Piedmont Historic Homes

Updated June 1, 2022

Piedmont Triad Region
Not Too Far Away
Recently Withdrawn

Recent Sales
Sales, 2017-2022

Piedmont Triad Region

721 N.C. Highway 61, Whitsett, Guilford County
Holly Gate
The James Henry Joyner House

• $1.75 million
• 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, 3,530 square feet, 4.04 acres
• Price/square foot: $496
• Built in 1908
• Listed October 21, 2022
• Last sale: $50,000, June 1976
• Note: “Impressive, two-story, Queen Anne style, frame house built around 1910, one of the best surviving in the county. Well landscaped and maintained. Prof. Joyner, a brother-in-law of W.T. Whitsett … taught English, Mathematics and penmanship at the nearby Whitsett Institute.” (An Inventory of Historic Architecture: High Point, Jamestown, Gibsonville, Guilford County, McKelden Smith, 1979, p. 106)
  • Joyner himself (1873-1960) was a graduate of the institute and a 1903 graduate of Catawba College. He taught at Whitsett for 23 years and later served as the first principal of Gibsonville High School. After he retired, he was a member of the Guilford County Bard of Education for 21 years and a member of the state Board of Education. His wife, Effie Whitsett Joyner (1877-1976), also taught at the school. She was a younger sister of William Thornton Whitsett, founder of the institute.
  • “Whitsett [Institute] burned tn 1918 and was not re-opened. Dr Whitsett and Professor Joyner both turned their energies and influence on behalf of the establishment of a public high school in nearby Gibsonville. The school was established and Joyner became its first principal. Under his leadership Gibsonville High School became the first accredited high school in Guilford County.” (NRHP nomination)
• NRHP nomination: “Holly Gate, the residence of Professor and Mrs. J.H. Joyner, is a transitional Queen Anne-Colonial Revival house constructed in 1908-1910. It is a frame two-and~a-half story dwelling with picturesque massing and a gray slate roof.
  • “The house is one of several large residences built by the faculty of Whitsett Institute in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries The remaining structures from this group are the finest Queen Anne Revival houses standing in the eastern section of Guilford County.
  • “No architect or contractor tor for this house is known.
  • “The Joyner House is set well back from NC 61 on a four-acre lot surrounded by mature hardwood trees and complemented by a series of outbuildings to the rear. The residence presents an irregular silhouette and plan, typical of the Queen Anne aesthetic.
  • “A tall hipped roof is complicated by a large projecting gable to the front and a semi-hexagonal hip to the left. The roofline is broken further by three high chimneys with brick band courses and molded tops. The first two stories are covered with clapboarding, while the gable end is covered in shingles.
  • “A Colonial Revival porch wraps around the left side of the house. The porch begins with a pedimented gable over the main central entrance to the house. There is an inset balcony immediately above the entrance pediment.
  • “On both levels, the porches are composed of grouped Doric colonettes on plinths. A turned balustrade was placed between the plinths in the first story porch.
  • “The house sits on a high brick basement partially concealed by mature foundation plantings.”

Not Too Far Away

1097 Healing Springs Road East, Crumpler, Ashe County
The Cabins at Healing Springs
National Register of Historic Places

• $1.68 million
• 16 units in nine buildings, 6,276 square feet, 11.32 acres
• Price/square foot: $268
• Built in 1888 (per listing; other sources say some cabins were built in the early 20th century with the rest are ca. 1920)
• Listed November 29, 2021
• Previous listing: “The historic Healing Spring was discovered in 1884 and was originally called Thompson’s Bromine and Arsenic Springs. The property was then known as Healing Springs Resort in later years and now simply called The Cabins at Healing Springs.
  • “Many of the cabins are the original cabins that were built in the early 1900’s. … [While the cabins] may look rustic on the outside, they have sympathetically been remodeled each cabin to highlight the original historical features. … There is a range of cabin sizes to choose from.”
• NRHP nomination: “The discovery of the mineral waters in Ashe County, which tradition holds to have been in 1885 by Willie Barker, opened the way for Captain H.V. Thompson of Washington County, Virginia, to develop this into a widely advertised and highly popular resort.
  • “The mineral spring spas of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not only centers for rejuvenating health, but were the most popular social centers. Thompson’s Bromine and Arsenic Springs is a good representative of a segment of our social heritage, of which only a few survive.”

