The Art & Soul of Greensboro May 2014 O.Henry 47

Street Level

Cannon CourtshipThe story of the historic Cannon Court apartments serves as a

reminder of Greensboro’s urban evolution

By Jim SchloSSer

Laura Katz is way too young to have heard the man-sion-dwelling millionaires howl-ing eighty-seven years ago about the construction of the building she has come to love so dearly. Six years ago, she told her real estate agent she wanted to live in a condo, preferably old and in Fisher Park. Just one bedroom, she said, and lots of light.

The agent eventually came upon a unit in Cannon Court Condominiums, until 1985 known as Cannon Court Apartments, a thirty-unit, three-story, U-shaped complex in the 800 block of North Elm Street. With an intimate court-yard, it features a handsome brick façade graced with bay windows, stair towers and a crenellated roofline.

“I had to have it,” Katz told the agent the instant she stepped through the door and saw the oak hardwood floors, crown molding, glass doorknobs, hexago-nal tiles in the bathrooms, the 12-inch-thick plaster walls and other charming features, including electrical floor outlets in the dining room for plugging in her toaster, coffee pot and waffle iron.

Fearful another party was about to make an offer, she offered the full asking price and became the owner.

“I love Cannon Court,” says Katz, now president of the Cannon Court Homeowners’ Association. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else in Greensboro. The people in the building are amazing — I have come to consider many of them additional family members, and we have a fabulous, eclectic mix.”

Cannon Court stands today as one of Greensboro’s most dignified residen-tial buildings, trumping, with its classic design and solid construction, scores of modern, sprawling apartment condo complexes built in the last century. Its location is ideal, a block from the park for which the neighborhood is named, and only a few blocks outside downtown. Long ago, if a Cannon resident was too lazy to walk or the weather was lousy, a streetcar stopped righty out front on tracks that split North Elm.

“The building repre-sents a period of rapid growth in Greensboro,” Preservation Greensboro Executive Director Benjamin Briggs says. In the same decade, downtown saw its skyline take shape with the King Cotton Hotel, the Jefferson Building, the Carolina Theatre, the Central Fire Station and the neoclassical Southern Railway Passenger Depot.

“It was an era when Greensboro turned from

being a town into an urban city,” Briggs continues. “The Cannon is an example of urban architecture that you see in Queens, New York, and Dupont Circle, in Washington. It is rare and fleeting in North Carolina.”

Cannon Court has just been approved by the Guilford County Historic Preservation Commission for Local Landmark status as a historic site. The City Council is likely to agree. The lengthy application, which requires searching newspaper articles from the period, reviewing deeds and old maps and providing architectural and historical context, was prepared mostly by architect Carl Myatt, who lives around the corner from Cannon Court on North Park Drive. He was assisted by Dana Rojak, a UNCG student. Myatt calls the building “sensitive to the site and character of the Fisher Park neighborhood.”

Buildings of Cannon Court’s grace and stature are becoming extinct, he says. “That is a special building,” Myatt says. “It is a bonus for Greensboro to still have it.”

And to think, when a Norfolk, Virginia, developer, C.C. Pierce, announced in 1926 he was spending $150,000 to build Cannon Court, expressions of outrage resounded from one end of the neighborhood to the other. At that time, Fisher Park, founded about 1902, was second to Irving Park as the city’s gold coast residential neighborhood.

A number of wealthy Fisher Park residents complained to City Hall that the apartments would be out of character and would ruin the neighborhood.

Among the loudest opponents were Charles Gold, a founder and a top execu-tive with Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co.; his neighbor, Wilbur Carter, who at different times headed three local life insurance companies; Rudolph Bernau, an optometrist and jeweler; and former Mayor Claude Kiser (namesake of Kiser Middle School). Even the church across the street from the Cannon site, Park Place Baptist, expressed its opposition.

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48 O.Henry May 2014 The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Gold, Carter and Bernau lived in nearby mansions, two of them in the very same block as the proposed Cannon Court, which was only a block from the nineteen-acre park that anchors the neighborhood. Kiser lived farther away in Fisher Park, at 108 West Fisher Avenue. The four of them stood convinced that the apartments would bring undesirables into a enclave of stately, single-family homes, many built early in the 20th century in what would be the city’s first planned subdivision.

