news-record.com

GREENSBORO — The last time the market tanked and the Great Depression set in, the solution was clear for the Queen Anne transitional with the wraparound porch at Greene Street and Fisher Avenue.

Divvy it up into flats, nail up some kitchen cabinets and commence to charging rent.

That was 75 years ago. Today, the math isn’t so simple for the old dame.

On the one hand, home repairs were never her strong suit. Her prized hardwood floors warped, Roman columns crumbled, plaster ceilings rotted clear through to the shingles, and beneath the house, the foundation rests unseen on a cavernous, lopsided pit.

Then again, 701 N. Greene isn’t just any address, but a corner lot and a key entry to Fisher Park Historic District, where the Downtown Greenway will pass, a last stand for preservation.

So there were all the makings for a classic sticky wicket when current owner First Presbyterian Church bought what is known as the Holleman House as part of a strategic expansion. The church board studied the cost of a renovation — starting at $300,000 — and finding no takers, decided recently to demolish the house.

The Fisher Park Neighborhood Association wants to help raise money to give the old gal, in all her dilapidated, cross-gabled glory, a second chance.

“It’s got historic value and architectural significance that you really can’t put a price on, and it’s on a very prominent corner,” said John McLendon, president of the neighborhood group. “That whole area and this house are on the edge, and the edges are very fragile.”

First Presbyterian’s board, which paid $400,000 more than two years ago for the house plus an adjoining brick apartment building, is not unsympathetic to the neighbors’ perspective: Keep Fisher Park’s tree-lined, old-Greensboro charm from being swallowed piece by piece by blank institutional structures.

“I understand the challenges that these neighborhoods face,” said Betsy Oakley, who leads the church property committee and once led Preservation Greensboro. “We have tried to do all the right things. It is just going to be too costly.”

A walk-through of the house reveals the toll that 75 years of rentals took on the Holleman House, built between 1905 and 1910 and named for original owner Silas Holleman. Beyond peeling paint in jarring shades of the 1970s , bathrooms and kitchens are in disrepair, and the house reeks of mold.

Before First Presbyterian’s purchase, the city condemned one downstairs unit after a tenant complained. The church decided to keep the house vacant, although someone recently climbed the rickety back staircase to make a shelter of sorts on a back porch.

How much it would cost to renovate the house depends on what the goal would be. Joe Thompson of New Age Builders, whose company renovates just such properties, said bringing the house up to code would be one matter; converting it for office use would entail more extensive structural work.

“I think the house is definitely saveable,” Thompson said. “It wouldn’t be cheap.”

Because the house lies within one of Greensboro’s three designated historic districts, along with Aycock and College Hill, the church had to get permission, which it has obtained, to demolish the house.

Still, city planners are holding out hope that church board members will consider collaborating with the neighborhood when they meet Monday.

Church leaders, with initiatives such as feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, question whether one down-at-the-heels house is worth this much money.

But from a preservation standpoint, opportunities to save a throwback like the Holleman House, with its crazy quilt of Queen Anne-Victorian-Colonial Revival features, are scarce in the era of the big box store and the pre-fab home.

“There are fewer and fewer historical structures left, and so many have been lost in that area,” said Mike Cowhig, a community planner with the city. “In College Hill, we renovated about 35 houses that were in worse shape than this. It’s all a question of money.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com