The Secrets of Irving Park
- Amanda Garner-Walker
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
Written by Benjamin Briggs in May 2016
Updated May 2025 by Samantha Stewart, Gate City Preservation L.L.C.
When the wrecking ball came down on the Spencer Love House in March of last year, scores of Irving Park neighbors, Greensboro residents, and historic architecture lovers across the state were shocked, outraged, and appalled. Many wondered how this could happen in a National Register Historic District. The loss of this high-style Georgian Revival mansion with exceptional historical significance, representing not only the original owner, textile magnate Spencer Love, and architect William Holleyman, but also the skilled builders who constructed it, was an unfortunate lesson that National Register status alone is not enough to protect a historic building from the landfill.
Despite the shockwave, many Irving Park residents have gained a renewed sense of pride and purpose and are advocating for greater protections for their historic resources, using tools like easements and landmarks. There has never been a better time for the Preservation Greensboro Tour of Historic Homes and Gardens to return to Irving Park. The neighborhood remains a pillar of high-style architecture, recreational planning, and early neighborhood development, featuring some of the most exemplary architectural resources in the state, designed by regionally and nationally prominent architects like Charles Barton Keen, Mott Schmidt, and Greensboro’s own Charles Hartmann and Edward Loewenstein. Six of these exceptional homes are featured in this year’s tour.
Irving Park was born from the ideal that rural environs were superior to those of the city. This ideal tapped into evolving concepts of recreation, density, zoning, exclusivity, nature, and aesthetics. The result was the development of a planned, landscaped, and heavily restricted community—with racial covenants, deed restrictions, and redlining prohibiting any person with African ancestry from occupying a property unless they were a domestic worker. As early as 1903, developer A.M. Scales with the Southern Real Estate Company began to acquire land in what is now Old Irving Park with the vision of establishing a rural retreat for affluent white families in northwest Greensboro, segregated from the working-class communities to the north, east, and south. Along with an adjacent 140 acres owned by the McAdoo family, one of the first builders in the area, the first phase of neighborhood development had begun.
The Greensboro Country Club was incorporated in 1911 with the objective of promoting and encouraging “outdoor and athletic games and exercises, including golf, tennis, croquet, bowling, automobiling and all other forms of wholesome and healthful sports, games and amusements.” In addition to those activities, the club sought to encourage nearby development “for country homes and residences for its members and other persons.” The club purchased 109 acres of land from the Scales family that year, and subscriptions for club memberships were promoted.
In April of 1911, club promoters announced that John Peacock had been contracted to lay-out the new golf course. Peacock was familiar with North Carolina as a winter resident of Pinehurst. He was reputed to be an expert in his line, having “laid off the grounds for a number of golfing clubs of importance in the country” in addition to his charge as a superintendent of the Algonquin Golf Club in New Brunswick, Canada.
As Peacock prepared his plans for the golf course, perhaps the earliest example in the state of a golf course developed into a neighborhood plan, the first phase of the Irving Park subdivision was also laid out by Greensboro civil engineer William B. Trogdon. His phase included streets directly surrounding the course, including Country Club Drive, Carlisle Road, Sunset Drive, Briarcliff Road, and Meadowbrook Terrace, and most roads bordered fairways so that properties overlooked the course as a park space. Areas of the plan that were not adjacent to the course were designed with passive open space, such as “The Dale,” a small park between Edgedale and Allendale roads.
The first generation of homes was built by a group of rising legal and insurance professionals. Between 1912-1913, Junius Irving Scales, an attorney and the namesake of Irving Park, began a Colonial-style home at 309 Sunset Drive. Robert Jesse Mebane, a prominent North Carolina businessman, built a handsome Dutch Colonial residence at 401 Sunset Drive (on the tour), and Harry Bush, a vice president of Dixie Fire Insurance Company, constructed his fine Colonial Revival home at 313 Sunset. Aubrey Brooks, the general counsel for the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, had a grand Neoclassical Revival home named Poplar Hall that was begun in 1913 based on plans provided by Hartford, Connecticut architect A. Raymond Ellis.
The clubhouse was completed in May 1912, the golf course opened in November of the same year, and the name “Irving park” was selected in January 1913. This momentum led to the incorporation of the Irving Park Company in June 1914, taking over neighborhood development from Scales and his Southern Real Estate Company. The transition of ownership drove the second phase of development in 1914 when city planner John Nolen (1869-1937) was hired to enhance the landscape of the existing development scheme and to extend roads, parks, and developable lots west to Battleground Avenue. The third phase of development is defined by the work of landscape architect Robert A. Cridland (1877-1959). The Philadelphia- and Atlanta-based designer had previously been engaged by the Vanderbilts to rework their Hyde Park estate overlooking the Hudson River in New York. Cridland’s 1916 plan for Irving Park added the area north of Irving Pl and east of Granville Rd.
