The easy ones are the old ones, the grand ones, and the famous ones. The historic preservation movement has rarely been challenged in protecting superlative places. If it’s the oldest building in town, the grandest edifice, or if George Washington slept there, the preservation community receives the equivalent of a public opinion green light in…
DetailsNorth Carolina is playing center stage in a proposed amendment to a Congressional bill that would jump start America’s railroads. According to Preservation Action, the nation’s only grassroots voice for historic preservation legislation in Congress, North Carolina’s historic railroad corridors are threatened with redevelopment if the amendment passes. Though current laws encourage due consideration of…
DetailsA celebrated Greensboro residence in the Fisher Park neighborhood has been resurrected and recognized as an official county landmark. The Greensboro City Council has approved Guilford County Landmark designation for the 85-year-old C. P. Carmichael House at 314 Isabel Street in Fisher Park. The home was nearly lost to a disastrous fire in 2004, but…
DetailsThe Big Dig at Blandwood, part of the city’s Bicentennial celebrations, began today. The project seeks to explore the hidden history of Blandwood, the eighteenth century residence in downtown Greensboro that has housed early settlers, industrialists, and even a North Carolina governor. The dig is funded through the History Committee of the 2008 Greensboro Bicentennial…
DetailsLast evening, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners approved the designation of the Ludwick Summers House at 6420 Woellner’s Way near Gibsonville as a Guilford County Landmark property. Chairman Kirk Perkins presented a commemorative plaque to property owner Dr. Stanley Corbin upon approval. As early as 1748, “Deutsch” families moved to present-day Guilford and Alamance counties…
DetailsFor most of the twentieth-century, Greensboro was one of the region’s economic power-centers, fueled by three highly profitable manufacturing sectors: textiles, tobacco, and machinery. Corporate names such as Cone Mills, Lorillard Tobacco, and Carolina Steel were synonymous with the Gate City, and Greensboro grew as employment in the three sectors swelled. As recently as 1980,…
DetailsAfter years of work, High Point has a publication dedicated to the architectural history of the city. In efforts of transparency and full-disclosure, I am its author. I will receive no financial benefit in the sale of the book. The publication entitled “The Architecture of High Point, North Carolina” hit shelves in High Point last…
DetailsThe fantasy of the theater was blended with the reality of history this past weekend at Blandwood Mansion, where five intrepid and talented actors portrayed members of the Morehead’s extended family as part of Greensboro’s Bicentennial Heritage Festival. Over 200 visitors were able to get a glimpse of the lives of the Morehead’s on the…
DetailsFuture-Perfect-in-Past-Tense grammatical terms were once the topic of discussion in the classrooms of Warnersville’s J. C. Price Elementary School, but today, the term describes a new direction planned by residents of the historically black neighborhood. Warnersville’s roots are deeply planted in Greensboro’s soil. Yardley Warner, for whom the settlement was named, was a Quaker missionary…
DetailsMasons have had a presence in Greensboro since shortly after the city’s founding, but few know about the history and architecture behind the façade of the fraternal organization’s impressive Temple at 426 West Market Street. The Masons that call this Temple home have deep roots in our community, having been chartered on March 1, 1821…
DetailsIn the economic devastation that followed the Civil War, Greensborough’s reputation as a city of comfortable hotel accommodations was badly bruised. Earlier fine hotels such as the Southern Hotel on West Street and the Planter Hotel on East Street were becoming worn and did not meet the improved standards set by wealthy northern industrial and…
DetailsLong before Kirkwood became a neighborhood of tidy post-War housing, the area featured scattered semi-rural farms and estates with notable homes and varied recreation areas. Development of neighborhoods north of Cornwallis Drive began during the roaring 20s, and spurred by the success of Irving Park to the south. One by one, small family farms were…
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