• $800,000
• 8 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, 5,869 square feet, 1.4 acres
• Price/square foot: $136
• Built in 1874 (see note below)
• Listed November 9, 2019
• Last sale: $37,000, April 1984
• Note: The current real-estate listings for the house show 1840 as its date. The National Register nomination says 1874; county records show 1900, which seems the least likely.
  • The house has been in the Hull-Daniel family for 115 years.
  • NRHP nomination: “The James Heyward Hull House [is] an excellent example of a 1907 Neoclassical Revival style dwelling in Shelby, one of several built at the turn of the century by some of Shelby’s most prominent residents. The large two-story house was originally built ca. 1874 in the Italianate style for Methodist minister Hilary T. Hudson. James Heyward Hull, a cotton broker, bought the house in 1907 and had it transformed into a Neoclassical Revival style house by adding a monumental portico, flanking wings, an ornate deck-on-hip roof, and completely redoing the interior.”
  • “The residential Neoclassical Revival style was a monumental version of classical elements that became very popular among wealthy industrialists in North Carolina during the bustling “New South” era of the early twentieth century. Also known as ‘Southern Colonial,’ the principal feature was a colossal central portico with one-story porches extending out to the sides. Other characteristic elements of the style were the two-story massing and richly detailed classical columns, entrances, and eaves. The popularity of the style caused it to be chosen as the form for the North Carolina Building at the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia. The style came to be associated with the ‘new’ southern aristocracy, the cotton mill owners, cotton brokers, and cotton planters.” (footnote in original: “Bishir, Catherine W. North Carolina Architecture. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 420-423″)

Recently Withdrawn

228 Holt Road, Haw River, Alamance County
The Charles T. Holt House
Blog post — For Sale: “The Most Ornate 19th Century Mansion in Alamance County,” $2.4 Million
sale pending February 14 to March 27, 2023
Listing withdrawn March 28, 2023

• $2.2 million (originally $2.4 million)
• 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 4,454 square feet, 21.10 acres (per county)
• Price/square foot: $539
• Built in 1897
• Listed July 18, 2022
• Last sale: $650,000, October 2007
• Note: A second home on the property dates to 1905 and has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and 2,431 square feet.
  • The property also includes a pond, a barn and a two-car garage with additional upstairs and downstairs rooms.
  • County records show 5,653 square feet as the “finished area” of the house, which may be larger than the “heated area” typically listed.
  • The listing shows 23 acres.
  • The house has a Graham mailing address but is in Haw River.
• NRHP nomination: “The Charles T. Holt House, the most ornate nineteenth century mansion in Alamance County, is located in the town of Haw River overlooking the Granite Mills complex, on twenty-five acres of lawn, grazing pasture, and farm land.
  • “The large Queen Anne dwelling and its six outbuildings were constructed in 1897 for textile businessman Charles T. Holt, the son of Thomas Holt, governor of North Carolina, and his wife, Gena Jones Holt, the daughter of Thomas Goode Jones, governor of Alabama.
  • “The elaborate style and asymmetrical composition of this well-preserved two-and-a- half story Queen Anne house serves as a classic example of the form, devices and motives employed by late-nineteenth century high-style builders. Peaks, turrets and decorative chimney stacks project in the irregular manner of the fashionable Queen Anne architecture of the 1880s and 1890s.
  • “Also characteristic of the superior examples of the Queen Anne style, the elevations are sheathed with a variety of materials including wood, slate, brick and stone. The exterior is richly decorated with intricate woodwork and bayed gable end projections, porches and pedimented gable ends.”

