The old Edmunds Manufacturing site now being leveled had rich history.
The destruction of the old Edmunds Manufacturing Co. under way on in the 1000 block of Battleground Avenue has brought words of sadness but not protests from local preservationists.
At least one of the buildings in the complex, the distinct limestone structure ,dates to the 1920s. It was the office of Greensboro Cut-Stone Works, which apparently shaped granite on the spacious grounds around the building.
The stone works' location made sense. The railroad that connected Greensboro to Mt. Airy, home of the N.C. Granite Co., passed on the other side of Battleground Avenue (then called Battleground Road). The tracks remain but they deadend a few miles to the north. What's now Norfolk Southern Railroad abandoned most of the Mt. Airy line in the 1970s.
Mike Cowhig, a city planner who keeps an eye on historical structures, wishes the limestone building, with its distinct facade, could have been incorporated into whatever developer Roy Carroll plans for the 4.4-acre site. Carroll is buying the property from the Edmunds family, whose company made steel parts there until about two years ago.
"There's a lot of industrial history there," Cowhig says.
As the story Friday about the transaction between Carroll and the Edmunds said, the Mile-High Swinging Bridge at Grandfather Mountain was built at the Battleground site in the early 1950s when Truitt Manufacturing Co. was there. Truitt opened in 1938 and added buildings for its steel fabrication business. Truitt sold to Edmunds later in the '50s.
Charles Hartman Jr., an architect who was the son of the architect who drew the plans for the Jefferson Standard Building, designed the bridge. The structure was shipped in parts to the mountains and assembled by another Greensboro company, Craven Steel Erecting.The bridge has been a tourist attraction ever since.
Carroll said he looked at the possibility of including the limestone building and the other structures into a commercial or mixed commercial-residential project he'll likely develop. But he said he found too much deterioration.
The limestone building, he said, remains in decent shape, but the interior lacks the charm of the exterior. The building, he said, also stands too close to the edge of Battleground.
