Moving history: Relocation prevents demolition, preserves century-old home
Moving history: Relocation prevents demolition, preserves century-old home
Mobile homes have come a long way in 100 years. A few blocks, in the case of one Greensboro home.
Of course, the house recently moved from Blandwood Avenue to a vintage first-ring suburb on Cedar Street was never meant to be mobile. But thanks to a concerted effort by a consortium of preservationists, the two-story Queen Anne-style house escaped the bulldozer and will soon return to service as a private residence.
“We thought it was too good to end up in the landfill,” said Ginia Zenke, whose family owned the house that was moved Sept. 19 from its original location in downtown Greensboro to make room for a new Guilford County jail. “We unfortunately had to tear down its twin, because the mover really needed the space.”
The Zenke family, which helped restore Blandwood Mansion and establish Preservation Greensboro, gradually bought up several houses on Blandwood Avenue over the years, including the one recently transplanted by Blake Moving Co. Preservation Greensboro worked with the Zenkes to save the house, and the city chipped in by contributing money for moving costs.
Mahlon Honeycutt owns the vacant lot at 408 Cedar St. where the house was moved. His family has owned the lot since 1976 and it has been vacant at least since that time, Honeycutt said. Preservation Greensboro has contracted with Southern Evergreen to restore the house, after which Honeycutt will buy the house for approximately $100,000.
“It fits perfectly on the narrow urban lot it sits on on Cedar Street,” said Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro.
The 1,650-square-foot house is one of the city’s oldest private homes. It has three bedrooms and two baths, with a kitchen and sitting room downstairs, and a small nursery off one of the upstairs bedrooms.
“It was included in Marvin Brown’s book ‘Greensboro: An Architectural Record,’ ” Briggs said. “He thought it was built sometime before 1910. We think 1900 to 1910. We don’t know exactly, because we don’t have building records at that point. It was one of the few residential buildings that remained in downtown Greensboro.”
Southern Evergreen, a Greensboro contractor that specializes in historic preservation, is working with Honeycutt to get the house back in shape. Their first job was restoring the foundation and the roof, both of which had to be removed for the move.
“The home is still in very original condition, which is wonderful, and allows us to go in and restore it and bring it back,” said Tom Garcia, Southern Evergreen’s principal builder and engineer. “As an example, the hardwoods are still there. There’s carpet over them now.”
The contractor will modernize the kitchen and bathrooms, but otherwise work to bring out the home’s historic details.
“It has some interesting details inside, but it’s a fairly simple house,” said Nora Miller, Southern Evergreen’s principal interior designer and historic preservationist. “It’s not a grand Queen Anne.”
Among the details that distinguish it as a Queen Anne house, according to Miller: It’s “asymmetrical in window and door placement, with a big bay window just on one side. ... It’s got a lot of fairly fancy brackets and scrolls,” and it had gables at both ends of the house. The architectural style was especially popular in the 1880s and 1890 during the Victorian era.
Garcia said the Queen Anne style is common in historic neighborhoods around Greensboro, including Cedar Street and the Charles B. Aycock Historic District along Summit Avenue.
“The windows in the attic are very Queen Anne in that they’ve got cranberry glass in squares around a central glass panel,” Miller said.
Unfortunately, most of the windows in the house will have to be replaced.
Garcia expects a quick turnaround on the work. The house should be restored and ready for tenants in mid-December, he said.
The house will maintain its historic character going forward. A condition of its sale was the attachment of a preservation easement to the deed, Briggs said.
“The house will not be threatened with demolition or neglect, or any sort of alteration of the historic fabric of the building, without prior discussion with the administrators of the development fund,” he said.
“We really hope to be a stabilizing force in the neighborhood and encourage homeowner investment. That’s the bottom line — that it adds to that neighborhood.”
Contact Eddie Huffman at 373-7335 or eddie.huffman@news-record.com.
House Moved 101809
The house is slowly prepared to be moved down Cedar Street. The jobs of moving telephone, cable and power lines as well as the house itself required dozens of professionals.
