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Catholic Orphanage at Nazereth
This large campus of buildings stood at what is today the north entrance to Centennial Campus for most of the 20th century. The main buildings you see in the photo above were constructed in 1927, although the small church might be older. A prior version of the orphanage had previously burned. In fact, there were no less than three fires at the site, spawning the "Cry Baby Lane" ghost stories, although there's only evidence of one fire-related death. The orphanage operated until the 1960's, and apparently the Tammy Lynn Center briefly used the facillities from 1972 until the buildings were demolished in the late 1970's.
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NCSU purchased the property in 1986 and construction of Centennial Campus has since drastically changed the landscape, but ruins of the orphanage still remain in the form of brick, rubble and concrete sidewalks that were never removed from the site. Today the orphanage is largely forgotten, but to the countless people that grew up here at a time when the Catholic Church was perhaps not entirely accepted in the South, the site is no doubt an important one. |  |
The Site Today
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For those of us with weak imaginations, here are some recent photographs with a 3-D recreation of the orphanage.
You can see the recreated orphanage in the northeast corner of Centennial Campus.