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Good sculptors could probably pull it off. They could make the nose more narrow and longer, the face leaner and more lengthy. They could add a beard and bushy eyebrows.

Presto, the bust of Thomas Jefferson on the 17-story Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. building would become Abe Lincoln.

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Jefferson Standard Life merged with its subsidiary, Pilot Life Insurance Co., in the 1980s to become Jefferson-Pilot.

J-P was recently bought by Lincoln Financial Group. Based in Philadelphia, Lincoln uses Abe's profile in its logo.

Lincoln Financial Group signs and the Lincoln profile now decorate the still relatively new 20-story Jefferson-Pilot building at West Market and North Greene.

The building connects to the old Jefferson Standard building at Market and Elm. A Lincoln sign also appears on J-P's printing complex on North Church Street. No signs have been erected on the old Jefferson Standard Life Building.

The Jefferson-Pilot building was completed in 1990 to create room for the former Pilot Life Insurance employees, who moved downtown from Pilot's Sedgefield headquarters to join Jefferson Standard employees.

Sol Kovach, a Lincoln Financial spokesman, said both the new J-P and old Jefferson Life buildings should now be called Lincoln Financial buildings.

But he doesn't expect Jefferson's bust to topple. Nor does he expect the "Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co." engraved above the arched entrance to be covered. History protects them both.

The Jefferson Standard building, opened in 1923 and once the tallest structure between Philadelphia and Atlanta, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

To remain on the register, the building must not be altered significantly. The National Park Service, which administers the national register program, likely would frown on any attempt to remove the Jefferson bust or the Jefferson Standard name. They are original to the building.

Besides, keeping old names on buildings when new businesses move in has become a tradition in downtown.

The South Elm Street building housing Triad Stage has a "W" mounted at the top. It stands for Ward. Montgomery Ward department store was there until about 50 years ago.

In the same block, the name Kress still appears prominently on an art deco building, even though the dime store moved out in the mid-1970s. A social-conference center, an architectural firm and a public relations company now operate there, and a bar is expected to open soon on the first floor.

The group that owns the building still calls it the Kress.

Engraved on the front and side of the 13-story Guilford Building at South Elm and Washington streets is the name Greensboro Bank & Trust Co. The office building opened in 1927 with the bank as anchor tenant. The bank failed in 1933 during the Great Depression and never reopened, although other banks did occupy the space.

The lingering question is what about the Elm and Market intersection, where Greensboro was started in 1808. What will it be called?

Until 1918, the intersection was known as Courthouse Square. The county courthouse stood where the Jefferson Standard Life building is now.

When Jefferson bought property to build its high-rise headquarters, county commissioners moved the courthouse two blocks west on West Market Street, where it still stands.

After that, Market and Elm became known as Jefferson Square.

Long-time Greensboro residents still call it that.

Should it now be Lincoln Square? Seems logical.

Many Greensboro residents thought the days had passed when wrecking balls routinely smashed fine old homes here from bygone eras to smithereens.

A vocal preservation movement grew out of a wave of demolitions in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, many houses and old building wound up being nominated for the National Register of Historic Places rather than torn down.

Tax incentives for renovating old properties also helped stopped the destruction.

But the promise of tax incentives, historic honors or a new even a new site could save the Arbor House at West Market and Spring streets. As a photo in the News & Record showed Thursday morning, the wreckers have arrived.

At point into the 20th century, grand old homes lined West Market from 300 block to Greensboro Co1lege.

One of the first to go, in the the teens, was the home of A.W. McAlister, a founder of Pilot Life Insurance Co. He also introduced golf to Greensboro. His property at West Market and Spring Street is said to have included a putting green.

McAlister's house fell to make way for a new YMCA, not the current Bryan Family YMCA now at the site. The old Greensboro YMCA was built there and stood until the 1970s.

Eventually, only one house on West Market remained downtown, the Arbor House, as it was known for more than three decades, the Watkins House before that and the Julius Gray house before that.