Bernau predicted if the neighborhood allowed Cannon Court, “in twenty years you’ll have nothing but apartment buildings, and in thirty years you’ll have nothing but slums.”

By contrast, George Grimsley, an educator turned insurance man, a former City Council member and the future namesake of Grimsley High School, dismissed the criticism, particularly Bernau’s. Grimsley, who had moved from Fisher Park to Winston-Salem to start an insurance company, still owned land in the neighborhood and said he one day intended to build apartments, including one overlooking the park.

“I can build an apartment that looks nicer than a residence,” he harrumphed.He dismissed the notion that the apartments foreshadowed slums.

Grimsley said he lived in an apartment in Winston-Salem. He pointed out that Pennsylvanian Andrew Mellon, philanthropist and former ambassador to the United Kingdom and no less than secretary of the U.S. Treasury, lived in an apartment.

The council voted 4-to-1 to permit the Cannon’s construction. In the majority was Greensboro Daily News publisher E.B. Jeffress, who lived in Fisher Park and was mayor. The lone dissenter was bookstore owner Norman Wills. Two council members, Julius Cone and Jefferson Standard Life President Julius Price, were absent. Price owned one of the largest mansions in Fisher Park.

In deciding to grant developer Pierce a building permit, the City Council surely took into consideration that Greensboro faced a housing shortage. Apartments, which had become popular in more urban settings, seemed a logical solution, provided they were well-built and tasteful.

Everyone who drives North Elm Street to and from downtown passes Cannon Court, which because of its elevation and setback from the street, seems to tower over its neighbors. Developer Pierce and Norfolk architect Philip Moser left a forty-foot frontage between Elm and the first two building, to make sure Cannon Court didn’t overwhelm North Elm. The space also permitted fresh air flow that helped cool the apartments. The Cannon’s courtyard was decorated with shrubs, flowers, trees and benches.

From the beginning, Cannon Court attracted tenants from a variety of back-grounds, from schoolteachers to business executives. One of the largest units, two bedrooms and more than 1,100 square feet, was occupied by Ruth and William Boren Jr., vice president of Pomona Terra Cotta Co., one of Greensboro’s largest manufacturing companies.

Other tenants through the years have included the late Worth Henderson, a prominent attorney, whose son Doug serves as Guilford District Attorney; and Gladys Duke, a successful retail shop owner at a time when women rarely owned businesses.

The name Cannon Court serves as an ideal trivia contest answer. The build-ing honors former U.S. House of Representative Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois. “Uncle Joe,” as he was known during his many years in Washington, was born in the Guilford College community in 1826. His family moved to Illinois when he was an infant.

The court’s residents are fiercely loyal to the building they realize is an integral part of Fisher Park and, for that matter, Greensboro.

Street Level

The Art & Soul of Greensboro May 2014 O.Henry 51

Street LevelAllison Jones thought nothing could compare to the old houses and buildings

in Wilmington’s historic district where she lived for four years.Then, fifteen years ago, she returned to Greensboro, where she had gone to

college and now works as a graphic designer. Riding down North Elm Street through Fisher Park, she passed Cannon Court, a building she had noticed many times. She had admired its exterior as had many others, but had never been inside. She spotted a for-sale sign out front.

She says that after seeing the unit, with its two bedrooms and one-and-a-half, “I said to myself I can’t let this go.” Then she saw the kitchen sink. “That was the selling point,” she says. “I could take a bath in it, it is so big.” She is, of course, talk-ing about a farm house sink, once standard in all thirty Cannon Court units.

While Jones and Laura Katz say the Cannon was love at first sight, others, such as six-year resident Chris Fletcher, an events planner, says, “You fall in love with it the longer you stay.” Current District Court Judge Linda Falls also lives in Cannon Court.

For sure, Cannon Court has its drawbacks. The units tend to be somewhat smaller than modern apartments [see page 60.] They lack central air condi-tioning or an elevator. Parking is on street or, after hours, in a parking lot of an office building next door.