• $1.2 million (originally $1.3 million)
• 4 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1,528 square feet, 10.4 acres
• Price/square foot: $785
• Built in 1880
• Listed August 14, 2022
• Last sale: Unknown
• Note: The property has a Pittsboro mailing address but is 8 miles east of the town.
  • No central air conditioning
• NRHP nomination: To come

• $799,000
• 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, 4,844 square feet, 4.7 acres
• Price/square foot: $165
• Built in 1879
• Listed March 15, 2022
• Last sale: July 2014, price not recorded on deed; last previous sale was circa 1871, part of a 1,000-acre tract, price not known
• Listing: “Outbuildings include buggy/carriage house, seven sided smokehouse (40 hogs), three car detached garage with apartment.”
• NRHP nomination: “The Leslie-Taylor House is a three-story, double-pile, frame house located on the north side of Carthage Road in Vass, Moore County, North Carolina. The house is set well back from the road and is pristine in its rural setting.
  • “The land surrounding the house is owned by the descendants of the Leslie-Taylor family and encompasses approximately one thousand acres total. The land included in this nomination is approximately eleven acres immediately surrounding the house and contributing outbuildings.
  • “In its overall form and elaborate detailing the house, built around 1879, is the most finely ornamented example of Victorian Eclecticism in Moore County. R15ear additions were built in the 1950s but do not detract from the magnificence of this home. The main house as well as its contemporary smokehouse and carriage house all maintain a high degree of integrity with respect to location, setting, design, workmanship, feeling, and association.
  • “The property has remained in the possession of the original owners, descendants who have been constant stewards of this architectural landmark. …
  • “The Leslie-Taylor House meets Criterion C for architecture due to its local architectural significance as one of the fullest examples of Victorian Eclecticism in Moore County. The style is characterized by steeply pitched gable roofs, full-width porches, decorated bargeboards, cross-bracing, bay windows, drip mold window crowns, and brackets. The Leslie-Taylor House, built around 1879 for local physician Dr. James Addison Leslie, exhibits all of these elements in a single picturesque composition. The house maintains a high degree of integrity with respect to location, design, materials, workmanship, setting and association. The house and surrounding outbuildings represent an intact representation of a late-nineteenth century home and its necessary buildings in North Carolina.”
  • James Addison Leslie (1843-1918) was born in Holly Springs in Wake County. He was a Civil War veteran and graduate of the University of Virginia and medical school in Pennsylvania. He married Annie Maria McNeil (1847-1914) in 1871. “Family tradition says that Dr. Leslie acquired the thousand acre tract from a cousin of his bride, a McKeithan. The two moved with three children to Vass in 1878 and began building their home, to be known as ‘Maple Lawn.’ …
  • “Dr. Leslie continued his medical practice out of his home and operated the farm and lumber business until his death in 1918. He is listed in the 1880, 1900, and 1910 Federal Census as a farmer and merchant rather than a physician. The Leslies’ second daughter, [Lillie Leslie Taylor, 1875-1921], married Frederick Whiteside Taylor [1876-1970] in 1905 and lived at Maple Lawn. In addition to maintaining the house, farm, and family lumber business, Mr. Taylor began a dairy in 1926, marked by the construction of a large barn on the property.
  • “Their son, Frederick Leslie Taylor [1906-1977], was born at Maple Lawn and maintained it as his home. He became President of Troy Lumber Company, the family lumber company, as well as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Campbell College near Buies Creek in Harnett County.
  • “In the mid-twentieth century the dairy ceased operation and the barn was used for horses until 1963-1964 when it became home to the Moore County Humane Society.
  • “The family has continued to farm and timber this land throughout its history. Mr. Taylor’s widow, [Lily Alliene Fresh Taylor, b. 1910], passed away in 2005, leaving Maple Lawn to her children, Frederick H. Taylor, Anthea Taylor Tate, and Leslie Taylor Whitesell, the present owners of the property.”
  • The 2014 sale of the property ended the family’s ownership after about 140 years.

