Qualla: High Point, North Carolina

High Point, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Twice a year, downtown High Point fills with 70,000 to 80,000 people who do not live there. They come in April and October for the High Point Market, the world's largest home furnishings industry trade show: roughly 11.5 million square feet of showroom space, around 2,000 exhibitors, 180 buildings, and buyers from more than a hundred countries. A 2018 Duke study put the economic impact at $6.7 billion a year. The rest of the year, the downtown is curiously quiet - more than half of it owned by International Market Centers, more than half of that left vacant between markets because that is how a city designed around two industry weeks works.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

High Point, North Carolina: Why Furniture, Why Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Design Folly from Surfside Beach, SC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The English-descended settlers who moved into the Piedmont in the 17th century made functional furniture on a small scale. Reconstruction-era labor was cheap, and High Point sat squarely on top of the answer to the southern furniture market - hardwood. The vast oak, hickory, and ...

Image: Design Folly from Surfside Beach, SC, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

High Point, North Carolina: The World's Largest Bureau

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lindy676, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1926 the High Point Chamber of Commerce built a 38-foot-tall chest of drawers on North Hamilton Street - the World's Largest Bureau, a piece of automobile-oriented pop architecture meant to advertise the town's product. It still stands. So does the Tomlinson Chair Company's ol...

Image: Lindy676 | CC BY-SA 3.0

High Point, North Carolina: John Coltrane's Saxophone

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit QuakerJosh, CC BY-SA 4.0. High Point's most important cultural export is John Coltrane. He was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926, but his family moved to High Point shortly after, and he grew up here, attended William Penn High School - the Quaker-founded school for Black students that...

Image: QuakerJosh | CC BY-SA 4.0

High Point, North Carolina: Quakers, Cox, and the University

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Quakers ran the city's early education long before the public schools existed. The High Point public system opened in 1897 with a $10,000 bond, partly to buy J. Elwood Cox's family home for the first schoolhouse. By 1921 the Chamber of Commerce went after a college, beating Green...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

High Point, North Carolina: Quiet Industry, Hidden Wealth

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cmalaspina, Public domain. Besides furniture, High Point has historically built hosiery and Hatteras Yachts, and in the diversified present makes a living off distribution, logistics, customer service, banking, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. The Bienenstock Furniture Library downtown is the largest fu...

Image: Cmalaspina | Public domain