Editor of PiedmontHistoricHomes.com. Former member of the Greensboro Historic Preservation Commission. Board member of the Preservation Greensboro Development Fund.
The Ethel and Carson Cox House in Thomasville is a real standout among the multitude of historic bungalows and cottages for sale this spring. Its Tudor style and turret with a witch’s hat roof make it a house you don’t forget, a quality long out of fashion.
The address is 221 Spring Street in the Colonial Drive School Historic District. The house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in 2,290 square feet. That comes to a modest (by today’s standards) $113 per square foot. The lot is a spacious 0.29 acre.
It’s remarkable that all three of the Whitsett family’s surviving homes have come up for sale in recent months. The 1883 Joseph Bason Whitsett House was sold in January. The Francis Marion Smith House, built in 1898, sold in February. Holly Gate remains for sale. Joseph and Mary Foust Whitsett and their children were arguably the most prominent family of their era in the greater Gibsonville-Whisett area, and their homes comprise a fitting memorial.
Holly Gate, 721 N.C. Highway 61 in Whitsett, was the home of Joseph and Mary’s daughter Effie and her husband, J.H. Joyner, both educators at the Whitsett Institute (founded by Effie’s brother William Thornton Whitsett). The “impressive, two-story, Queen Anne style, frame house, built around 1910, [is] one of the best surviving in the county,” according to An Inventory of Historic Architecture: High Point, Jamestown, Gibsonville, Guilford County (1979).
North Carolina’s brilliant mid-century Modernist houses are frequently endangered and often torn down, largely because buyers, sellers and realtors often do not realize the importance of how to identify, preserve and protect these livable works of art. You can’t save something if you don’t know where it is and why it is important.
This tour supports NCModernist, an award-winning nonprofit digital archive for owners, students, journalists, researchers, real estate agents, historians, preservationists, architects and architecture fans to protect and preserve the state’s Modernist houses. With documentation on over 5,000 houses, NCModernist is an unrivalled resource for Modernist research and preservation.
Update: The house sold for $805,000 on December 13, 2023.
One sure way for your name live on is to have a high school named for you. Today, there may not be many people who could tell you who George Grimsley was (or even what his first name was), but most everyone in the area knows his name is on Greensboro’s oldest high school. Few people associated with the city have had a greater impact on Greensboro and North Carolina than he did as an innovative school superintendent, promoter of public libraries and an early president of Jefferson-Standard Life Insurance.
Grimsley’s suitably impressive house is now on the market for $1.295 million. One of the most prominent homes in the Fisher Park Historic District, it has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. It’s a spacious 3,568 square feet, sitting on just over a half-acre. The price works out to $363 per square foot, which is in the range of what the most high-end historic homes are going for in elite neighborhoods.
Update: The house sold for $365,000 on March 1, 2023.
If you’re looking for a historic home in a small Triad town, the Wade-Arscott House may be the best buy available today. The classic Queen Anne is just $369,000, a bargain at $106/square foot. That is, of course, if the house is as sound and well-functioning as it looks. And if you’re seeking, or at least can live with, the relative remoteness of Troy.
But if that all checks out, 214 N. Main Street is a lively, rambling piece of 19th century history. It’s a B&B today (well reviewed), but a fairly small one (3,474 square feet), manageable for a family home. The house has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. The lot is a quarter-acre. It’s one of just five structures in the National Register’s tiny Troy Residential Historic District.
Architecturally, there’s a lot going on here. “A notable example of Queen Anne architecture in Troy is the two-and-a-half-story Wade-Arscott House, a rambling frame residence that is enlivened by widely spaced windows, a one-story wraparound porch supported by square posts and enclosed by plain balustrades, a cylindrical, weatherboarded and shingled tower capped by a helmet roof at the southwest corner of the structure, and a peaked gable dormer incorporating a recessed balcony,” the district’s nomination states.
Update: By March 1, three of these houses were under contract.
