When it opened on Westover Terrace in 1929, the Greensboro Senior High School was heralded as the city’s $1,000,000 high school. It was built at the culmination of a wave of school construction across the city that represented community commitment to education. The new high school was the most expensive asset in the city’s school…
In 1922, developer A. K. Moore acquired a 212-acre tract of land with a unique location in Greensboro. The land was located at the western terminus of Market Street – the city’s primary east-west thoroughfare that provided an axis and direct access to the center of the city. In contrast to the man-made east-west axis…
Since its establishment as a primary and secondary school in 1873, Bennett College has grown to one of the most important Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in North Carolina. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was one of the few schools in the city that provided education beyond the primary grades…
Beginning with the magnificent neoclassical Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast at 204 North Mendenhall Street, this tour will weave the history of Westerwood from the late nineteenth century to the present. Built on a hill just a west of Greensboro’s village center, the area was first developed in the 1890s as the home of B.…
As Greensboro grew to become the second largest city in North Carolina by 1970, the city gained affluence through income from textiles, cigarettes, electronics, banking, and insurance. Wealth and prosperity led to corporate confidence which translated into progressive designs that drew from global conversations on architecture. For the decades between 1930 and 1980, Greensboro was recognized…
Announced in 1914, West Market Terrace was developed by Greensboro realtor E. Colwell Jr. Encouraged by sales in the Fisher Park neighborhood, this new subdivision included 200 building lots with amenities such as broad concrete sidewalks, and “utility lanes” behind properties to preserve streetside aesthetics. Sixty lots were sold in 14 days, but development was…
This walking tour has been postponed to an undetermined date. South of the railroad tracks are a variety of shops, galleries, and restaurants that were constructed beginning in the 1870s by Joseph Shields. Named Shieldstown, the structures overlooking South Elm Street featured brick storefronts sporting ornate iron- and stone-trimmed facades, and elaborate cornices. Today, the…
This walking tour has been postponed to an undetermined date. Traces of nineteenth-century history linger on the edges of the Summit Avenue neighborhood (recently renamed Dunleath), but the greatest architectural legacy dates from the early twentieth-century. In 1898, industrialist siblings Ceasar and Moses Cone constructed a “magnificent boulevard” to ease transportation between their cotton and…
East Greensboro is a constellation of neighborhoods, many with a spectrum of African American connections. However, the heart of East Greensboro is within a triangle of seminal institutions including North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Bennett College, and Dudley High School. These institutions define a community that led North Carolina through the Civil Rights…
Once nearly forgotten, the childhood home of jazz legend John Coltrane is slated for preservation and extended new use as an historic site. John William Coltrane was born in 1926 to Alice Gertrude Blair and her husband John Robert Coltrane in Hamlet, North Carolina. The young family remained in Hamlet only two months before moving…
On October 15th 2019, the Greensboro City Council designated the Groome-Shevel Building at 532-534 South Elm Street a Guilford County Landmark property. Landmark designation means the community recognizes the property is worthy of preservation because of its special significance in local history. Any substantial changes in design, materials, and appearance to the property is subject…
Greensboro has a century-old love affair with the architecture of old England. Considering our revolutionary spat here in 1781, the affection might appear ironic, but Greensboro has long held an interest in antiquities and craftsmanship, and it is likely from these roots, not nationalism, from which our interest grew. Greensboro’s Tudor-style houses are part of…