Page-Walker Hotel: Where Cary Began

The Page-Walker Hotel was built around eighteen sixty-eight by Frank Page, the man who effectively founded the town of Cary, North Carolina. Page constructed the hotel to serve passengers on the railroad that had come through in eighteen fifty-four, positioning himself at the intersection of timber, rail, and hospitality that defined the postbellum Piedmont.

Frank Page went on to become a major figure in the North Carolina lumber and rail industries. His son Walter Hines Page became U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain during Woodrow Wilson's administration. The hotel later changed hands and served railroad travelers for nearly fifty years. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-nine, the building is now the Page-Walker Arts and History Center, housing a local history museum and galleries. It is one of the oldest surviving structures in one of North Carolina's fastest-growing communities.