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Local historians and those who want to
preserve Wake Forest’s heritage
anxiously watching to see who or what
buys the town’s second oldest house.
The oldest, of course, is
the plantation house Calvin Jones built
about 1820, but the South Brick House
has an almost equal history.
It is part of Captain John
Berry’s legacy. A Hillsborough architect
and contractor, he submitted a plan for
the first substantial college building,
but the college trustees substituted
another and hired him anyway to build
what became known as “the College
building” and “Old Main.” Using his own
slaves and local clay, he put up the
three-story building in 1836 and 1837.
It burned to the ground, the victim of
arson, in 1933.
While the college building
was under construction, two trustees,
C.W. Skinner and Amos J. Battle,
proposed they would spend their own
money, not to exceed $3,000 each and to
reimbursed, for Berry to build two
identical houses for professors, each 36
feet long and 32 feet wide. When they
were complete in 1838, they became known
as the North Brick House (razed to make
way for the vacant dormitory that stands
at the intersection of Front and North)
and the South Brick House, which still
stands at 112 E. South Ave., surrounded
by a creamy picket fence.
The college retained
ownership of the houses for a time. The
South Brick House and two lots were sold
to an S.S. Biddle in 1855 for $2,000.
The college was always strapped for
money. At that time, the total lot for
the house stretched the length of the
first block of South Main Street.
Although symmetrical in
outward appearance, the interior of the
house is not. Instead, it is in the
shape of Greek key. The front door opens
into a front hall or parlor that
stretches across the front to the left
and ends at the right with a door to the
staircase, which crosses the window to
the right of the front door.
It had a varied history and
many owners during the years, and
someone built what is now the kitchen at
the rear. At one point – or perhaps
several – the owner rented rooms to
college students and athletes, among
them Arnold Palmer.
Dr. Edgar E. Folk, English
and journalism professor, and his wife,
Minta, nee Holding, bought the
house in 1949. Mrs. Folk, who worked in
the college library at that time, was a
daughter of T.E. Holding and grew up in
the spacious Queen Anne house next door.
The Folks replaced the wide
front porch that had been added at some
time with the classical pillared Greek
Revival porch. Mrs. Folk papered the
unusual front hall or parlor with a
mural and filled the house with
antiques.
When the college moved to
Winston-Salem in 1956, Folk and Dr. A.C.
Reid maintained their Wake Forest homes,
sharing an apartment during the week and
returning home on the weekends. Mrs.
Folk became a well-known dealer in
antiques with a shop in town.
Their grandson owns the
house but lives in Maryland with no
interest in living in Wake Forest, and
no other family member wants to purchase
it.
Thus the sign – Gail Weisner
with Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and
Walston is peddling the house for a cool
$700,000. Weisner, who lives in historic
Oakwood in Raleigh, has an appreciation
for the history and the value of the
house. The ideal buyer, she said, would
be someone who “would live in and
preserve it.”
Whoever buys it will be
given the original contract with Berry,
just one of the hoard of historic and
personal papers found in the house.
The house is sound and has
been maintained, she said. “The (heart
pine) floors are in good shape. John
Berry built a good house.”
But there are drawbacks, and
the idea that it can continue as a
private home is becoming less and less
realistic. Weisner estimates it will
cost $250,000 to do the needed
renovations such as redoing the outdated
bathroom and kitchen and adding air
conditioning.
If the house were near
Washington, D.C., or New York City,
Weisner said, it would be appreciated
and gladly renovated, “but here
everybody wants new and shiny.” It is a
part of the town’s historic district,
but the appearance standards apply only
to the exterior visible from the street.
She and others have made
overtures to organizations and
individuals about preserving it as a
museum or for some other public use but
without success.
Weisner said one of the best
uses might be as something similar to
the Tucker House in Raleigh, available
to be rented for meetings, wedding
receptions and other group events. The
barns and outbuildings could become
workrooms and sales rooms for local
potters or other artists. In combination
with the Renaissance Plan and the
efforts to bring tourists to the
downtown area, “It could be a fabulous
destination.”
You can see the unique
interior sometime in July when Weisner
plans an open house after all the
family’s personal belongings have been
removed and the house has been cleaned. |