Speculating on the success of the project, the Irving Park Company constructed two homes on Country Club (today Irving Park) Place. The two "handsome seven-room residences" were designed by architects Keen and Barton, and were promised to be "thoroughly modern in every respect and in keeping with the surrounding residences".
The third phase of development is defined by the work of landscape architect Robert A. Cridland (1877-1959). The Philadelphia- and Atlanta-based designer had previously been engaged by the Vanderbilts to rework their Hyde Park estate overlooking the Hudson River in New York. Cridland's plan of 1916 for Irving Park added the area north of Irving Place and east of Granville Road. The tract had been owned by William McAdoo, who had initiated a plan for subdivision of property as early as 1913. Revisions to Nolen's earlier plan included renaming of some streets, the replatting of some lots, and the design of Elmwood Park as a primary gateway from North Elm Street.
Cridland wrote a highly influential book titled "Practical Landscape Gardening" that was published in 1916. He remained influential in public and private design projects from Atlanta to New England for the next several decades, including Hope Valley in Durham, Oak Hill Gardens at Berry College in Georgia, and the Hudson View Gardens in New York.
Irving Park's original nine-hole golf course by John Peacock was a constant throughout all phases. The club hired Fred N. Newrham as its manager and he provided lessons for golfing neophytes. Between 1925 and 1930, the course grew to it's current 18-hole form when it was
re-designed by premier American golf course architect Donald J. Ross (1872-1948). Ross was born in Dornoch, Scotland, and he was involved in designing or redesigning around 400 courses
from 1900 to 1948. Subsequent to the Ross redesign, a lake on the Number 13 fairway was built in 1932. With the exception of changes to holes 13, 16, and 18, the course continues to reflect Ross's design.
The planning of the recreational amenities such as passive parks and recreational club activities positioned the neighborhood well for the Roaring Twenties, when Greensboro's blue- and white collar companies expanded rapidly. Residential commissions that remain standing in Irving Park include:
• Raleigh James Hughes's Mediterranean composition for Parran Jarboe at 206 Sunset Drive (1915)
• Charles Barton Keen's Colonial Revival scheme represented in the H. Smith Richardson House at 1700 Granville Road (1924)
• Simmons and Sawyer's charming English Tudor for the Courtenay-Stone House at 709 Sunset Drive (1925)
• Charles Hartmann's grand Georgian Revival composition for the Lynn Williamson House at 307 Sunset Drive (1925)
• A. Raymond EIiis's Neoclassical design for the Paul Schenck House at 812 Country Club Drive (1925)
• Harry Barton's charming design for the McDaniel Lewis House at 1508 Edgedale Road (1928)
• William C. Holleyman Jr.'s Norman Revival design for the Herman Cone House at 806 Country Club Drive (1934)
• Edward Loewenstein's Modernist Martha and Wilbur Carter House at 1012 Country Club Drive (1950-51)
• Mott Schmidt's elegant Georgian Revival Ralph C. Price House at 1801 Carlisle Road (1953-1955)
As Irving Park passes its centennial, pressures from real estate and twenty-first century lifestyles challenge the community. Smaller homes are threatened with destruction and replacement with overscaled residences. Additions to historic properties are not always sympathetic to the history and architecture of the community. Street parking remains a challenge on roads designed before automobiles grew popular. However, the neighborhood remains popular and attracts a high level of investment.
In May 2016, Preservation Greensboro held its Sixth Annual Tour of Historic Homes & Gardens in Irving Park. The celebration featured five vintage homes in the as part of National Historic Preservation Month. The tour highlighted stunning features of early twentieth-century architecture that include Irving Park's oldest home and a Mid-Century Modern home. Participants gained insights into local history, horticulture, and design.The tour is the flagship fundraiser for Preservation Greensboro.
This year, Preservation Greensboro is holding its Fifteenth Annual Tour.
Preservation Greensboro contributes a key role in the growth of Greensboro's economy and vitality through tourism, reinvestment, and place-making. With diverse initiatives that help you to restore, explore, and connect with your community, Preservation Greensboro provides a voice for revitalization, improved quality of life, and conservation of historic resources for future generations. Are you a member yet? Learn more about Greensboro's only member-supported preservation organization by exploring our website or joining
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