Live in South Park

South Park was a white developer's subdivision that segregation made a Black neighborhood. The Raleigh Real Estate and Trust Company laid it out on the old Bledsoe estate between 1905 and 1910, with a streetcar down Blount Street. The 1990 National Register nomination says it was not meant for Black buyers; it became a Black suburb because it sat beside Shaw University, founded in 1865, and because the new white suburbs of Glenwood, Boylan Heights and Cameron Park were closed to them. Shaw produced the doctors, lawyers and teachers who became its professional class, and the East Raleigh-South Park Historic District, listed in 1990 with 532 contributing buildings, is still the largest historic Black neighborhood in Raleigh.

The overlay governs size, not style. Since 2007 South Park has been a City neighborhood conservation overlay, and its rules are short: lots of 3,000 to 8,000 square feet and 40 to 80 feet wide, a front setback within 10% of the block's average, a front door facing the street, parking beside or behind the building, and a height limit of 28.7 feet. There is no certificate of appropriateness, no review of design or materials and no delay on a demolition, which is what separates it from the historic overlays in Oakwood and Boylan Heights. The Register listing adds no rules either; the City calls it mostly honorary. What it offers is money: a contributing house can earn the state's 15% rehabilitation credit, up to $22,500.

The parcel file shows what those rules allow. Of the 389 single-family houses in the overlay, 146 were built in 1941 or earlier and 97 in 2015 or later. The new ones are assessed at a median of $625,895, the ones built before 2000 at $352,059. The census counts the people: the overlay's blocks held 1,119 residents in 2010, 867 of them Black, and 1,070 in 2020, of whom 542 were Black, while the white population rose from 89 to 314. The City's housing department ranks the block group holding about half the overlay's residents third of 293 in Raleigh for vulnerability and displacement pressure, with median rent up from $780 in 2020 to $1,327 in 2024. What the counts cannot say is why anyone left. Whether a family sold at a price it wanted, lost a rental or could not carry a tax bill is in no public record this guide could find, and it offers no estimate.

Public money is arriving at the same time. John Chavis Memorial Park reopened in June 2021 around a new community center, and the City has budgeted $53.95 million for an aquatic facility there, to be built from 2027 to 2029. The Top Greene center is to be expanded for $9.3 million, and the South Park Heritage Trail is expected from fall 2027. Just east of the overlay, Toulon Place added 200 affordable apartments in 2025 with $3 million from the City. The planned Southern bus rapid transit line would run down South Wilmington Street, the overlay's western edge, but has no opening date.

What it costs is mostly land. Wake County assesses the median single-family house at $448,779, 60% of it land. At 90.91 cents per $100 that is about $4,080 a year, and Wake revalues on 1 January 2027 (citywide figures are on the Raleigh page). The whole overlay qualifies for the City's Enhanced Homebuyer Assistance: up to $60,000, deferred, for a first-time buyer at or under 80% of area median income, on a house priced up to $450,000, with a 10-year deed restriction on the resale proceeds. The median assessment sits just under that cap. The county recorded 47 single-family sales from January 2024, at $1,000 to $1,050,000, without marking which were market sales, so this guide gives no median price.

Worth knowing before you commit

The overlay limits the size, not the look

Lot, setback, entrance, parking and height rules, with no design review

---

• Check the parcel on the City's iMaps: only about half the overlay is inside the Register district
• Measure a planned addition against the 28.7-foot limit and the block's average setback
• Assume the house next door can be torn down and replaced without design review
• If the house contributes, ask the State Historic Preservation Office about the 15% credit before work starts
• Below 80% of area median income, ask the City about the $60,000 loan and its resale restriction
• Look up the school assignment by exact address: East Lee Street splits it

How South Park got here

• 1855About now the Rogers-Bagley-Daniels-Pegues House is built at 125 East South Street, a Greek Revival and Italianate house from the years when this was plantation land at the edge of the city. It is one of two antebellum houses the 1990 nomination singles out.
• 1870Henry M. Tupper, who organized the Second Baptist Church (now Tupper Memorial) in 1866, buys the Daniel Barringer estate south of the Capitol and moves his school there as Shaw Collegiate Institute. Shaw becomes the magnet that draws Black families, and later Black doctors, lawyers and teachers, to live around it.
• 1874The Colored Department of the School for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind is built on South Bloodworth Street, the third institution the nomination credits with settling Black Raleigh here. Its 1898 boys' dormitory at 600 South Bloodworth Street survives.
• 1907The South Park subdivision, laid out between 1905 and 1910 on the Moses Bledsoe estate by the white-owned Raleigh Real Estate and Trust Company, is advertised in the News & Observer on 6 June. It was not planned for Black buyers; it became a Black suburb because of Shaw and because the new white suburbs of Glenwood, Boylan Heights and Cameron Park were closed to them. A streetcar ran down Blount Street as far as Smithfield Street.
• 1937John Chavis Memorial Park opens on the neighborhood's eastern edge as a segregated park for Black residents, built with Works Progress Administration funds, with a carousel placed there the same year. The Chavis Heights public housing project follows to the southeast.
• 1982The John P. "Top" Greene Center opens on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, named for a South Park resident and community activist, with exhibits on the history of South Park and East Raleigh.
• 1990The East Raleigh-South Park Historic District is listed on the National Register: 708 resources across about 30 blocks, 532 of them contributing. The nomination already records the demolition of many substandard houses in South Park and a vinyl-siding campaign as threats.
• 2007The City zones South Park a neighborhood conservation overlay under case Z-30-2007, effective 16 October. Today's ordinance sets lots of 3,000 to 8,000 square feet and 40 to 80 feet wide, a front setback within 10% of the block's average, a street-facing main entrance, parking to the side or rear and a height limit of 28.7 feet, and does not review design or demolition.
• 2011The tornado of 16 April damages the district; the City's National Register layer still carries the note against the district and against the Rogers-Bagley-Daniels-Pegues House.
• 2016John Chavis Memorial Park is listed on the National Register in April, for its 1937 design and as one of the few segregated recreation facilities in North Carolina built with federal money.
• 2020The census counts 1,070 residents on the overlay's blocks, 542 of them Black, against 1,119 and 867 in 2010. The number of white residents rises from 89 to 314.
• 2021Chavis Park reopens on 12 June after its first rebuilding phase, with a two-story community center, a playground, a splash pad and a new plaza around the carousel house.
• 2025Toulon Place, 200 affordable apartments for families in which the City invested $3 million, is completed just east of the overlay on Sawyer Road and Asheranthem Way.
• 2026The City's 2022 parks bond projects are in design: a $53.95 million aquatic facility at Chavis Park, to be built from 2027 to 2029, a $9.3 million expansion of the Top Greene center, to be built from 2026 to 2028, and the 3.3-mile South Park Heritage Trail, expected from fall 2027 to spring 2029.

What the map does not show: the park's pools are the next phase, with construction scheduled from 2027 to 2029. For open ground, Walnut Creek Wetland Park is 58 acres to the southeast, and Dorothea Dix Park is west across Saunders Street.

Elsewhere in Raleigh, not South Park

The free option is the park's lighted outdoor track, five laps to the mile.