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GREENSBORO — The city’s zoning commission voted 4-3 Monday to allow condos on North Elm Street and Cornwallis Drive — a plan that involves demolishing the historic Commencement House built by UNCG students.

The house was designed in 1957 by students at what was then Woman’s College of North Carolina working with Greensboro architect Edward Loewenstein. It is believed to be the earliest example of a house designed by female students.

“I can say with great authority that this is a one-of-a-kind house,” said Patrick Lee Lucas, a historian and associate professor in UNCG’s department of interior architecture.

Lucas said the multilevel house was designed with then state-of-the-art technology, such as dishwashers, garbage disposals and aluminum wiring. The result was hailed as a “house of tomorrow” in media from the Greensboro Daily News to McCall’s Magazine.

The 23 students, a mixture of art and home economics majors, designed the house in a yearlong course, then oversaw its construction — an unheard of feat for women of the time.

“You have to remember that at that time, the architecture school was at N.C. State in Raleigh, not here,” Lucas said. “Significance doesn’t always come from white males and conventional design. Sometimes it comes from young women who tried something new.”

The condo buildings’ developer, John Stratton III, said he doesn’t consider the building historic.

“This is a building designed by, really, a home ec class at Woman’s College,” Stratton said, giving a laundry list of North Carolina architects he thought wouldn’t consider it historically or architecturally important.

That characterization offended zoning board member Patti Eckard, who told Stratton he shouldn’t denigrate the young women who designed it or their achievement. Stratton said he was only quoting what he’d read in the 1958 McCall’s Magazine piece and meant no offense.

In the end the commission narrowly voted to allow the area to be rezoned for the condos. Chairman Raymond Trapp joined Commissioners Patti Eckard, Ralph Johnson and Mary Skenes in supporting the rezoning. Cyndy Hayworth, Kevin Wright and Susan Spangler voted against.

With such a close vote, several neighbors said they’d appeal the decision, taking it to next month’s City Council meeting. Many said it was not just a matter of preserving the Commencement House. They also opposed the fact that the condos would be as tall as 50 feet.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com