High Point

High Point is a city in the Piedmont of North Carolina, part of the Piedmont Triad with Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Twice a year, in April and October, the High Point Market fills the city with buyers and designers who come to see the new furniture collections.

The town took its name from its position as the highest point on the line of the North Carolina Railroad between Goldsboro and Charlotte, where the railway crossed a plank road. Incorporation came in 1859, and the town grew after the Civil War with furniture factories that used the hardwood of the surrounding forests. Hosiery and textile mills followed in the early 20th century, and the city became known as the Furniture Capital of the World. The jazz saxophonist John Coltrane grew up in High Point, and a statue of him stands downtown.

Thomas Built Buses, based in High Point, makes school buses, among them the yellow Saf-T-Liner. Culp, a company of the city, makes upholstery fabrics and mattress ticking for furniture makers. Showrooms for the furniture market fill many buildings of the center, some of them open only during the market weeks.

A building shaped like a chest of drawers, with two socks hanging from one drawer, was built in the 1920s to show the city's furniture and hosiery trades. High Point University, founded by the Methodist Church in the 1920s, has grown into a campus of brick buildings and gardens north of downtown. The High Point Rockers play baseball in the Atlantic League at a ballpark opened downtown in the 2010s. The High Point Museum keeps the history of the furniture trade and of the Quaker families who first farmed the area.