111 E. MAIN ST. / FLATIRON BUILDING

Built sometime between December 1915 and June 1925, this structure replaced an earlier wood-frame structure that seems to have escaped the 1924 fire that destroyed much of Carrboro's commercial district.

1940 (Jack Delano, Farm Service Administration, Courtesy Library of Congress)

Accompanying text reads: "Carrboro, North Carolina, is a desolate town because its only industry-- textiles--has completely closed down."

1925 Sanborn map excerpt

In 1953 it became Tripp's Shoe Shop & Lawn Mower Repair, owned/operated by John and J. E. Tripp.

Excerpt of 1950s photo (via Richard Ellington)

1970s

An amusing anecdote about this structure took place in the 1990s, when in was in between renters and was temporarily vacant. Someone got into the building a placed large "COMING SOON - HOOTER'S" signs in the windows (Hooter's being a restaurant that employs scantily clad women as waitresses), and the mayor's office phone lines were inundated with calls from irate (and some very threatening) residents.

09.11.2019 (G. Kueber)

Architectural description from Carrboro, N.C., an Architectural & Historical Inventory (1983):