As a photo in the News & Record showed Thursday morning, the house is coming tumbling down.

Julius and Emma Gray built it 1875. Research by Preservation Greensboro indicates part of the house may have dated to the 1850s. That part served as a gate house to Blandwood Mansion on West Washington, the grounds of which then extended to West Market.

Emma Gray was a daughter of former Gov. John Motley Morehead, the master of Blandwood Mansion, which preservationists saved in the 1960s and is now a National Historic Landmark.

If it was a gate house, the Grays enlarged into a sizable two-story dwelling reportedly using bricks from Edgeworth Female Seminary.

Gov. Morehead founded the seminary in the 1840s to educate his daughters and other young women who came from all over he region. The school closed during the Civil War, reopened afterward, then burned in 1875.

Preservation Greensboro mounted a herculean effort to save the Arbor House - named for the antique reproduction lighting fixture shop there until a few years ago. Preservation Greensboro tried to persuade Brown Investment Properties, which bought the house from heirs of Allen Watkins, to include it as part of a condominium project planned for the site.

Brown decided the house was too run down. The company offered it free to anyone who would move it.

Because of the location and the house's weight, a move would have had to be a short distance. The ideal spot was a short block away at Spring and West Friendly Avenue, a vacant lot where the Charles Ireland house stood until fire destroyed it in the 1990s. The lot owners, however, declined to accept the Arbor House.

Brown set a March 31 deadline for moving the house. No one came forward.

Preservation Greensboro and Blandwood Mansion staff members took photos of the house earlier this week for history's sake. Architectural Salvage, a subsidary of Preservation Greensboro that strips fixtures from structures about to be demolished, removed items from the Arbor House. They will for sale at Architectural Salvage's store in an old Packard auto dealership on Bellemeade Street.

Chester Brown of Brown Investments said he's not sure what will happen to the Arbor House bricks. If they were part of the seminary, they have some sentimental value.

Asked if people can stop and take a brick, Brown said, "If they do, I don't want to know about it."

He later called back to say if someone did want a brick to call his office first, 379-8771, and someone can come from Brown's nearby office. A gate could be locked.

With West Market downtown now free of residences, only a few remain from the 19th century downtown. The Sherwood House on West Friendly and the Jordan-Weir House (Greensboro Woman's Club) on Edgeworth Street are among them.

Wreckers are busy elsewhere downtown. They are knocking over the former North State Chevrole Dealership buildings along Smith Street. Few if any people expressed dismay about their demise. The building are of modern vintage, built as an addition to the original North State Chevrolet building across Smith.

The site will become Bellemeade Village, with condos, apartments, shops and restaurants. ilt there. The name honors another grand downtown house, on Bellemeade Street, that camd down in the 1950s to make way for a grocery store that didn't last long.

Downtown Greensboro promoters see Bellemeade Village as another important peg in downtown's revitalization. Saving the Arbor House would have helped, too.

Go ahead and call them artifacts. They won't smack you. They're happy to be alive and hearty enough to still party.

With an average age of 91, they belong to the Class of 1933 at Greensboro Senior High School, now known as Grimsley. They will hold their 73rd reunion May 13 at Muirs Chapel United Methodist Church.

The class numbered 372 graduates. One, Tommy Cox of Greensboro, estimates 48 to 50 are still alive.

He's got 16 definites for the reunion. One classmate is coming from Michigan.

The class holds annual reunions. The survivors have reached the age where waiting for reunions just on years ending in five and zero is actuarily chancy.

Their principal, Charlie Phillips, stayed in touch with the class until his death in 1989. Cox remembers during the early 1930s, the Depression, money was too scarce for Mr. Charlie, as he was known, to have a secretary.

Phillips summoned students taking business courses to take dictation and type his letters, Cox says.

"We had a ball last year," he says of 2005 get-together. Twenty attended. He's hoping he can reach that figure by May 13.

One woman came from California last year. She's still alive, but has said the trip would too arduous to make again.

