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The Wake Forest College Birthplace –
also known as the Calvin Jones House –
looks more like the home it once was
these days, thanks to Susan and Sherrill
Brinkley.
And the North Main Street
neighbors and interested people will be
invited to an open house there on
Tuesday, June 26, between 5 and 7 p.m.
It will also be a time for neighbors to
ask questions about the building plans.
The Brinkleys are moving
from their longtime home in Wakefields,
the Sutherland-Harris plantation home on
Capital Boulevard, and they donated some
of their furniture to the Birthplace: an
1845 grand piano, an 1830 sofa
upholstered in green taffeta and an 1835
mantel clock.
“These are all things we
will make best use of as we furnish the
house as it may have been between 1820
(when it was built) and 1847 when Dr.
Wait retired,” Ed Morris, the director
of the Wake Forest Birthplace. Dr.
Samuel Wait was the first Wake Forest
College president and he and his family
lived in the Calvin Jones House before
he built a house on the west side of
what is now North Main Street.
Morris said the Birthplace
Society plans to go to the Historic
Preservation Commission in August with
more of their plans for the annex behind
the house. It will be late fall at the
earliest before construction on the
annex can begin.
Because of a number of
delays, including permission from the
Raleigh Public Utilities Department, the
separate bathroom building Morris and
the society had planned to be complete
by early spring will be built at the
same time as the annex.
If you were at Six Sundays
this past Sunday, you surely noticed the
orange and yellow tapes strung around
the Ruth Snyder Garden, the Old Well, a
number of trees and all the plantings
around the Calvin Jones House. During
earlier Six Sundays concerts, children
had rampaged through the garden, the
plantings and the trees, causing damage,
and Morris asked the members of the Wake
Forest Cultural Arts Association to
string the tape, which they did, calling
themselves “the people police.” |