Although young tenants are more common, soon-to-be-86-year-old Jan Jacobsen has lived fourteen years in the same studio unit — one room, one bath — on the first floor. “This place is almost like an island in itself,” says the retired nurse, who loves being near the park. She also likes the mind-your-own business character of her fellow Cannon Court residents coupled with the peace and seren-

ity of the place. “I have a very secure feeling here. It suits my purpose very well.”Owners include graphic designers, business people, law students and a doc-

tor. They tend to be urban lovers. They especially embrace the park, where dogs are welcome.

Laura Katz still attracts the occasional stare when she enters the park with her imposing Great Dane. (Her other Dane was run over and killed on Elm

Street recently.) Residents brag about being only a few

minutes away from downtown, with its restau-rants, night life, baseball stadium and shops along South Elm.

“When the Performing Arts Center is built it will be in walking distance and make it more attractive for people to live here,” Katz says.

And being historic doesn’t come with a big price tag. Compared to newer Greensboro condo units, Cannon Court is a bargain. Prices range from about $80,000 to $100,000, depend-ing on a unit’s size. One owner says he got his at an opportune time for less than $70,000. A

studio has gone for lower than $40,000, but studios rarely come on the market. Some investors buy units to rent out. One investor owns six rental units.

The Cannon Court was one of three apartment complexes built in Fisher Park in the mid-1920s. The first, in 1925, was the Dolly Madison Apartments. Yes, “Dolly.” It is, of course, named for another well-known Guilford County native who moved away in her youth. For the spelling of Dolley’s first name, blame the stone mason who engraved it. It stands proud in the far northern end of the neighborhood. It too was also built by C.C. Pierce and designed by Philip Moser. Pierce sold the Dolly Madison a year later and built Cannon Court.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro May 2014 O.Henry 53

Another Fisher Park complex, built in 1925 by a Richmond, Virginia, developer, is the Vance, Shirley and Fairfax, three apartment build-ings side by side at Magnolia Street and East Bessemer Avenue.

The Dolly Madison, along with the Vance, Shirley and Fairfax, likely escaped the wrath of wealthy Fisher Parkers because they stood far enough away from the park. But their presence may have aroused fears when Cannon Court was proposed. Enough was enough, those in opposition argued.

Cannon Court did seem to have set a trend. In 1939, one of the city’s foremost architects,

Charles Hartmann, whose works include the Jefferson Building and Grimsley High, built the Country Club Apartments across from the gates of Irving Park. The large courtyard that’s a hallmark of the Country Club Apartments (now condomini-ums) may have been an idea that grew in scale from the smaller courtyard at Cannon Court.

Other apartments sprang up over the years, most of them bland and out of character with the early 20th century ambience of the neighborhood. But that was before the early 1980s when the Fisher Park neighborhood became a local historic district, setting standards for present and future structures. Now, more than eight decades later, Bernau’s predic-tion that the neighborhood would be overrun with slum apartments hasn’t come close to being true.

In the end where, controversy once reared its head, irony abounds. Charles Gold’s house has been cut up into rental units, called the Howard Apartments. Wilbur Carter’s house is now Delancey Street, a rehab house for the homeless and recover-ing drug and alcohol addicts. R.C. Bernau’s home has been turned into offices. Park Place Baptist Church later closed, was torn down and Craft Insurance now occupies the site. Claude Kiser’s house on Fisher Avenue has been demolished.

The best may be ahead for Cannon Court. Historic Landmark status will allow the homeown-ers association up to a 50 percent property tax reduc-tion for costs of repairs to the building, the courtyard and other common space, such as stairwells.

The designation would add prestige. Cannon Court would become the ninety-eighth county his-toric property since the the program began in 1980.

Approval will put Cannon alongside some high profile properties, including the Woolworth Building; the building now housing Natty Greene’s restaurant, the 110-year-old Dixie Office Building; the 1844-built Greensboro Women’s Club; Reynolda House look-alike the Alexander McAlister house in Irving Park, built in the early 1900’s; and the 76-year-old Country Club Condominiums. OH

Jim Schlosser is a contributing editor of O.Henry maga-zine. He can be reached at jim@ohenrymag.com.

Street Level