Piedmont Historic Homes

Two weeks ago, developer Roy Carroll paid $4.5 million for the 1937 J. Spencer Love House at 710 Country Club Drive in Greensboro. Now he’s tearing it down. The 11,000 square-foot mansion had a distinguished history — built by the founder of Burlington Industries, then owned for 37 years by Benjamin and Anne Cone of Cone Mills, and finally sold to Carroll by Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, founder of Pace Communications, former ambassador and now chair of the American Red Cross. It was one of the major structures of the Irving Park Historic District on the National Register. The property is three acres in the heart of Irving Park, across the street from the Greensboro Country Club.

“The Love House is a palatial Georgian Revival mansion inspired by eighteenth century Virginia houses,” the neighborhood’s National Register nomination says. “It features Flemish bond brickwork, a steep hipped roof with segmental-arched dormers and a modillioned cornice, a five-bay facade with a swan’s neck pedimented entrance, a string course between floors, and brick corner quoins.” It’s hard to imagine there will be that much to say about the house that replaces it.

There are other houses in Irving Park that are arguably more impressive architecturally, and a few have had more or less comparable collections of significant owners. But there are fewer and fewer of them every year. There have been too many tear downs in recent years to list, but another particularly egregious one was 1915 Granville Drive, a much smaller but very elegant 1936 home torn down in 2020 and now a very expensive vacant lot.

A real-estate agent who co-listed the Love House is “dumbfounded” by the demolition, The Business Journal says (excerpt for nonsubscribers). “”I think it’s a sad and disheartening thing,” said Chad Waclawczyk, owner and managing broker of Carolina Home Partners by eXp Realty. Carroll, for his part, says the house was too expensive to renovate “to meet our needs.” The photos above hardly show a house that needed to be renovated. Which begs the question of why he bought it instead of leaving it for someone who would appreciate it.

Ten years ago, Carroll tore down The Dixie Apartments downtown, a distinctive 1921 building, so he could build a hotel and apartments that would fit in on any interstate exit. And now he joins Jason Harris, the grinning assclown who torn down Adamsleigh in Sedgefield, and developer Ardmore Residential, which tore down the 1883 Joseph Bason Whitsett House in Gibsonville last year, on the list of philistines demolishing significant homes for developments that could have gone anywhere.

These houses are irreplaceable. Their historic, aesthetic and cultural value is gone for good. The losses in Irving Park diminish our community’s uniqueness and character. They’re making Greensboro a less interesting and attractive place, even for the 99 percent of us who could never afford to live in Irving Park.