Piedmont Historic Homes

One of Greensboro’s grandest historic mansions has been sold to a new owner with a new vision. Known as Double Oaks Bed and Breakfast for much of the past 25 years, the house has been bought by Down Home North Carolina, a statewide community-organizing group working “to build multiracial and working-class power in small towns and rural communities across North Carolina.” The house will serve as a community center, event venue and meeting place for the organization.

Update, August 9, 2024: Here are their plans.

“Together, we are taking action to increase democracy, grow the good in our communities, and pass a healthy and just home down to our grandbabies,” its website says.

The organization paid $1.5 million for the house, 204 N. Mendenhall Street. The purchase was made possible by years of successful fund-raising, Down Home said. Among its recent major gifts was a $250,000 grant from the Katz Amsterdam Foundation in Colorado for “increasing voter registration in rural communities of color and addressing disinformation and voter disenfranchisement.”

Down Home and the Double Oaks staff will continue to operate the bed and breakfast through the end of October to honor existing reservations. After that, the group will transition the house into the Reclaim North Carolina Center.

“Under the previous owners, the Double Oaks property and Borough Coffee have been a beloved part of the fabric of Greensboro and the Westerwood neighborhood,” co-director Dreama Caldwell says. “As the Reclaim Carolina Center, we will continue to maintain a welcoming public space and add in local history, music, art, and other community events.” Borough Coffee will continue to operate at the house.

The previous owners, James and Amanda Keith, are enthusiastic about the new owners’ plans. “It’s been a real honor running this space, and we’re excited to pass it down,” James says. “We love the work Down Home has done for North Carolina so far and the vision they have for the property.” The Keiths have spent the past few years restoring the NuWray Hotel in Burnsville, another National Register property, which is now open.

It was important to both Down Home and the Keiths that the house remain open to the public. “Our intention is to keep everything that people love about the property and hopefully be able to add in more,” co-director Todd Zimmer said in a conversation Thursday.

“I think this has the potential to be a really cool Southern space that serves a broad community of people in a unique way. We’re really excited to see how it develops over the years.” The organization envisions music and perhaps film screenings in the backyard event space and lectures and exhibits in the house.

Zimmer mentioned potentially creating a display about the history of the Westerwood neighborhood “that would focus on the experience of working people.” One element of the display could be a 1920s newspaper ad for the neighborhood that the group found, extolling the political value of homeownership for the working class (seen above). “You never heard of a bolshevist who owned his own home — nor of a man who owned his home being susceptible to the doctrines of discontent and disloyalty,” it said (reflecting the perspective of America before it became a modern Pottersville).

Down Home is working in 22 rural counties across the state, including Alamance, Caswell Chatham and Rockingham. “To be able to do that work, we need to be able to convene people in a central location from time to time, to strategize, to train together, to build relationships,” Zimmer said. A number of staff members live in Greensboro, and half of the staff of almost 50 live within an hour of the city.

“The long-term vision is that whenever a coalition of citizens from across the state needs to come together to work on issues that impact us all, that there will be a great meeting place for them in Greensboro that’s welcoming and is set up to facilitate those kinds of gatherings.”

The group hasn’t owned real estate before. Its first leased office was in the Burlington Outlet Village. “The previous occupant had been Dixie Outfitters, which was a Confederate apparel store,” Zimmer said. “We do multiracial organizing, and we were really tickled by the poetic aspect of making that space ours. It’s symbolic of the kind of transformation that we want to bring to the community.”

Double Oaks, formally known as the Harden Thomas Martin House, is an entirely different opportunity — a 6,700 square-foot mansion, originally “a personal home on an incredibly grand scale,” Zimmer said. It was built in 1909 and is listed on the National Register. Still, Down Home sees a similar symbolism. “There was something poetic and future-oriented, we felt, in saying we’re going to reclaim this kind of space for the communities we serve and make it ours and point toward the future where there can be home ownership for the people we care about and organize with.”