New Listing: The Gibson House, An Ice Cream Man’s Mid-Century Modern Mansion in High Point, $775,000

Update: The house sold for $801,000, above the asking price by $26,000, on September 25, 2020.

When Sloan and Geneva Gibson built their home in 1955, they were thinking modern all the way. The great room has bi-fold doors with motorized screens, opening the room to the outdoors. It was among the first homes in High Point with heat and air conditioning from an electric heat pump, NCModernist says.

The house merits a mention in The Architecture of High Point North Carolina for, among other things, its landscaping, designed as part of the house to provide privacy, and the concrete, tinted green so it wouldn’t stand out so much.

The Gibson House went on the market this week at $775,000. Even though it’s 65 years old, the listing describes it as “contemporary.” It started out modern, but it’s become timeless.

The Gibsons had a modern sensibility, but they were in a very old-fashioned business, the Gibson Ice Cream company.

“Sloan Gibson makes ice cream—and how! Other plants of similar character produce ice cream, frozen sherbets, chocolate milk and what have you. This is solely an ice cream makery and it turns out the stuff at the rate of 7,500 gallons a day. It goes to army camps, drug stores, roadside stands and elsewhere but a whale of a lot is served across the counter and on the tables of the ‘gold room’ at the plant. Parking space is provided for a hundred or more cars and uniform curb service attendants are at hand.”

Statesville Record Landmark, May 10, 1947,
via the wonderful Rural North Carolina History blog)

The house is at 412 Emerywood Drive, and it’s a glorious example of Mid-Century Modern design. It has four bedrooms and four bathrooms in 4,249 square feet. The back yard has an in-ground pool (it’s gorgeous, as the listing’s 13 pictures of it show). The lot is 0.63 acre. The price comes out to $182 per square foot, reasonable enough in High Point’s high-end Emerywood neighborhood.

It was designed by Mays & Parks Associates, a High Point firm that designed a number of Mid-Century Modern homes in the city.