GREENSBORO — From the street, you might never guess the house at 919 Spring Garden St. has been through a fire. The damage is visible only from the side and back.
Inside, it’s rough. The tenants who lived here left everything behind after the fire. Clothes, books, pictures and other household items, all smoke- and water-damaged, litter the floor. The rear section is burned and blackened, and there is smoke damage throughout.
Benjamin Briggs can see beyond all that. He restored a house about the same age and condition in High Point many years ago. It also had survived a fire. The floor plan and design details are nearly identical. So, it’s easy for him to see what it can be. In his mind’s eye, it’s already restored.
Briggs feels such a strong kinship with this house that he said he may need therapy if it ends up getting demolished. But that’s what will happen if Preservation Greensboro can’t find a buyer by September.
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The Colonial Revival house, built around 1902, still has many of its external historical features, such as diamond glass panels on the windows. The original front door, made of costly tiger oak, has a thick beveled glass panel and a built-in mail slot. The house also has its original slate roof, one of the few in College Hill.
But Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro, said he’s willing to give up the original roof (which would make it cheaper and easier to restore) if he can find a buyer willing to renovate the house. The list price of the more than 3,000-square-foot house is $50,000. But it probably will take a minimum of $150,000 to repair and renovate.
Most people shrink from a house with fire damage, but Briggs said, it actually presents an opportunity in this case.
“The strength of this house is that you can do whatever you want with the interior,” Briggs said. “The only original things left are one fireplace and mantel and one interior door.”
Everything else inside the house needs to be taken down to the studs and redone. That means the house can be configured in a variety of ways — with an open-concept kitchen, bigger rooms and closets, bathrooms where you want them or even a smaller floor plan. The rear portion, which has the most fire damage, was a 1940s addition so it doesn’t have to be rebuilt and preserved.
The foursquare home, so called because it has a four-room floor plan arranged in a cubical block form, was built by traveling salesman William Crawford in 1902 or 1903, according to Briggs’ research. It’s typical of the foursquare style, with two symmetrical stories, a broad front porch, and a pyramid-shaped roof with a central dormer window.
It originally had two symmetrical chimneys, but one was taken down and sealed at some point, probably during the 1940s. At that time, the house was converted to apartments to accommodate the influx of people drawn to Greensboro by the Overseas Replacement Depot, a training and processing base for soldiers going overseas during World War II.
The diamond-pane windows, twin columns and clapboard siding reflect the Colonial Revival style popular when the house was originally built. But it also reflects more regional influences, such as the wraparound porch popular in the Carolina Piedmont at the time.
In the 1940s, it was expanded to include a new two-story section in back and modified inside to convert the single-family home into a boarding house. Even the basement under the house was enlarged. Many of the original interior features, such as doors and fireplaces, were most likely lost during this expansion.
In the 1980s, it was converted from a boarding house to four apartments in a professional and well-done renovation, Briggs said. College Place United Methodist Church, which is two lots away, acquired the apartment house as an investment.
Then, in 2011, a hibachi on the second-story rear porch started a fire. The fire destroyed the porch and heavily damaged some of the rooms in the rear, but the slate roof kept it from becoming a conflagration.
The church assumed the house would have to be torn down. A giant pile of fill dirt in the backyard was intended to fill the basement after the house was razed. When the church learned the house could be saved, members agreed to work with Preservation Greensboro to find a buyer.
“The members of the church are rooting for us,” Briggs said. “They don’t want to tear it down.”
A tour of the interior reveals a few remaining gems. The one original interior door is a beauty — a six-panel tiger oak door with a glass doorknob.
On the second floor is the only original fireplace and mantel that remain. The fireplace is finished in pale green tile, and a cast-iron door with a cameo design covers the opening. The wooden mantel has flower medallions on the corners and an urn appliqué in the middle.
Though the attic is blackened, the leaded glass windows are mostly intact in the dormer.
Briggs is working to get some of the debris removed so people can truly appreciate the house itself, which is structurally sound.
It has nearly unlimited potential for someone willing to invest in renovation, Briggs said, and would be eligible for historic preservation tax credits. It can never be apartments again, but it could be a single-family home or perhaps a bed and breakfast inn.
On the corner of Spring Garden and Joyner streets, it’s within sight of Aycock Auditorium, which makes it a convenient location for anyone associated with UNCG. It has a view down Springdale Court and is just steps across the street from Springdale Park.
“It’s also one of the few places with a real urban street scene,” Briggs said. “There are always people walking and biking on the sidewalk.”
Tearing the house down would hurt the whole neighborhood, Briggs said.
“Joyner Street has the highest owner-occupancy rate in College Hill,” Briggs said. “It has such a strong sense of place. If this goes, you lose some of the character of the neighborhood.”