The best place in the Triad to find an affordable starter or smaller home these days may be in the area’s smaller towns (actually, this may always be true). Here are five move-in ready bungalows and cottages priced under $200,000 and two more priced just a bit more.
The houses are spread out from Mount Airy to Ramseur. All but one were listed since January 1. They were built between 1900 and 1948. One is a stone cottage, one has remarkable brickwork. One is now an Airbnb short-term rental, none are restoration projects. Several have pretty substantial lots, up to just under an acre.
Update: Eight of the houses had sold by March 30, 2023. The other owner had accepted three offers but all had fallen through by the end of March. Two of the houses were put on sale again at higher prices within three weeks of their closings.
Is something going on? The real estate market slowed to a crawl late last year, but it looks like spring might be quite a bit busier. Nine historic homes listed since January 30 are already under contract. The properties include a stately $950,000 home in Winston-Salem’s Buena Vista neighborhood and a $50,000 restoration project in Thomasville, a 1918 bungalow in Greensboro’s Fisher Park Historic District and a 1972 Mid-Century Modern home at the Bermuda Run Country Club.
Twenty-two homes have been added to the site in the last 10 days, so it’s not like everything out there is being grabbed up in just a few days. But the pace does seem to be picking up, right in the middle of winter. Here, in no particular order, are the nine new listings suddenly spoken for:
Update: The home was sold for $350,000 on February 28, 2023.
The number of historic homes for sale has contracted sharply in recent months, along with the rest of the market, but one still robust category is National Register properties in Guilford County. There are three for sale, and 204 E. Railroad Avenue in Gibsonville is by far the most affordable. At $425,000, the price comes out to a modest $120 per square foot.
“The Francis Marion Smith House, erected in 1898, is the most stylish and impressive residence in Gibsonville surviving from the 1890-1910 period that witnessed the town’s major growth,” its National Register nomination says. “The two-and-a-half-story frame house combines elements of the Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styles, including an elaborate program of classical trim and turned ornament.”
Not surprisingly, given its location and date, it’s associated with the Whitsett Institute and family, arguably the most prominent family of its day in eastern Guilford County. “It is one of three notable late nineteenth and early twentieth residences associated with the Whitsett Institute, a boarding secondary school and junior college in the Whitsett community near Gibsonville. The three houses (one of which has already been listed in the National Register) are among the finest houses combining Colonial Revival and Queen Anne style elements in eastern Guilford County.”
Update: The house sold for $334,000 on March 30, 2023.
The Wray-Rainey-Webster House was the home of two major 19th-century leaders in Reidsville. Now for sale at $350,000, it’s a significant and well preserved piece of history in Reidsville’s Old Post Road Historic District and National Register historic district. The address is 716 S. Main Street.
“Believed to be one of the oldest houses surviving in the district, this two-story frame residence has changed hands more than most of the pivotal houses, and its original location was some one hundred yards to the south on the present site of the Hugh Reid Scott [House],” the district’s Nation Register nomination says. The Honorable Mr. Scott owned the house for a time, as did John Webster, congressman and crusading editor of Webster’s Dollar Weekly.
Some historic neighborhoods and rural communities are fortunate enough to still have buildings that once housed corner grocery stores or other retail businesses. The buildings come up for sale occasionally, and there are now four historic properties for sale in the Triad that feature former stores as homes or outbuildings. For the most part, there are relatively few available details about the structures themselves and the businesses they housed. But there are at least a few facts known about all but one.
2401 Urban Street in Winston-Salem was built to be a neighborhood grocery store with an apartment upstairs. 400 W. Main Street in Reidsville may not have been designed with a residence in mind, but it has provided a location for a business and a home for its owner as far back as 1959. The Robert G. Mitchell Store in Wentworth was built in 1900 and is barely standing, an unsound building with no heat or electricity. At 3405 Maple Avenue in Burlington, the tiny old store behind the house is a mystery.
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