It’s one of the more curious sights greeting people as they drive over the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge into downtown Wilmington: an 11-story high-rise that towers over neighboring historic homes but somehow feels nestled into the area, sitting comfortably among the surrounding brick-layered streets.
It is, and always has been, known as Solomon Towers, a 151-unit public housing facility built in 1972 on 2.38 acres at 15 Castle St. for just under $8 million.
A 2006 StarNews story noted the Towers’ residents have “million-dollar views of the Cape Fear River waterfront … They are among the city’s most vulnerable residents, some poor and aged, others living with physical disabilities or mental illnesses.”
Things got off to a rough start in 1971 when Solomon Towers, named for its longtime chairman, Harry M. Solomon, was being built by the Wilmington Housing Authority (WHA). Someone blew up two cranes at the project’s construction site on South Front Street during a period of racial unrest in the city, though the perpetrators were never identified or definitively tied to said unrest.