• $200,000 (previously as low as $99,900)
• 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 2,188 square feet, 0.5 acre
• Price/square foot: $91
• Built in the late 1880s, per NRHP nomination
• Listed February 26, 2019
• Last sale: $25,000, June 2011
• Note: For sale by owner
  • Listing: “the perfect blend of unpretentious elegance and a rustic urban farm.”
  • “This house is for someone with vision, passion and some skills would be handy.”
  • “The 30’x32, steel frame greenhouse has a block base. There is a 8’x12′ barn used for my goats. It is Amish made with a metal roof and 2 lofts. The woodshed is 3′ deep x 13′ long. There is an addition not included in the square footage. It includes a sun room, a pantry, and mud room off the driveway.”
  • Answering the most obvious question: “YES there is a urinal on the wall in the purple bedroom. The last owner put it there it is no longer hooked up.”
  • Previous listing: “The facing came off the back of the second story and squirrels got in and damaged the wiring in the ceiling of the purple bed room. All 22 windows need to be replaced [Editor’s note: or, better yet, repaired].”
  • NRHP nomination (1986): “… a distinctive example of a vernacular use of elements of the Gothic Revival and Italianate styles of architecture popular in the mid nineteenth century.”
  • The first owner and probable builder of the house was William G. Jennings, a brick manufacturer.
  • “Only six brick houses dating from the years prior to 1890 are known to survive in the city, and it is unlikely that any substantial number more were built. Of these six, five can be described as in the Italianate style or exhibiting Italianate influence. … The Jennings-Baker House is a much more vernacular and personal expression of Victorian tastes, as it combines elements of several styles. The triangular patterned brickwork above windows and doors on the facade have a vaguely Gothic flavor, while the segmental arch openings on the side and rear elevations and in the ell … are typical of masonry construction of the period. The facade’s projecting bays and porch suggest the influence of architecture predominantly found at military institutions, while the corbel table on the facade and the parapeted side elevations of the main block are reminiscent of commercial architecture in the late nineteenth century.”
  • “This combination of elements strengthens the possibility that Jennings may have intended his house as a sort of advertisement for what was then a young enterprise, exhibiting the products of his brick yard and demonstrating the masonry skills of his workers.”
  • There are travelers from the East who meet next door.

132 Becktown Road, Mocksville, Davie County
Boxwood Lodge
Boxwood Lodge NRHP
Blog post — Boxwood Lodge: An Elegant National Register Mansion-Wedding Venue-B&B near Mocksville, $3.45 million
listing withdrawn March 8, 2021

• $3.45 million
• 10 bedrooms, 8 full bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, 9,304 square feet, 48.23 acres
• Price/square foot: $372
• Built in 1934
• Listed January 17, 2019
• Last sale: $782,500, March 2002
• Note: The house was designed by Delano & Aldrich of New York.
  • The property is what remains of a 1,500-acre hunting retreat developed from 1911 to 1931 by William Rabb Craig, a New York cotton and sugar broker who died in 1931. Craig’s widow built the house on the site of a hunting lodge built in the 1910’s.
  • The listing says a $5 million restoration of the house was completed in 2007.
  • The property includes a guest cabin built in 1933, a barn built in the 1910’s and a pond.
  • It is now a bed and breakfast and a wedding/event venue.

432 Willow Oak Drive, Eden, Rockingham County
Willow Oaks Plantation
Willow Oaks Plantation NRHP (as “Cascade Plantation”)
listing withdrawn May 2019; relisted June 1, 2021
listing withdrawn November 27, 2021

• $7.5 million
• Bedrooms and bathrooms not specified, 6,187 square feet, 1,768 acres
• Price/square foot: $1,212
• Built in 1825
• Listing date unknown
• Last sale: $1.58 million, August 2001
• Property website: “For the past years the plantation has hosted hunting and sporting activities … Throughout most of our long history, Willow Oaks Plantation has been a private residence. The Property is reverting to such. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.  More information is coming soon.” (via the Wayback Machine) The property includes two additional residences called the Lodge and the Ranch.
  • Located on the Dan River, the property includes creeks, two 6-acre lakes, ponds and shallow impoundments.
  • The property includes equestrian facilities.

4564 S. N.C. Highway 150, Tyro, Davidson County
Tyro Tavern, 1840
Tyro Tavern NRHP
listing expired November 18, 2018

• $250,000
• 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 3,470 square feet, 0.96 acre
• Price/square foot: $72
• Built in 1840
• Listed May 20, 2018
• Last sale: $65,000, November 2001
• From the NRHP nomination, 1983: “This Greek Revival style structure has survived with almost no alterations except the removal of the two-story front porch in the mid-twentieth century.”
  • “… the finest example of Greek Revival domestic architecture in Davidson County. It was apparently built as the residence and tavern of Joseph H. Thompson, son of early nineteenth century innkeeper Frederick Thompson. J. H. amassed a fortune from his Tyro Iron Works, the largest agricultural foundry in the county throughout most of the second half of the nineteenth century. The imposing brick dwelling, which still dominates the crossroads village of Tyro, is the only structure remaining of Thompson’s mercantile and industrial empire.”