Live in Warehouse District

This is the corner of the 1792 plan the railroad reached first. The North Carolina Railroad skirted the southwest edge of town in 1854, and over the next ninety years the houses around Nash Square gave way to a cotton oil works, produce and grocery warehouses, a freight depot and the 1891 Grand Union Station on Dawson Street. By 1929 Raleigh's railroads moved 78 cars of goods a day, and many of its 76 wholesalers sat on the sidings here. Trucks ended it in the 1950s. What survived is the Depot Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2002: 27 contributing buildings of 35, and Nash Square.

The boundary is the neighborhood association's. This guide uses the line the Warehouse District Community Association registered with the City: Morgan Street to the north, McDowell Street to the east, the tracks to the west, with Nash Square and the new City Hall inside and Raleigh Union Station a few steps outside. The 2020 census found 875 people in 692 homes, and 572 of the 659 occupied homes were rented. Nearly all of them are in a few buildings: The Dillon's 271 apartments, opened in 2018, an 83-unit building on West Davie Street from 2014, and two condominium plats on Dawson and Martin Streets. Wake County's parcel file shows no apartment building finished inside the line since.

No design review, and a levy on every bill. The Depot listing covers 44 of the 94 parcels. It brings federal and state tax credits for rehabilitating a contributing building, and no City historic or conservation overlay touches the boundary, so exterior work needs no certificate. Every parcel is inside the Downtown Municipal Service District, which adds 6.8 cents per $100 to the City's 37.20 and Wake County's 53.71: on a condominium assessed at $400,000, $272 of a $3,908 bill. The district took in more of this area in 2024, when its rate fell from 7.86 cents. Wake revalues on 1 January 2027; the citywide arithmetic is on the Raleigh page.

The rail corridor is the thing to price. Union Station takes the Piedmont, the Carolinian and the Floridian, and GoTriangle's bus facility across the corner has run Route 100 to the airport since August 2025. NCDOT's $1.09 billion grant for the S-Line to Wake Forest pays for a second platform running south from the Hillsborough Street bridge, and removes the at-grade crossings at Jones and Hargett Streets, the second at The Dillon's corner. NCDOT publishes no date for the station work, and the Governor's office dates the grant to December 2023 where the Alliance's 2026 report says 2024. The Alliance also counts 2,173 units in the district's pipeline, on its own wider map, among them 385 apartments at Union West and 82 condominiums at One Nash Square, all planned or proposed.

What is not known is a sale price. No public source publishes a condominium median for these blocks. The Alliance's $685,000 median listing is for all of downtown, and the Census Bureau's survey puts the median owner-occupied home in tract 501, which also holds the Fayetteville Street core, at $654,000 give or take $54,682, and the median gross rent at $1,919. Until 2027 the blocks are a building site too: the 17-story City Hall at Hargett and McDowell is due for substantial completion at the end of 2026, Red Hat Amphitheater is being rebuilt at the southern tip, and CAM Raleigh is selling its warehouse on Martin Street.

Worth knowing before you commit

The corner is a construction schedule

Rail, City Hall and the amphitheater all change the blocks around you

---

• Ask which side of the building faces the tracks, and hear the unit at night before the offer
• Read NCDOT's S-Line plans for the Hargett Street crossing; no date is published for the station work
• Confirm the unit is a condominium you can own, not an apartment in a building held as one parcel
• Budget the 6.8-cent downtown levy and the 1 January 2027 revaluation into the tax bill
• Run the exact address through the WCPSS lookup: the southern tip draws different schools

How the Warehouse District got here

• 1792William Christmas lays out the new capital around Union Square with four park squares. Nash Square is the southwest one, and the district grows up around it.
• 1854The North Carolina Railroad skirts the southwest corner of the town. A frame depot at West Cabarrus and South Harrington Streets serves as Raleigh's central station until the late 1800s, and houses still line the streets around it.
• 1891The Grand Union Station opens at 224 South Dawson Street, facing Nash Square, and serves all of Raleigh's railroads until 1950. The National Register nomination dates it to 1891; the City's page on the district says 1890.
• 1912The Southern Railway builds its brick freight depot at 327 West Davie Street, with granite paving blocks in its yard and, from about 1920, a steel crane.
• 1929Raleigh's three railroads receive and send out a daily average of 78 cars of goods, and many of the city's 76 wholesale businesses sit on the sidings here.
• 1940Nash Square is relandscaped with WPA funds to Arnold Peterson's design, which survives almost exactly as it was planted.
• 1950Union Station on Dawson Street is sold, and the Southern Railway's Colonial Revival passenger station on West Cabarrus Street, which later serves Amtrak until 2018, is the city's depot. The nomination dates the new station to about 1949 and Amtrak to 1950. Over the decade the wholesalers leave for warehouses on the highways.
• 2002The Depot Historic District is listed on the National Register: 35 buildings, 27 of them contributing, and Nash Square. It is a listing with tax credits for qualifying rehabilitation, not a local overlay with design review. A 2017 boundary increase adds 302 to 310 South West Street.
• 2018The Dillon opens on a 2.5-acre block at West and Hargett Streets, the old home of the Dillon Supply Company: an 18-story office tower and two six-story apartment buildings. On 10 July Raleigh Union Station, in the company's 1940s warehouse on West Martin Street, receives its first passenger trains.
• 2020The census counts 875 residents and 692 housing units inside the boundary, 33 of them vacant, and no one in group quarters.
• 2023NCDOT is awarded a $1.09 billion federal grant on 8 December for the S-Line from Raleigh to Wake Forest. Its plan adds a second platform at Union Station and removes the at-grade railroad crossings at Jones and Hargett Streets.
• 2024The downtown municipal service district expands on 1 July, taking in more of the Warehouse District, and its rate falls from 7.86 to 6.8 cents per $100.
• 2025GoTriangle's Raleigh Union Station bus facility opens on 3 August at 200 South West Street, across the corner from the train station.
• 2026The 17-story City Hall tower at Hargett and McDowell Streets heads for substantial completion at the end of the year, Red Hat Amphitheater is rebuilt one block south of its old site, and the City drafts a long-range plan for Nash Square.
• 2027City Hall is due to open, and Wake County revalues every property on 1 January and then every two years.

What the map does not show: the way to Dix Park crosses the rail corridor, and the Alliance's strategy still lists a link south to the park as something to build. For a splash pad, Moore Square is four acres on Blount Street, about 1.2 kilometers east.

Elsewhere in Raleigh, not Warehouse District

The free option is Dorothea Dix Park: 308 acres across the tracks, open dawn to dusk.