The class looks forward to a milestone 75th anniversary in two years, when the city celebrates its bicentennial.

After that, it may be that proverbial situation of the last one alive turning out the lights.

This is the season for class reunions, and some of those classes have clocked much mileage since graduation day.

A blog last week reported the the 73rd anniversary of the Class of 1933 at Greensboro Senior High School (now Grimsley) reunion coming up May 13 at Muirs Chapel United Methodist Church.

A week before on Friday, May 5, the Class of 1941 at the former Pleasant Garden High School will hold its 65th reunion. The site will be Centre Friends Meeting Fellowship Hall on N.C. 62.

Compared to Grimsley's Class of '33, which had 375 graduates, Pleasant Garden was a tiny high with 39 graduates.

When survivors get together, they'll be plenty of to recall, including the school's six-man football team. It would be awhile before P-G had enough students to pull 11 on the field at the same time.

It could find, however, find nine players for a baseball team. My, how those country boys could play. Pleasant Garden won the state's Class C division in 1940 and 1941.

Class historian Gerry Kirkpatrick of Greensboro writes that the class's size got a boost from the presence of the Kirkman triplets - Mary, Marian and Stacy. The class also had two brother and sister combinations.

In a news release about the reunion, Kirkpatrick recalls teachers and especially the principal, E.D. Idol. Idol later became superintendent of the old Guilford County School System, made up of rural schools and some close to the city, such as Bessemer and Rankin.
Idol also did some teaching at P-G.

"We often enjoyed 'side tracking' Mr. Idol from the scheduled class topic to more interesting life experiences," Kirpatrick writes.

The class, he boasts, was the last to graduate after attending 11 years. In 1942, a 12th graded was added to the county schools. Rural schools in those days tended to be "union schools" housing all grades

The Class of '41 is blessed with longevity and good luck. Kirkpatrick says of the 39 grads, 21 live, as does one teacher, Louisa Millard Douglas.

Five sweetheart couples in the class married after graduation, according to Kirkpatrick's count.

Many graduates stepped out of their cap and gowns and into military uniforms. The United State's entry into World War II would come with the bombing of Pearl Harbor that December. P-G warriors saw combat in the Pacific and Europe.

"Fortunately, the class suffered no casualties...and the classmates were able to return home to continue their lives, most within the local area," Kirkpatrick says.

Pleasant Garden High lasted until the early 1960s when it and rivals, Alamance(Rep. Howard Coble's alma mater) and Nathanael Greene highs were consolidated into Southeast Guilford High School. The three schools left behind remain as elementary schools.

For more information about the reunion: call Kirkpatrick starting Thursday at 297-0033.

It seems like ancient history, but back in 1980 and 1981, new White House press secretary Tony Snow cranked out conservative editorials for the Greensboro Record.

He was part of a move that began in about 1977 to make the larger, morning Daily News and the afternoon Record's editorial pages distinct from each other philosophically.

The Daily News took a moderate to liberal approach to local, state and national affairs. The Record became the city's conservative voice.

Bill Cheshire, who had replaced Jesse Helms place as editorialist for a Raleigh television station, was hired to head the Record's page. He brought in two talented young writers, Terry Eastland (later Attorney General Ed Meese's press secretary) and Joe Duggan.

When Cheshire left, Eastland, who had departed for the San Diego paper, returned as his replacement. When Duggan later left to join the Richmond paper, Eastland hired Snow to replace him.

Snow was born in Kentucky and grew up in Ohio, graduated from Davidson College and did a graduate school stint at the University of Chicago.

Before joining The Record, he taught school in Kenya and Ohio and did advocacy work for the disabled in North Carolina, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia also says Snow is talented musician who plays flute, saxophone and guitar and performs in a Washington band, "Beats Workin'."

At the Record, Snow wrote unsigned editorials and signed editorial columns. One of the later had the memorable title, "Uncle Sam - the Bozo of the Bozarks."

