Piedmont Historic Homes

Updated December 10, 2023

Some older properties, especially outsized, rural ones, are marketed as possible commercial properties — B&B’s, vineyards, event venues and such — rather than or in addition to residential use.

• $5.25 million
• 8 bedrooms, 6 full bathrooms, 2 half-bathrooms, 6,767 square feet (per county), 1.61 acres
• Price/square foot: $776
• Built in 1929
• Listed September 6, 2024
• Last sale: $415,000, September 2016
• Neighborhood: Fisher Park Historic District (local and NR)
• Note: The house has a Ludowici tile roof and copper gutters.
  • Other sources put the square footage at 7,266.
  • The property includes landscaping designed by Chip Callaway, an irrigation system with a well, landscape lighting, a gardener’s cottage and a three-car garage.

National Register nomination: “Hillside, the Julian Price residence at 301 Fisher Park Circle, like the neighborhood itself, is a visible symbol of the financial success that evolved in Greensboro in the decades following World War I. Greensboro architect, Charles C. Hartmann, designing for a client he already knew, created this spacious, elegant but intentionally unpretentious Tudor style mansion. By all accounts a complex personality, Mr. Price combined a ‘just home folks’ manner with brilliant financial acumen. The executive behind the expansion of the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company wielded a powerful influence in the development of Greensboro as a major commercial city. Hillside seems to
reflect the private aspect of Price just as Jefferson Standard Life Building (also designed by Hartmann) reflects Price’s public spirited qualities.”

Hillside “has the appearance of a mountain retreat, said to be the image Price wanted Hartmann to create,” the nomination says. “Hartmann’s ability as a designer is vividly illustrated in his success at making a thirty room, four story, 160 foot long house resemble a picturesque assemblage of forms that merge with nature. This effect is achieved by judicious use of elements derived from the English Tudor and Gothic Revivals and the American cottage tradition.

“Placed on the highest point of Fisher Park Circle, the house originally stood in a larger setting of informal paths, plantings, and trees, accented by a gazebo (demolished) and a rustic board and batten gardener’s cottage, which remains. A raised terraced and rock wall conceal the entire basement level with its driveway, and service entry diminishing the height of the house.”

The significance of Hillside is more than local. “The house represents a high level of design and craftsmanship and is a distinctive domestic type which has limited representation of this quality in North Carolina.”

Julian Price himself (1867-1946) was a figure of statewide significance. He worked for one of the companies that became Jefferson Standard Life Insurance in a 1912 merger. He was initially vice president and agency manager of the new company and in 1919 became president. In his 27 years leading the company, its assets grew from $9.7 million to $174 million and insurance in force grew from $81 million to $655 million.

Under his leadership, Jefferson Standard created a broadcasting division and in 1949 established North Carolina’s first television station, WBTV in Charlotte, which is now located at 1 Julian Price Place. He also served as president of the Atlantic and Yadkin Railway.

“During the administration of Governor Angus W. McLean (1924–28), Price, as head of the North Carolina Salary and Wage Commission, was instrumental in effecting a fair system of employment and pay for state employees,” NCpedia says. “He became Governor McLean’s most trusted financial adviser. Towards the end of McLean’s term Price was strongly mentioned throughout the state for governor on the Democratic ticket but refused to have his name placed in nomination.”

He was a notable philanthropist as well. As a memorial to his wife, he funded the construction of Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Greensboro. NCpedia relates a story of smaller-scale generosity told by granddaughter Kathleen Bryan Edwards:

“During World War II Guilford County was dry and this was hard on local Air Force base personnel. One officer inquired of the name of the local bootlegger and was told it was Price. He called Julian Price one Sunday afternoon and asked if he were the local source of liquor. Price asked what kind the captain wanted and when told, Johnny Walker, he asked the young officer, ‘Black or Red?’ ‘Black,’ replied the stunned officer, who was then told to drive up in back of the house. The captain could hardly believe his luck when he tried to pay, for Price said, ‘No, no, young man, nothing is too good for our boys in the service.'”

318 Elkin Mill Creek Road, Wilkes County
Elkin Creek Mill

• $2.5 million for the entire 38-acre property, including the mill and residence, a winery, vineyard, restaurant, barn/event space and four cabins (originally $3.2 million).
• … or $1.97 million for 28.5 acres, including the mill and residence, a winery, vineyard and restaurant.
• 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,304 square feet, 38 acres
• Built in 1896
• Listed May 8, 2023
• Last sale: $1,206,500, May 2012
• Note: The mill, a residence since the 1990s, is on the National Register. The rest of the 38-acre property is not on the NR.
  • Video and commercial listing (PDF if online link is broken)
  • Located in the Yadkin Valley AVA
  • The property has an Elkin mailing address but is just across the county line, about 4.5 miles northwest of town.

National Register nomination (1982): “Located in a wooded section of east Wilkes County, the Elkin Creek Mill survives intact as one of the best examples of a full-scale, water-powered milling operation in western North Carolina. The simple frame structure houses all of the equipment used in the production of flour cornmeal) and feed, most of it dating from the early years of the mill’s operation.

“Powered by three water-turbine power sources, the systems include three roller mills; a traditional millstone, a hammer mill, and a complex array of cleaners, sifters, mixers, and elevators used in the various processes.

“The mill was established in 1896 by L.T. Stimpson and John A. Butler, prominent industrialists of neighboring Iredell County, and operated continuously until 1970.

“Its last 32 years of activity were under the stewardship of Alexander County native Edward Jolly, who in retirement remains an authority on traditional milling processes.

