Blandwood Mansion, located on West Washington Street in downtown Greensboro, will soon get an old house as a new neighbor. The old house (image, above) is owned by the Zenke family, long-time supporters of the restoration of Blandwood Mansion as a period museum and civic landmark. Henry and Virginia Zenke were pivotal in the 1960s…
The Green Hill Gatekeeper’s Cottage, located on a triangle of land between West Fisher Avenue, Wharton Street, and Battleground Avenue is known for its frilly trim and high-pitched roofline. It makes a distinctive architectural statement to hundreds of daily northbound commuters. The future owner, John Lomax, will close on the property in late October. One of…
McIver Street in College Hill may be losing at least one of its historic homes; part of a broader plan by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) to destroy an entire street-face within the National Register-designated neighborhood. Designated by City Council as Greensboro’s first historic district in 1980, and recognized by the United…
All too often, visitors and citizens wonder where exactly Greensboro’s historic neighborhoods are located. There are, after all, no lines on the ground to delineate the boundaries of the community. However, now the curious need only look to look up. Last autumn, the Fisher Park neighborhood requested a pilot partnership with the City of Greensboro…
Blandwood Mansion, the eighteenth century landmark property in downtown Greensboro, found itself a victim of twenty-first century copper-market theft Tuesday morning. Thieves destroyed seven air-conditioner units by removing their copper supply lines. The same vandals also stole gutters from the Carriage House facility on the grounds. The price of copper has doubled in the last…
Preservation Greensboro has a national reputation among preservation organizations through several initiatives, including America’s earliest Tuscan Villa, Blandwood Mansion, and the Blandwood Ball. However, a great deal of attention is centered upon a grassroots initiative to save elements of Greensboro’s historic homes slated for the wrecking ball. Architectural Salvage of Greensboro has grown into…
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…
North 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…
A 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…
Last 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…
The 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…
Future-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…