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Last week Gary Roth, the president of
Capital Area Preservation, was ebullient
because the Wake Forest Town Board had
agreed to waive fees and provide the
crews and equipment, up to $20,000
worth, to move the Lake house from the
Southeastern Baptist Theological
Seminary campus to a new site on North
College Street.
This week his hopes were
dashed, then somewhat revived.
“Here’s where we stand,”
Roth said late Tuesday. “We needed to
get Embarq and Time Warner [Cable] on
board, the property owners on board. If
any one of these things did not go well,
we were dead.
“Embarq did not go well.”
Roth said John Barnes,
Embarq’s public affairs manager, told
him Monday the company would have costs
in the neighborhood of $30,000 and
“many, many customers who would be
affected.”
“That was pretty much the
bullet,” Roth said. “So then I went to
the seminary and spoke to Ryan
Hutchinson, who has been a straight
shooter. His first reaction was, maybe
we could do something. He did not want
to let it die.”
Roth said he asked if there
was not a corner of the seminary
property where the house could go, and
that slim possibility remains. “It’s not
dead yet.”
Hutchinson, the senior vice
president for business administration,
was obviously still interested in saving
the house when he was called later
Tuesday, and he was going to consider at
least another possible site.
“We are still looking,”
Hutchinson said, “and I was going to try
to contact Embarq. I’m not hopeful but
at least I can try.” Time Warner Cable
also had said thousands of their
customers would be affected. Hutchinson
said he had joked that “People can live
without power and telephones, but don’t
take away their cable.”
The problem, Hutchinson
said, is that the seminary does not have
a need for the house and, although it is
in excellent condition, “It’s still
going to require quite a bit of work”
after the move. “I don’t have the
resources to address the needed care of
it.
“What we had really hoped
was that the house was going to be
used,” Hutchinson said.
The seminary has given the
house to CAP and has made a contribution
toward its move. Roth says the seminary
has been very, very supportive.
The brown, Craftsman-style
bungalow is the last house standing on
what was West Avenue that led from the
steps of Gore Gymnasium (now the Ledford
Center) to the first Wake Forest College
athletic field. The short street was
once lined with homes, and F.E. Osborne
Sr. built the brick duplexes at the end
and around the street after the seminary
took over the campus.
The house now stands in the
footprint of what will be Patterson
Hall. The ground has been cleared and is
being graded around it, and the
seminary, which has worked with CAP to
try to rescue the house, has set a date
of Aug. 15 by which it must be moved
from its foundation.
The bungalow is a house
without a home. Last year the Wake
Forest commissioners voted not to sell a
lot on South College, at least one other
property owner has refused to sell what
seemed an appropriate lot, and now a
last-minute plan to move the house to a
North College Street lot CAP purchased
has fallen through.
Aside from the historic
value of the house itself – because of
its age, about 80 years, and unusual
Oriental details – the house is valued
for its association with the Lake
family. It was owned during the 1930s
and 1940s by I. Beverly Lake Sr., then a
law professor at Wake Forest College who
served at the North Carolina Department
of Justice before running for governor
in 1960 and 1964. At the time of those
campaigns, he lived in a North Main
Street house still owned by family
members. Lake lost both election bids.
In 1965, he was appointed a justice of
the North Carolina Supreme Court and
served there 13 years. He was a great
and gracious source of Wake Forest
history until his death in 1996.
His son, I. Beverly Jr.,
became a lawyer, served in several
capacities in state government, then
became a special Superior Court judge,
an associate justice on the North
Carolina Supreme Court, and retired
after five years as the Chief Justice.
He lives in Raleigh but since his
retirement has been active in Wake
Forest, serving as a member of the
Cemetery Board and the Wake Forest
College Birthplace board. |