“After several years of neglect, the mill may have a better future adapted as a restaurant now planned by its present owners.”

Lazarus Theophilus Stimpson (1843-1916) was “one of Iredell County’s most beloved citizens,” The Statesville Sentinel wrote upon his death. “Noted for his integrity in business as in other phases of his life,” he was still working when he died at age 72, operating a cotton mill, flour mill and store in Iredell County and serving as president of Merchants and Farmers Bank.

John A. Butler (1853-1904) had business interests in Iredell, Wilkes and Gaston counties. He died in Gastonia after suffering from dropsy, Bright’s disease and tuberculosis. “During his residence here he had won many friends by his gentlemanly bearing and cheerful disposition,” The Gastonia Gazette reported.

• $2.5 million
• 11 bedrooms, 8 full bathrooms, 6 half-bathrooms, 6,593 square feet (per county), 1.7 acres (total of both lots, per county)
• Price/square foot: $236 (including the guest house and carriage house)
• Built in 1921
• Listed June 13, 2025
• Last sale: $195,000, October 2017; $212,000, March 1994; $148,000, January 1994
• Neighborhood: Downtown
• Note: Owned by an LLC in Greensboro
  • The property is now a wedding and event venue. It “accommodates up to 185 guests and sleeps 25 overnight.”
  • “This turnkey business is fully equipped and transfers with bookings into 2026.”
  • The listing shows 7,000 square feet for the house, 2,700 for the guest house and 1,300 for the carriage house. The guest house is a 1936 home of 2,197 square feet (per county).
  • The National Register designation doesn’t cover the parking lot or guest house.

NR nomination: “The Finch House conveys a refined, subtle sense of permanence and wealth. The expansiveness of the austere yet sophisticated edifice is unequaled in Thomasville’s 1920s and 1930s residential architecture. The green Ludowici-Celadon tile hip roof, deep eaves, and shaped rafter ends, and large multipane windows and French doors exhibit the influence of the Renaissance Revival style, a departure from the more popular period revival styles common in Thomasville during that period. The spacious two-story residence was erected in two phases: the original dwelling completed in 1921, and a 1938 west addition that doubled its size. …

“The 6,570-square-foot dwelling has a finely crafted but unpretentious interior. The 1921 first floor comprises an entrance vestibule, reception hall, living room, sunroom, stair hall, kitchen, and adjacent service areas. The 1938 addition’s first story includes a butler’s pantry, dining room, library, and two restrooms accessed from an east-west corridor. The 1921 dwelling was remodeled in conjunction with the 1938 addition’s construction. The formal public spaces—the reception hall, dining room, living room, and library — are embellished with classical cornices, door and window surrounds, wainscoting, chair rails, baseboards, and mantels. Single- and double-leaf raised-panel doors and multipane French doors retain original hardware. Smooth plaster walls and ceilings and tongue-and-groove oak floors are intact. …

“The T. Austin and Ernestine Lambeth Finch House, erected in 1921 and enlarged in 1938, meets National Register Criterion C for architecture as a remarkably intact and locally significant example of the Renaissance Revival style. The dwelling’s white stuccoed walls, green Ludowici-Celadon tile hip roof, and deep eaves supported by shaped rafter ends exemplify the style and unify the 1921 and 1938 sections. As was typical in such residences, the Finch House features wood casement and double-hung multipane windows and French doors. Finely crafted classical elements including Tuscan porch columns and Palladian library entrance surrounds contribute to the sophisticated aesthetic. Classical cornices, door and window surrounds, wainscoting, chair rails, baseboards, and mantels distinguish the reception hall, dining room, living room, and library. Although similar dwellings were constructed throughout the United States in elite subdivisions developed during the 1920s and 1930s, the Finch House is unique in Thomasville, where the wealthy favored Tudor, Georgian, and Classical Revival styles. The dwelling’s expansiveness and estate-like setting are particularly notable, as most of the city’s early- to mid-twentieth-century subdivisions contain modest bungalows, period cottages, and Minimal Traditional houses on small parcels. The stuccoed, green-tile-roofed, three-bay garage northwest of the house, built in 1921 and remodeled to match the house in 1938, is a rare survival.”

The 1919 marriage of Thomas Austin Finch (1890-1943) and Daisy Ernestine Lambeth (1898-1983) united two prominent North Carolina furniture-manufacturers: Thomasville Chair Company, owned by Thomas Jefferson Finch, and Lambeth Furniture. Ernestine was John Walter and Daisy Sumner Lambeth’s only daughter. She was a 1919 graduate of Greensboro College. T. Austin was the oldest of Thomas and Hannah Louise Brown Finch’s six sons. He had graduated in 1909 from Trinity College in Durham. His mother’s family had early connections with Trinity College, organized in 1838 at Brown’s Schoolhouse, a one-room log building on the Randolph County farm owned by John Brown, one of T. Austin’s great-grandfathers.

As T. Austin worked his way to the top of the family business, he served as a Thomasville City Council member from 1915 until 1917, was elected mayor in 1923 (he was succeeded by Ernestine’s brother) and was active in the local Democratic Party. He became president of the company after his father’s death in 1929. In 1930, the Finches and the Duke Endowment funded the construction of City Memorial Hospital. T. Austin died of a heart attack in 1944 at age 52. His brother Doak Finch became president of the company, followed in 1961 by T. Austin Finch Jr. Ernestine remarried in 1948 and continued to live in the house. The family sold it in 1984.