Greensboro's Treasured Places

Architectural Guide of High Point Published

After years of work, High Point has a publication dedicated to the architectural history of the city. In efforts of transparency and full-disclosure, I am its author. I will receive no financial benefit in the sale of the book.

The publication entitled “The Architecture of High Point, North Carolina” hit shelves in High Point last week. Books are available for purchase at the High Point Historical Museum (1859 East Lexington Avenue), the North Carolina Room (3rd Floor) of the High Point Public Library (901 North Main Street), City Hall at the Mall (Oak Hollow Mall, Lower Level), High Point City Hall, 211 South Hamilton Street), the Doll & Miniature Museum (101 West Green Drive), and Barnes and Noble Booksellers at Oak Hollow Mall. The book costs $49.99, and proceeds are returned to the High Point Historic Preservation Commission to invest in city preservation activities such as educational materials and programs.

The 263-page publication includes a comprehensive architectural history of the development of the city, coupled with an inventory of 202 individual sites; a glossary of architectural terms; end notes; works cites; and an index. The book is illustrated with documentary photos of city structures both extant and extinct, early maps, floor plans, and hundreds of contemporary images of historic sites. Twenty four color plates depict historic structures in High Point in which color plays a key factor in their design. The cover design features the newly renovated Briles House at 1103 North Main Street, the home of High Point’s Junior League (image, upper right).

With a lack of a comprehensive survey, High Point has been an unsung hero in North Carolina’s architectural history. The book reveals historic buildings in High Point that few are aware of, such as the impressive and sprawling Three Musketeer’s Estate in Emerywood designed by Winston-Salem architect Luther Lashmit and decorated by New York firm W. & J. Sloane (image, lower right). As I state in the preface:

Reflecting the city’s growth and influence is an architectural inventory epitomizing High Point’s increasing civic pride and cultural sophistication. Since the city’s early settlement, hotels and merchant-houses presented fashionable façades to visitors and discerning shoppers. Later, wealthy industrialists had ambitious houses and churches erected in popular styles that illustrated the growing town’s sense of style. Finally, civic projects such as schools and parks utilized modern designs that spoke to High Point’s progressive spirit and quickening pace. By the middle of the twentieth century, High Point had an impressive collection of architecture representing nearly every popular style since the city was founded, including designs by nationally recognized architects and planners.

I hope the book will make the case for increased awareness and protection of High Point’s remarkable architectural legacy. This legacy is a gift of past citizens, and need not be recklessly squandered by well-meaning developers, promoters, and planners. If cultivated, High Point will find that’s its architectural legacy is a tangible and enjoyable asset that newer communities in our region will never attain. In addition, investment in historic resources is an expenditure that will never be relocated to foreign shores, and serves to strengthen the city’s tax base and quality of life for all citizens.

With this publication, High Point joins 32 municipalities and 38 counties in North Carolina with published architectural surveys. Locally, the Guilford County architectural survey was published in 1970, and Greensboro’s survey was published in 1995. Other cities, such as Charlotte, have not yet published an architectural survey. Way to go High Point and happy 2008 Historic Preservation Month!

Life in the Fast Lane: Exotic Architecture Mirrors Notorious Past

On the Greensboro Road in eastern High Point, there stands two exotic houses like no others in the Furniture City. Newcomers, if they catch a glimpse of the homes through the trees, marvel at their wonderfully unusual architecture. Old timers, however, remember one the homes as the site of one of North Carolina's most sensational murders. Here at the Terry and Peggy Harper House, the unique architecture is matched by its intense and dramatic history.

Rewind to the early 1920s, when two High Point men, Terry Harper and J C Welch, met a pair of attractive showgirls in Chicago. The beautiful women fell in love with their newfound suitors and soon were engaged to be married. The future Peggy Calligan Harper was from Chicago; the future Wilna Welch hailed from New Orleans.

