Piedmont Historic Homes

An Unexpected New Direction for Greensboro’s Double Oaks, a 1909 National Register Mansion

August 2, 2024

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.”

The Most Intriguing Historic-Home Sale So Far in 2024 Was Quite Discreet

July 16, 2024

The most impressive historic home sold in the Triad this year may be the 1920’s Tudor Revival mansion in Winston-Salem designed by Charles Barton Keen for Dr. Frederick Moir Hanes and Elizabeth Peck Hanes. It’s definitely the most intriguing. It was a very private sale; the house wasn’t listed publicly. It sold for $1.84 million in April. It hadn’t been for sale since 1972.

Frederick Hanes was one of the most distinguished members of the Hanes family, though he never worked in the family businesses started by his father and uncle. Fred was a highly accomplished physician and teacher and a major figure at Duke in the 1930s and ’40s. He headed the department of medicine at the medical school and was chief physician at Duke Hospital. Betty, a former nurse, was greatly involved with the nursing school. “Betty Hanes was really a great person,” Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans said.

Fred’s influence at Duke extended beyond the med school. The Sarah P. Duke Gardens were his idea.

6 Historic Houses, All Still For Sale After 6 Months or More

July 7, 2024

Even though interest rates have chilled the housing market, there are still historic homes that sell as soon as they’re put up for sale, sometimes at irrational prices (like this one and this one — great houses, quick sales, wild prices). And, then, there are those that don’t. Here are six historic homes that have been listed for more than six months, all unsold.

In some cases, it’s easy to see why. Some of these are mansions — houses 4,000 square feet and up. They typically take longer to sell than more reasonably sized homes, although a few here and there sell quite quickly (especially in Winston-Salem). Sometimes price is an obvious reason, even in these days of $350 or $400 per square foot for bungalows. In other cases, it’s impossible to tell from the listings what the problem is. And with old houses, there’s no end to the possibilities.

Click on the links for more information about each house.

The 7 Most Interesting Historic Homes Sold in June

July 3, 2024

June’s most notable sales include an 1881 Italianate farmhouse, a couple of particularly sweet bungalows, a Mid-Century Modern house designed by one of the state’s first African American architects and a pair of intriguing restoration candidates.

Of particular note among the past owners is James Holt Green, owner of the Glencoe mill and village in the 1930s and one of the state’s great heroes of World War II. Although rejected by the Army, he was determined to join the war effort and finagled a posting with the Office of Strategic Services. He led units behind German lines in Yugoslavia and Slovakia, rescuing downed airmen and wreaking havoc. He didn’t make it back home.

Click on the links below for more information about the houses and their histories.

Mebane on a Million-Dollar Budget

June 18, 2024

*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.

The 8 Most Interesting Historic Homes Sold in May

June 5, 2024

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.

The 6 Most Interesting Historic Houses Sold in April

May 4, 2024

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.

Four Houses with Infamous Pasts, Including a Triple Murder

April 8, 2024

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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.

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

April 3, 2024

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.

Another Historic Mansion in Greensboro Is Being Demolished

March 13, 2024

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.

Historic homes for sale in the Piedmont Triad