Even among the grandest mansions in Piedmont cities and towns, big properties tend to top out at a couple acres, maybe three. But right now, through a random quirk of timing, there are three homes listed for sale in the region with extraordinary acreage within their towns, in one case an astonishing 54 acres.

It’s not unusual for historic homes to be found on properties far smaller than when they were built. Many have had towns grow out around them. Usually, though, the land surrounding the homes has been almost entirely sold off. Here are three properties where, for whatever reasons, that never happened.

This week’s highlights:

Sale of the Week: The Merry Oaks Hotel. Built in 1880, the property is all that’s left of a once-thriving little railroad town in Chatham County. The 3 1/2-acre tract includes the hotel, post office and general store; it went for $400,000.

There are several new listings for historic-building condos this week, including two very high-priced units in notable buildings in Winston Salem. One is in the Indera Mills complex, a former apparel factory, listed at an eye-opening $779,000 (and $336/square foot!). And the owners accepted an offer in one day. The other is at Piedmont Leaf Lofts for $499,000. Both buildings are on the National Register.

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).

Houses don’t come up for sale that often in Old Salem, but the Belo-Stockton House is available again for the second time in about 10 months. The previous owners put the house on the market last December and accepted an offer in three days. They were able to close the sale in less than a month, even with the intervening holidays. I guess the buyer had no trouble getting a mortgage. It was an LLC belonging to L.M. Baker Jr., the former chairman of Wachovia.

It’s almost irresistible to linger over our shared memories of Mr. Baker — for those too young to remember, he typically went by his nickname, “Bud,” which rhymes with “mud” — but let’s not let his presence distract us from this wonderful house.

Priced at $440,000 this time, the house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in 2,100 square feet ($210/square foot, right about the going rate for top-of-the-line historic houses in the most desirable neighborhoods). Pictures included in the listing suggest the interior and exterior are close to impeccable.

2834 Bellemont-Alamance Road, Alamance Village, Alamance County
Sunny Side

• Sold for $470,000 on September 28, 2021 (listed at $449,900)
• 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 3,320 square feet, 1.77 acres
• Price/square foot: $142
• Built in 1871
• Listed July 1, 2021
• Last sale: $275,000, May 2016
• Note: The house was built by Lawrence Shackleford Holt (1851-1937), third generation member of the local family that dominated the Alamance textile industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
  • Nation Register nomination: “Sunny Side is a well~detailed, little-altered, two-story T-shaped frame Italianate style house with some Gothic Revival style features constructed in 1871 …. The cross-gable roof house with an elaborate bracketed cornice faces north and has a three-bay wide, single-pile main core with ornate two-bay hip-roof front porch, a projecting double-pile gable-front wing and rear ell at the east, and a small one-story single-room wing at the west. …