It's one of the more distinctive structures in downtown Wilmington: A towering stone wall that rises high above the sidewalk near where Nun Street meets the Cape Fear River and runs behind the 200-year-old Gov. Edward Dudley Mansion.
When I was a teenager back in the 1980s, some of my buddies and I thought it would be a good idea to walk on top of the wall, which is only three or four feet tall where it begins on South Front but is more than 20 feet above ground at its corner down the hill. As we were walking toward our likely deaths, a man came out of the Dudley Mansion and informed us very loudly, and in no uncertain terms, that walking on the wall was actually a terrible idea.
Anyway, there are other similar walls downtown near the river, including across Nun Street from the Dudley and at the foot of Ann Street, but the Dudley wall on Nun Street might be the oldest.
According to Tony P. Wrenn's 1984 book "Wilmington, North Carolina: An Architectural and Historical Portrait," deeds to the Dudley Mansion going back to at least 1837 "begin to refer to the wall on the brow of the hill, so the bluff evidently was being walled to allow houses to be built on the level and fronting South Front."
Wrenn notes that "houses on the west or river side of South Front Street require high retaining walls to maintain their position on the bluff."
Dudley became North Carolina's first popularly elected governor in 1836 and was the first president of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Co. His mansion was built in 1825 and added on to several times in the 1800s.
Looking at the wall today, it's evident that it has seen additions as well.
Wrenn writes that "the upper part of the Dudley wall is said to have been extended upward by James Sprunt just after his 1895 purchase of the house."
Sprunt was a prosperous business owner who owned the wildly profitable Champion Cotton Compress in the 19th century and later became known for writing the history book "Chronicles of the Cape Fear River."
According to Wrenn, the wall used to have corner towers and several types of decorations, but they were gone by the 1980s and probably removed long before that.
There may have been a wall on Nun Street well before the 1830s.
According to Wrenn, title records for the Dudley property go back to 1739, when Wilmington was still called Newton. For much of the 1700s it was known as Rolf's Rock Spring Lot after its original owner, Dr. Roger Rolf, and for the spring or creek that used to run through the area.