News-Record.com

Because Philadelphia must be at least 400 miles from Greensboro, a reader poses a good question: Why is Greensboro's Philadelphia Lake
so named.

For those unaware of Philadelphia Lake, it's now mostly a marsh off off Cone Boulevard, near Cleburne Street. Until the 1960s, it was a bonafida lake, though much smaller than brother next door, Buffalo Lake.

The two lakes were separated by an earthen causeway. Cone Mills owned both lakes, and still owns Buffalo. The mills drew manufacturing water from them. A third lake, Lake Jeanette, still there, served as a back-up water source. A pipe line connected the three lakes.

When work began on the housing development now called New Irving Park, and on Mendenhall Middle School, silt and run-off pretty much filled in Philadelphia Lake.

The name became meaningless to everyone except for some grown ups who had played as youngsters around Philadelphia Lake, then surrounded by forest.

The name, though, has come splashing back because of the recent construction of the expensive Philadelphia Lake Townhomes complex. It's along Cone Boulevard bordering the marsh that was the lake. Passersby naturally wonder why happened to the lake and how it got its name.

Lacy Baynes Jr., a retired Cone Mills executive who was once in charge of the company's real estate subsidiary, Cornwallis Development Corp., says the name makes historical since.

He says Cone Mills bought the land for the lake many years ago from the Philadelphia Land & Title Co. Buyer named the lake for seller.

The names of the other two Cone lakes make more immediate sense. Buffalo Lake is fed by a tributary of North Buffalo Creek. Buffalo passes through the former Cone mill villages and plants, only one of which, White Oak, still operates.

Buffalo's dam also stretches along the bottom of a hill below one of Greensboro's oldest churches, Buffalo Presbyterian, at 16th and North Church streets.

Lake Jeanette is named for the wife of the first Ceasar Cone. He with his brother, Moses Cone, built what became Cone Mills in the 1890s and early 1900s. Jeanette Cone lived more than 40 years after her husband died in 1917 in their mansion at Summit and Bessemer avenues. After her death, the mansion was torn down.

But Lake Jeanette flows on as the centerpiece of an upscale residential area known as the Lake Jeanette community.