Greensboro – Piedmont Historic Homes

This Week’s Best: A Kerner Family Home in Kernersville and Two Elegant Houses in Greensboro

September 15, 2025

The most remarkable development last week was the sale of 225 N. Main Street in Kernersville. The house is notable in its own right, but the sale itself is also worth noticing. The house was for sale for almost two years when the owners accepted an offer on September 7. The sale closed four days later — an astonishingly quick end to a surprisingly long process. The sale price was $340,000, down a substantial $125,000, 27 percent, from its original $465,000. The house was sold by its next-door neighbor, the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden.

The house was built by Rephelius Byron Kerner (1849-1881), a great-grandson of the town’s namesake, Joseph Kerner. Rephelius was a cousin of Julius Gilmer Korner (1851-1924), aka Reuben Rink, a commercial artist, Bull Durham barn painter and builder of Korner’s Folly.

This Week’s Best: A Major 1912 Mansion in Reidsville and ‘H&G’ to Two B&B’s

August 24, 2025

It was an uncommonly boring week until Thursday. That’s when a listing appeared for Belmont, the most notable of the three houses in the the Robert Payne Richardson Houses Historic District in Reidsville. The Neo-Classical Belmont, 1700 Richardson Drive, is a standout in every way — architecturally significant (“an opulent example of the style, one of the finest in the state”), perched up on a hill overlooking the road, wonderfully maintained, with a range of features from a spectacular ballroom to a beach volleyball court (the mansion is now a wedding venue, after all). If you’re looking for about 9,000 square feet of truly impressive history on almost 10 acres, Belmont is up for $2.4 million, a relatively reasonable $256 per square foot. You could pay a lot more, per square foot, for a lot less (see below).

It was ‘H&G’ for two B&B listings this week.

This Week’s Best: A Literary Connection in Reidsville and a Striking House in Elkin

August 10, 2025

Some intriguing houses and past owners this week.

Who knew the connection between Reidsville and one of Britain’s most important writers and theologians of the 20th century? This 1930 house was the boyhood home of Walter Hooper (1931-2020). “All of us who know and love the writings of C.S. Lewis owe a great debt to another figure, highly regarded in the field of Lewis scholarship but less well known to the wider world of readers: Walter Hooper. Over the course of six decades, Hooper served as literary advisor to Lewis’ estate, dedicating his life to editing, preserving, and sharing the work of C.S. Lewis.” There’s an appropriate Lewis quote painted on a kitchen wall.

An Elegant 1915 Home Gets A Quick Makeover While For Sale

August 7, 2025

124 S. Mendenhall Street in Greensboro is proving to be a surprisingly tough house to sell. It’s a striking place, built in 1915. “Its walls and oversized gambrel roof clad in shingles, this house is a rare Greensboro example of the shingle style,” the neighborhood’s National Register nomination says.

Among its other distinctive features, the house has a remarkably wide front porch that wraps around on the right with French doors opening onto the foyer and another door at the end of the porch. Interior features include unpainted pocket doors in the living room, a long window seat along a triple window in the dining room and a kitchen island with a counter that seats five. I’ve been in the house a couple times (it’s around the corner from my house), and I can tell you it’s impressive.

It was listed last September at $850,000 ($273/square foot), which was pushing the upper end of the price range in the College Hill Historic District, though not wildly. It’s a big, beautiful house (3,100 square feet). With some give in the price, one would expect it to sell fairly readily. The price did come down substantially, to $695,000, and the owners accepted an offer. The house was under contract for an unusually long time before the deal fell through (four months, from March through June).

In July, the owners took the house off the market for three weeks, changed real-estate agents and relisted it this week with a significantly lower price, $615,000. What a difference those three weeks made. You rarely see a house made over so significantly after it already has been put up for sale. Perhaps the new agent felt that the sellers’ taste for dramatic colors and wallpapers wasn’t helping (and it did hit you the minute you walked in). That’s all gone now. Here are some before-and-after photos (click on the photos to see them larger):

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 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 Five Most Interesting Houses Sold in November

December 2, 2023

109 E. Haywood Lane, Mount Gilead, Montgomery County
The Harris-Caffey House

Sold for $440,000 on November 16, 2023 (listed at $439,000)
4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms, 4,034 square feet, 0.54 acre
Price/square foot: $109
Built in 1898
The property includes a gazebo and a fountain, both in the front yard; a two-car garage; and a small storage building. The house is the only residence among 10 structures listed as “cultural resources” in the town’s comprehensive plan (p. 12).

Here Are 9 Historic Homes Listed in the Past 10 Days That Are Already Under Contract

February 8, 2023

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:

Today’s Special: Historic Homes Under $200,000

May 14, 2022

I’m not sure what the cutoff is for “affordable” these days when it comes to buying a home. What I do know is that older homes are becoming more unaffordable every day, like every other sort of home. So it caught my eye when a little group of at least relatively affordable homes popped up this week. They’ll probably sell quickly — one already has, in a single day — but their appearance on the market does confirm that such houses exist.

None of these appear to require major restoration work. They’re all essentially move-in ready, as far as one can judge from the listings. They’re mostly smaller places in smaller towns. For the moment, at least, these look like the best opportunities for buyers looking for affordable historic homes in the Piedmont Triad.

New Listing: A Mid-Century Modern Mansion in Greensboro Designed by a Top New York Architect, $550,000

February 24, 2022

The George and June Newman House is in Greensboro’s Latham Park neighborhood, 1307 Latham Avenue. It was designed by architect J.P. Coble, who practiced in New York City.

Jack Pickens Coble (1909-1984) was born in Greensboro. “He graduated from the Cornell University College of Architecture, where he won first prize in the 1934 Baird Prize Competition, $35 and a gold seal, for designing a proscenium arch and a curtain for an opera house,” his obituary in The New York Times reported. His residential clients included Edgar Bronfman, Bennett Cerf, Stephen Sondheim and Mrs. Marshall Field.

Piedmont Historic Homes

Historic homes for sale in the Piedmont Triad

Tag: Greensboro