Staff Photo By Matt Born/Wilmington Star-News.
Q. What was the large concrete dock that extends into the Cape Fear behind PPD used for in the past? There is nothing connected to it now but it looks like it would be able to support unloading large boats.
A. Judging from the Sanborn insurance maps in the New Hanover County Library, that appears to be the old boat landing and freight station for the Norfolk, Baltimore and Carolina (NBC) Lines, a Virginia-based corporation that operated barges and coastal steamers on the Atlantic Seaboard and along the Intracoastal Waterway through the 1950s.
NBC was eventually acquired by McAllister Brothers Inc. of New York.
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Date posted: October 11, 2012
The long concrete dock behind the PPD building belonged to the Almont Shipping Company, which was located where the PPD building is now. The dock was built sometime after 1958, when a major fire destroyed several warehouses at the north end of the Almont property. Almont provided stevedoring and warehousing for bulk agricultural chemicals.