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GREENSBORO — The city’s most historic home has a new owner and with it a more secure future.

On Tuesday, officials transferred ownership of Blandwood Mansion from a state commission to Preservation Greensboro Inc., the nonprofit that has operated the property as a museum for 35 years.

“We are now the owner instead of the tenant,” said Benjamin Briggs, Preservation Greensboro’s executive director. “Now that we are the owner, we can move ahead a little less fettered.”

The transaction — which involved no exchange of money — means security for the property.

The former home of Gov. John Motley Morehead now will be locally owned and it will be protected from demolition or unwanted changes by what officials call a preservation easement.

Before the establishment of the legal document this week, the county’s only National Historic Landmark building had no local, state or federal safeguards.

“It was shockingly vulnerable,” Briggs said. “We suddenly went from having no protection to being one of the most protected properties in the country.”

The transfer also means the mansion and carriage house at 447 W. Washington St. will not become a state historic site, as had once been the goal.

In 1969, the two-acre property had been deeded to the John Motley Morehead Memorial Commission. At that time, Preservation Greensboro began to lease Blandwood from the commission, which had been established by the General Assembly a decade earlier.

However, the aim had been for the state eventually to take over operation of the site.

“There were some people on our board that wanted to try it,” Ashley Crayton Poteat, Blandwood’s director/curator, said of the idea. “But we knew with the state’s finances being what they are that there was no chance of that happening.”

In addition, North Carolina officials set out earlier this year to reduce the number of state commissions.

“The governor said there were about 150 that they were looking at and (we) were on the list,” said Anne Daniel, the longtime head of the Morehead commission and a Greensboro resident. “If we were going to be decommissioned, what was going to happen to Blandwood?”

Daniel said that hastened efforts to transfer the property. She said the transaction went smoothly and visitors to Blandwood won’t notice a difference.

Preservation Greensboro, which carried out a 10-year restoration of Blandwood, has raised money for the mansion since 1966. That role will continue.

The mansion operates on an annual budget that can reach $125,000. Most of the money comes from local donations and events such as the Blandwood Ball.

Blandwood, which gets no state funding, has served as a house museum since 1976.

Parts of the mansion predate the founding of Greensboro in 1808.

In 1795, a farmer named Charles Bland built a four-room Federal-style house on the site.

In 1822, local businessman Henry Humphreys expanded the house to six rooms.

Morehead, a lawyer and politician, bought the house in 1827.

Documents show that Morehead called the property Blandwood; it’s unclear exactly how the name originated.

After Morehead became governor in the early 1840s, he hired noted New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis, the co-designer of the state capitol, to draw up an expansion for Blandwood.

“What Davis designed for Morehead was very cutting edge,” Briggs said. “Houses at that time were Gothic.

“He introduced a new style of architecture in the United States.”

It was called Italianate, and Blandwood is the oldest surviving example of the style in the country.

“Blandwood stands among the most important (houses) in the nation as a turning point in American design,” Briggs said.

“Greensboro is fortunate to have such a distinguished property in the heart of the city.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com