Elementary School | Wake County Public School System | Base school for 2,495 residents, including all of Roanoke Park, and the only elementary within a ten-minute walk of the intersection. A magnet school on the traditional calendar. |
| Root Elementary School | Wake County Public School System | Base school for 1,285 residents, in parts of Hayes Barton and Bloomsbury. Not a magnet school. |
| Wiley, Lacy and Partnership Elementary Schools | Wake County Public School System | Wiley takes 1,091 residents and Partnership 531, in the blocks between Wade Avenue and Peace Street that include Glenwood-Brooklyn; Lacy takes 584 in the southwest of Hayes Barton. Wiley and Partnership are magnet schools, and Partnership runs a modified calendar. |
| Oberlin Middle School | Wake County Public School System | The base middle school for every block in the area, on Oberlin Road. A magnet school on the traditional calendar. |
| Broughton High School | Wake County Public School System | The base high school for every block in the area, on St. Mary's Street. A magnet school on the traditional calendar. |
Run the exact address through the school system's lookup before you commit. Four of the six elementaries are magnets, magnet seats are applied for in a separate choice window, and the system publishes next year's base maps alongside this year's.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Highs near 11 °C and 18 nights at or below freezing in an average January at RDU
- With the leaves down, Hayes Barton's curving streets show how closely Draper laid them to the contours
- Land is 55% of the area's single-family assessed value
- Highs near 13 °C and 3.6 cm of snow on the 1991 to 2020 normal
- A replacement house in the Five Points East overlay is held to two stories, 35 feet, and a front setback within 10% of the block's average
- Outside that overlay, a demolition needs no historic review at all
- Highs near 17 °C and 104 mm of rain on the normal
- Spring listings arrive, and 1,232 of the area's single-family parcels are in no Register district and outside the overlay
- Check the school assignment for the exact address: six base elementaries divide the area
- Highs near 23 °C, with the season's last frost nights, 1.1 on the normal
- Jaycee Park, just west on Wade Avenue, has three lighted ball fields and six lighted sand volleyball courts
- Roanoke Park's two playgrounds and boardwalk sit inside the neighborhood of the same name
- Highs near 27 °C and no frost on the normal
- The Raleigh Rose Garden, on Pogue Street west of the area, is the nearest public garden
- 206 of the area's single-family houses were built in 2020 or later
- Highs near 31 °C and 99 mm of rain on the normal
- Fred Fletcher Park on Clay Street has a softball field, a multipurpose field and a water garden
- The median lot in the area is 0.2 acres, and in Hayes Barton 0.3
- The hottest month at RDU, with highs near 33 °C and 128 mm of rain
- RDU averages 52 days a year at or above 32 °C
- An older house's attic and ductwork are tested in July, so ask for a summer's power bills
- Highs near 32 °C and lows near 21 °C
- Oberlin Middle and Broughton High serve every block, both on the traditional calendar, and Underwood is a short walk from the intersection
- Glenwood Avenue, the old streetcar line, runs through the middle of the area to downtown
- The wettest month on the RDU normal, at 131 mm
- The City holds open-space parcels at Young Street, on the area's eastern edge, filed as FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program land; check the flood map for any address nearby
- Highs still near 28 °C
- Highs near 23 °C and lows near 10 °C
- The Five Points Center for Active Adults runs its programs on weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Hayes Barton's 1920s streets curve because they follow the contours of the land
- The canopy drops, and 7.8 frost nights are normal for the month
- Highs near 17 °C
- Assessments set on 1 January 2024 are about to be replaced
- Highs near 13 °C and 2 cm of snow on the normal
- Wake County's next revaluation takes effect on 1 January 2027, and where land is more than half the assessment, the land value is the number to watch
- The shops at the intersection cluster around the Flat Iron Building of about 1922 and the commercial rows of the 1930s to 1950s
4 more photographs of the community and its surroundings
All freely licensed, via Wikimedia Commons. Filter by category.
Showing 1–4 of 4 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Five Points, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Raleigh library.