News-Record.com

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.