After marriage, both couples settled in High Point and commenced construction of two well-designed and eccentric houses in 1926. The homes were built side by side and designed by Glendale, California architect Clarence D. Tedford. They were the talk of the town not only because of their exiting out-of-town inhabitants but their dramatic architecture as well.

The Terry and Peggy Harper House was designed with an Arabian theme, featuring a keyhole entry, barrel-tile roof, and a turban domed front porch roof supported by spiral colonettes. The J. C. and Wilna Welch House was a bit more subdued, but featured a Spanish theme. Spanish style homes were popular in California at the time with movie stars as it was both luxurious and exotic. The two houses were stuccoed and originally painted pink, which only accentuated their stage presence on the Greensboro Road.

Both homes were opened for numerous and some say, quite memorable parties. They quickly gained a reputation as a place to see and be seen.

Tragedy struck at the Harper Home in 1931, however, that tarnished the exuberant spirit of the house. A Jamestown man, Charles Holton, had made the acquaintance of Peggy Harper. Mrs. Harper, by later newspaper accounts, decided to leave her husband and marry Mr. Holton. Two days before Christmas, Charles Holton was found by Mr. Harper in the Harper Home, and shot four times in the living room of the house.

Mrs. Harper’s account of the murder follows: “Mrs. Harper and Mr. Holton entered the living room together...Mr. Harper came in excitedly through a side door. She, fearing trouble, grabbed him as he passed the room door, but he knocked her down and rushed into the living room where there were a few brief words and then several shots rang out. Mrs. Harper got to her feet as quickly as possible and ran into the room and attempted to wrest the pistol from Mr. Harper, suffering a powder burn on one hand in the scuffle which started before Mr. Harper had fired the final shot from the pistol.”

Mr. Holton, in a statement before his death, stated that he had been set up. He claimed that Mrs. Harper asked him to the Harper residence where Mr. Harper awaited to discuss arrangements for a divorce with his wife. Upon entering the home, he said, he was ambushed by Mr. Harper and shot.

The trial captured the attention of newspapers for days, resulting in numerous “Extra” publications. Despite accusations that she was known as ‘Chicago Peggy’ (and all a nickname like that would imply) during her vaudeville days, Mrs. Harper was acquitted when the judge allowed a motion for non-suit in the murder charge against her. She remained a participant in the case, taking the witness stand in defense of her husband.

Mr. Harper had his own version of the evening, insisting that he found Holton sitting on his living room settee. When Mr. Holton sprang up and made for an end table with a pistol on it, he shot to protect himself.

After the Judge completed his one hour charge, the all male jury rendered a “not guilty” verdict after 27 minutes of debate. According to newspaper reports, the Judge “rapped for order in the courtroom suddenly gone wild in a demonstration of its approval of the verdict.” Mr Harper collapsed under the stress of the trial and was helped into the judge’s chambers while Mrs. Harper was carried into an adjacent jury room to recuperate.

Once the sensational trial had ended, attention centered on the future plans of the Harpers. Much to everyone’s surprise, the couple reconciled and remained in their home. In 1945 they moved to south Florida. Happy times did not remain at the adjacent Welch Home either. The Welches divorced in the mid 1940s and Wilna moved back to New Orleans.

Certainly, the fast lane did not lead to High Point in the 1920s. However, a few of the big city’s bright lights did shine in High Point during the Roaring Twenties in the form of exotic houses, big parties and ended in a scandalous trial. Today, the parties are over, the trial is forgotten, and the participants long gone, but High Point still has two fantastic houses as a reminder of faster times.

High Point Loses Modernist Architect

High Point lost a leader in architectural design last Friday with the passing of Robert W. Conner, at the age of 93. Bob was a native of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where he was born on September 8, 1914. He grew up in Utica, New York, before attended Duke University, and later studied architecture at N.C. State College. He worked for legendary High Point architects Louis Voorhees and Eccles Everhart from 1948 until he opened his own practice in High Point in 1956.

