Demolition of one house delayed, two other old houses that were moved recently will soon be named county landmarks.
For preservationists striving to save the former Margaret Gay house in Fisher Park, hope came recently when the Greensboro Historic Preservation Commission granted the house a reprieve.
The preservationists can draw inspiration from two houses that were rescued from demolition and moved in High Point and eastern Guilford County. Both will likely be declared Guilford County Historic Landmarks next week.
Because the Margaret Gay House, built by in 1930 by widow Gay and used for offices, is in the Fisher Park Historic District, the commission voted to delay owner First Presbyterian Church from demolishing the house for a year.
The church wants to remove the two-story house for parking.
The delay will give the Fisher Park Neighborhood Association and church leaders time to explore options. Options include moving the house, jacking it up and parking cars underneath or leaving the house as is, with the church creating a shuttle system to nearby parking decks.
The church has said it will give the house to anyone who'll move it.
To keep costs down, the house would have to be moved a short distance. After this blog mentioned recently that Fisher Park, the city's oldest subdivision, lacks vacant lots, former neighborhood association president Ann Stringfield said not so. The neighborhood has open land where the house could go.
The two houses that Fisher Park people can draw hope from are the Annettie Brown House in High Point and W.R. Smith House on Brightwood Church Road near Whitsett.
Julie Curry, the county planner who works with the historic property commission, calls the Brown house the last pure Queen Ann style house left in High Point.
Until last year, the the house that widow Brown built in 1897 stood on a hill on aptly named High Street. It looked down on the railroad tracks, which resulted in the founding of High Point in the 1850s. (The city gets its name from being the highest point between Goldsboro and Charlotte on the state-owned railroad leased to Norfolk Southern Railroad.)
The house's savior should come as no surprise - Dorothy Darr, active in High Point preservation since she moved there in 1982 from Manhattan.
She lives downtown in the the old O. Arthur Kirkman Sr. house, built in 1913 and also on High Street. Kirkman was a prominent furniture industry person, who had a private rail siding leading from his yard to the nearby main tracks.
The Darrs fixed up the Kirkman house, which features Tudor touches. It subseqently became the first house in High Point listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Darr was soon into various other preservation projects, including saving the remains of old William Penn High School, the former black school where the famed jazz musician, the late John Coltrane, played in the band.
She became interested in the Brown house two years ago, after the furniture-related company that owned it announced it would be torn down for additional showroom space. The house had been used in recent times for offices.
After Darr inquired, the company offered her the house if she'd move it within 30 days. She did, hiring Blake Moving Co. of Greensboro to relocate 3,000 square foot house last winter a half-block away to Oak Street, still in the High Street Historical District.
She's still tinkering with the house, but expects she'll rent it out as offices. She'll seek to a National Register of Historic Places listing for the house. It's eligible because of its age and architecture.
This Tuesday, the county historic preservation commission is expected to declare the Brown House a County Historic Landmark. That brings status to the house and a 50 percent cut in property taxes for Darr.
"It was managable," Darr says of the reason why she undertook the challenge of moving the house.
The commission that same night is expected to give the same landmark honor to the older W.R. Smith House, a coastal style cottage. Smith built the house in 1840 near the hotel he owned that served stagecoach traveler on what's now Burlington Road.
Jerry Nix, who is to eastern Guilford County what Dorothy Darr is to High Point, protested after the town of Whitsett rezoned the Smith house for a subdivision. As with the Brown and Gay houses, the owner told Nix he could have the house for free if he'd move it.
Nix, who had moved other historic structures, relocated the house a half block to land he owns behind the historic Daniel Foust House on Brightwood Church Road. In 1995, Nix restored the Foust house, built in stages from 1850 to the 1870s and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Nix is restoring Smith house inside and out hoping to get it as close to its original look as possible. He plans to rent it.
The county's historic properties panel meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Smith House. Later, members will walk to the backyard of the Foust House and vote on whether to make the Smith and Brown houses county historical landmarks.
Approval is expected for both.