To gain reporting experience, Snow took leave of the editorial department brielfy and covered news for The Record. His stories carried headlines such as, "Man Held in Probe of Three Deaths."

News & Record columnist Rosemary Roberts, who was writing editorials for the Daily News back then, remembers Snow as a young man with "a very clever sense of humor" and a good writer.

Even though she was on the Daily News, she said the Record's editorial writers then were brilliant, dispite the fact she often disagreed with the position expoused.

Snow left in 1981 to join the Virginia-Pilot in Norfolk. He later wrote editorials for the Detroit News and then became editorial page editor of the Washington Times. During the first Bush administration, he left the Times to become Bush's chief speech writer.

He and the writer he replaced in Greensboro, Duggan, had become friends. Snow hired Duggan as an assistant.

Duggin, now a political appointee to the U.S. Agency for International Development, says, "I'm glad to be somewhat back on the same team he is. He has a lot to offer."

Duggan remembers being impressed with Snow after the first Bush lost for re-election.

"He had to rebuild his career," he says. "I admired him for his courage and tenacity."

Snow returned to the Detroit paper as a columnistin Washington. He later wrote a column for USA Today and another column syndicated in 200 newspapers. In 1996, he joined Fox, doing both radio and television commentary. He also continued to write a column.

"He has always been very enterprising," Duggan says.

In taking the White House job, Duggan says, Snow is making a smart move. It demonstrates the guts that Duggan always knew Snow possessed. Snow is walking away from a lucrative career with Fox News.

Duggan also says Snow has the right temperament and character to be an effective press secretary.

"He's a genuinely nice person and he projects it to the public,"
Duggan says.

At 50, Snow apparently has overcome a struggle with colon cancer. Otherwise, he wouldn't be taking a White House job that, as Rosemary Roberts says, "is 24-7." A press secretary must always be available to a news media that always needs feeding.

Roberts is not sure if Snow is making the right move, theorizing, "I think he wants something new."

Of course, when Bush leaves office in early 2009, Snow can always return to Fox or one of the political talk cable channels.

Max Thompson could have stopped his civic work, his duty more than done. He had helped create the Aycock Neighborhood Historic District, served as the neighborhood association president and chaired the city's zoning commission.

But he kept being publicly active, and it's a good thing, too.

After much lobbying in the mid 1990s, he convinced the city to rebuild at a cost of $123,932 the Hendrix Street Pedestrian bridge. The span crosses the double-track Norfolk Southern Railroad and connects Aycock to another historic district, Fisher Park.

An old bridge at the same site lacked eye pleasing qualities. The new bridge, completed in 1997, is a beauty, with steel trusses and landscaped beautifully at both ends.

Thompson died last August at 62. His friends decided the most appropriate memorial would be the bridge.

It will be dedicated in his honor during a ceremony there May 18.

"Max was persistent,''says Mike Cowhig, a city planner who works with the the city's three historic districts, Aycock, Fisher Park and College Hill. "He wouldn't let the idea die."

At the ceremony, a plaque will be presented. Mayor Keith Holliday will speak, as will Max's son, Sam, and Chuck Newell, who with Thompson and a few others pushed the city to declare Aycock a historic district in 1984.

Thompson lived on Chestnut Street, not far from the bridge.

The original bridge was erected in 1909 and carried cars and small trucks over the tracks. In 1972, the city deemed the bridge too rickety for motorized vehicles, but allowed pedestrians and bike riders to continue using it.

In 1988, the city decided the bridge was even too risky for walkers and bike riders. It was barricaded for six years before being torn down, except for the abutements, in 1994.

That's about when Thompson began working for a new bridge to keep two old neighborhoods linked.

The replacement bridge stands where the old stood. It is higher to allow Norfolk Southern freight trains carry double-stacked trailers to fit under.

The ceremony will include entertainment by a barber shop quartet. Thompson, a landscaper by profession, loved that kind of music and once sang in a group.

Afterward, those attending will adjourn to Sternberger Park on Summit Avenue for a celebration.