Mebane on a Million-Dollar Budget

301 S. 5th Street, for sale at $1 million

Mebane has been discovered. The small Alamance County town has become one of the hottest real-estate markets in the region as the Triangle’s sprawl pushes homebuyers west. A good indication of Mebane’s popularity is the number of million-dollar historic properties for sale. That number is currently three, which may not seem like a lot, but Mebane is still a pretty small place. And not too long ago, it wasn’t a very promising place to sell a million-dollar house.

Here are Mebane’s current million-dollar listings. Two are in the Old South Mebane Historic District; the other is outlying a bit from town and comes with 52 acres. As it happens, all were owned by notable figures in Mebane’s industrial and government history. And if what you’re looking for is a $3 million mansion on 29 acres with marble floors and intricate wall moldings that “set the stage for opulence,” keep going for one more listing that was withdrawn earlier this year after just four months. They shouldn’t have given up so quickly. Opulence is becoming a hot item in Mebane.

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The 8 Most Interesting Historic Homes Sold in May

Farmhouses, mansions, bungalows — May was an interesting month. The most notable historic homes sold in the Triad last month include a grand 1900 house in Sanford (and I know that Sanford is a bit of a stretch, but the house is worth looking at), a strikingly well preserved 1926 farmhouse in Rockingham County and an 1880 church in Pinebluff. A Winston-Salem mansion, a Greensboro Queen Anne and three diverse bungalows round out the best of the month.

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The 6 Most Interesting Historic Houses Sold in April

A National Register mansion and the home of a renowned poet and novelist are among the most notable historic houses sold in the Triad in April. Others worth noting include the homes of a prominent 19th-century millwright, a Lexington orphan who became one of the town’s most successful businessmen, and a small-town theatre owner. In addition, a decrepit farmhouse was sold for the first time since it was built around 1800.

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Four Houses with Infamous Pasts, Including a Triple Murder

This looks like a nice house, doesn’t it? It’s in Winston-Salem, and it just went on the market. Real-estate listings sometimes fail to mention the most interesting aspects of houses, and this is one of them. Usually, it’s because the agents don’t know the history of a particular house, although in this case the agent grew up in Winston-Salem and knows the whole story. It’s just that some homes’ histories have details that don’t fit well with descriptions of living rooms, kitchens and updated bathrooms. Murder is a good example.

Consider the house above, 3239 Valley Road in Winston-Salem, or 303 W. Main Street in Yanceyville. Both are now for sale, both with odious murders in their background. One was the actual site of a particularly infamous triple murder. Understandably, you wouldn’t know that from looking at their listings. There are at least a couple other houses in the Triad that have been sold in past few years with killings or killers in their histories, all becoming more obscure as time passes.

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The Five Most Interesting historic Homes sold in March in the Triad

February’s most interesting houses date from 1850 to 1919. Four represent some of the finer homes in the Triad’s smaller communities of Coleridge, Mount Airy, Mount Gilead and Mocksville. Their earliest known owners include a dentist, a mechanical engineer, a physician-turned-mill-owner and a register of deeds, Two of the houses were listed in February; their sales closed in less than a month. Two were listed last summer, and one wasn’t listed publicly.

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Another Historic Mansion in Greensboro Is Being Demolished

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.

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The Five Most Interesting Historic Homes Sold in February

The founder of the world’s biggest textile company. A German-born carpenter and home builder. A flea-circus impresario. A house sold with a restored 1939 Cadillac. And a house with a garage containing an outcrop of granite too big to allow a car into it. That’s who and what you’ll find when you look into the most interesting historic home sold in February. One of the houses may have had more super-rich owners than any other in Greensboro, perhaps the Piedmont.

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A Prominent Millwright’s 1880’s Home in Gibsonville, $400,000

Berry Davidson had a remarkable career as a 19th-century millwright and mill owner, and we know all about it because he had the rare impulse to write it all down. Davidson’s house in Gibsonville is for sale for $400,000. It’s an impressive structure with a wrap-around porch and widow’s walk, built in 1881 or 1887 (accounts differ). The house stayed in the Davison family until 1975, when the current owner bought it from Berry’s descendants.

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