Bob was so well-regarded in the community because he, among other High Point architects, incorporated national architectural trends into commissions in the Furniture City. Styles such as Modernism, New Formalism, and Neo-Expressionism would likely have never found their way to the streetscapes of High Point had it not been for Bob Conner. In fact, High Point’s position as a leader in North Carolina’s modernist movement can be credited to Bob and his fellow designers.

Among his earliest works is his own home (image, upper right), constructed in 1956 at 1405 Emerywood Drive. An avid environmentalist, Bob blended his home with its heavily forested environment through use of western red cedar sheathing and a low roofline. Inside the house, windows enjoy broad vistas into the woods, and walls are built of historic bricks salvaged from a demolished downtown building. The home is understated in design, yet features carefully chosen materials that express natural colors, textures, and patterns.

In 1958-60, Bob designed a two-story office building at 1813 North Main Street for Harold C. Bennett, owner of Bennett Advertising. The sleek and modern building was groundbreaking for High Point at the time, featuring a façade of multiple surfaces and shapes. The cantilevered second floor dominates the composition, featuring a masonry-framed border surrounding a recessed tile wall containing four ceiling-to-floor windows. An automobile passage supported by columns that widen as they rise skirts north of the building. The composition presents a remarkably modern face in the midst of later strip development of the 1960s and 1970s.

Around 1960, Bob designed an innovative structure for the Washington Street Branch of the High Point Public Library (construction image, center right). The inward-oriented structure presents pink Roman brick walls to the public streets surrounding the site. Rising one story, the walls are broken only by a ribbon of short windows placed high on the façades. Above the window band are turquoise-colored panels that rise to the roofline. The main entryway permits access from Fourth Street to a covered courtyard, richly landscaped and surrounded by generous windows. The building shelters its occupants from the noise of the surrounding city streets, yet opens into a controlled courtyard full of light and vegetation.

Bob designed an unusual church in 1960 for the First Reformed United Church of Christ. The sanctuary is sheltered beneath a striking parabolic roofline sheathed in copper, which has been allowed to oxidize into a soft verdigris color. The brick façade of the sanctuary, defined by the high arch of the roofline, features a large cross superimposed on a field of stucco. A freestanding spire rises to the east. The building stands as one of the most architecturally striking and progressive in the West End area.

He also designed a sleek Modernist building for the Scottish Bank in 1962 (image, lower right). Rising four stories over Hayden Place, the bank is constructed of a pale concrete, with walls on the east and west interrupted by bands of windows. The main entry, aligned to take advantage of clear sight lines toward Main Street, is in a recessed two-story glazed curtain wall accentuated by bold green aggregate trim and complemented by an expanse of small green and red tiles arranged in a textile plaid pattern. A broad plain of concrete stamped with a diagonal shingle pattern extends from the entry to the northeast corner of the building.

Around 1965, Bob designed a building for High Point’s only synagogue; the B’Nai Israel Synagogue located to 1207 Kensington Drive in Emerywood Forest. This unique Neo-Expressionism-style building established a sense of permanence as well as progressiveness for the congregation. The complex includes a large sanctuary complemented by an extended educational building to the north. The sanctuary rises to a height of two stories and is topped by a dramatically undulating roof. The concave stuccoed façade wall bears a menorah and the name of the congregation in Hebrew.

Among his other projects were designs for Ragsdale High School and Junior High in Jamestown, Grace Lutheran Church in Thomasville, First Union Bank on North Main Street, and Christ United Methodist Church.

During his career, Bob did what some architects can’t do today. He enticed clients to embrace the importance of good design and style, and was able to produce commissions that remain landmarks of their time throughout the city. His body of work expressed the wealth and sophistication of High Point during the 1950s and 1960s in ways few communities in North Carolina have the benefit of. The city is better for having Bob Conner contribute his life’s work in it, would it be that same could be said for all of us.

Images courtesy of High Point Museum.