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Copyright (c) 2004, Greensboro News & Record, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 24, 2004

BLAIR TO BECOME SPIFFY ADDRESS AGAIN
THE VICKS APARTMENTS WERE RENAMED THE BLAIR APARTMENTS IN THE 1930S, BUT LITTLE ELSE HAS CHANGED THERE SINCE 1919.

By Jim Schlosser

GREENSBORO - A company that was making a fortune relieving bad colds could afford the cash for something grand in its hometown.

In 1919, Vick Chemical Co. , whose products included Vick's VapoRub and Vick's Cough Syrup, opened The Vicks Apartments at 132 Fisher Ave.

They had to be classy because the three-story building stood within seeing distance of the Church Street home of H. Smith Richardson, who that year became president of Vick Chemical, founded in 1905 by his father, pharmacist Lunsford Richardson.

The Richardson house is long gone, but The Vicks Apartments survive, known since the 1930s as the Blair Apartments.

"These were high-end apartments," said contractor Dawn Chaney, leading a tour of the building, which she and her business partner, Pam Frye, are restoring. "They each had 1,600 square feet, a fireplace, a sun room."

Actually, two sun rooms - one in the front overlooking Fisher Avenue, the second on the back with a view of downtown.

Chaney and Frye intend to bring back in exacting detail the second decade of the 20th century inside The Vicks/Blair apartments.

Along with the Lyndon Street row houses and the Flatiron Apartments on Summit Avenue, these apartments are Greensboro's oldest.

All were considered unusual for their time because before the 1920s renters tended to live in rooming houses instead of apartments.

Carl Carlson, 89, a member of the Richardson family, says Vick Chemical was making huge profits, some of which it was using for real estate ventures.

"It was one of the first and nicest apartments in Greensboro," Carlson says of The Vicks.

Among The Vicks first tenants was G.R. Dawson, corporate secretary to Smith Richardson.

Two other units were occupied by Vick white-collar employees.

Local, state and federal preservationist experts are looking over Chaney's and Frye's shoulders to make sure the restoration is historically accurate.

It must be to qualify for tax benefits that go to those who restore old structures.

The experts can relax. Chaney has a 25-year restoration track record. She owns properties in the three local historic districts: Fisher Park, College Hill and Aycock. She restored as offices a half-dozen houses that survive from a former residential neighborhood on downtown's southwest side.

Termite and water damage has made The Vicks/Blair restoration costly. The other day, a green roof tile tumbled down, but some good came from that mishap. The date on the back of the tile said 2-6-19. Chaney and Frye had been unsure whether the building was completed in 1918 or 1919.

Despite the neglect, Chaney and Frye are grateful that the building they first entered last year hadn't changed since it opened.

The layout of apartments, the bathrooms with claw-foot tubs, the hardwood floors, the doors with transoms, the brass mail slots in the lobby and other features were original, even the light over the main entrance.

Chaney and Frye are making some upgrades, such as air conditioning and gas logs in the fireplaces. Former kitchen pantries in each apartment are being converted to a second bath.

The original hardware on doors and windows are being cleaned. Where replacement hardware is needed, Chaney has found pieces from the same period or reproductions.

"It's amazing what the Internet can do to help you," she says.

She found a Michigan company that still makes old-fashioned two-button light switches - one for on, one for off - that need replacing in the apartments.

The reproductions come with a twist that would dumbfound tenants of the 1920s.

"The buttons also serve as dimmers," Chaney says. "Young people will like that."

She plans to market the apartments toward professionals who want to live near downtown. She and Frye haven't determined rents or what the apartments will be called, Blair or The Vicks .

The Vicks seems logical because a metal ornament with a "V" has for 85 years decorated the wall above the entrance.

The original light fixture that illuminated the entrance is away being cleaned. The six mail slots in the foyer wall will get a polishing. Unlike today's flat slots, these slant downward into the wall.

Chaney and Frye ponder what to do with the milk compartment in the foyer wall. It was where the milkman left fresh dairy products for tenants.

The Vicks Apartments were bought in the 1930s by Walter E. Blair, who had a role in developing Irving Park. His son, Kennett Blair, inherited the apartments, and he and his wife, Treva Blair, lived in Apartment 5. After Kennett Blair died, his widow remained there almost to her death last year at 84.

She willed the apartments to her sister, Jo Ann Gross.

"We wanted the building restored to its former glory," says Gross' daughter, Robin Nocci.

The building looked shabby in a block where it serves as a bookend to a row of renovated craftsman-style houses.

Unable to afford a costly rehabilitation, Gross and Nocci looked for a buyer. Those who expressed interest didn't share the vision of the project that Gross and Nocci had.

Then, the plumber who had worked on the apartments for years suggested Dawn Chaney, for whom he also had worked.

"No one was telling us what we wanted to hear until Dawn came along," Nocci says.

The restoration should be finished by summer.

After that, Chaney and Frye will start planning the reconstruction of the brick shell covered by vines in the rear. It was a three-car garage for tenants, with maids' quarters above.

The original look will be restored, but with two apartments inside instead of cars.

Chaney loves standing on the back sun porch on the top floor of the apartment building and taking in the views.

Through the west windows, the spires of First Presbyterian Church and the tree canopy over Fisher Park appear.

Through the north windows looms the downtown skyline, much taller than in 1919.

Chaney says a friend told her recently, "When I look out that window, it reminds me of Paris. When I looked the other it reminds me of New York."

"I said, 'No, you are in Greensboro.'"