Greensboro's Treasured Places
Greensboro's Grand Houses
Enabled by a dramatic increase in community wealth due to rapid industrialization and commerce, Greensboro's corporate captains, textile barons, inventors, and successful attorney's began to erect well-designed and sometimes palatial residences just before World War I. These wealthy patrons commissioned Period Revival houses and mansions by renowned architects including Charles Barton Keen of Philadelphia, A. Raymond Ellis of New York, and Charles C. Hartmann of Greensboro.
The subdivision of choice was Irving Park, designed in 1911 by acclaimed landscape architect John Nolen. The plan was enlarged and revised by Philadelphia landscape architect Robert B. Cridland in 1920. Early residential designs follow Neoclassical formats with symmetrical facades often including Greek and Roman orders. Several examples of European-influenced designs in Norman, Tudor, and even 
Mediterranean styles coexist comfortably next to later Modernist designs by Greensboro-based architect Edward Loewenstein.
Continued economic growth enabled other stylish neighborhoods to emerge across the city, including Hamilton Lakes and Sedgefield. Each neighborhood contains remarkable period architecture, including the A. M. Scales House in Hamilton Lakes designed by C. Gadsden Sayre of South Carolina, and the remarkable Adamsleigh, designed by Winston-Salem based Luther Lashmit. Adamsleigh, built for High Point textile baron John Hampton Adams, is popularly recognized as Greensboro’s largest private home, encompassing over 15,000 square feet with separate caretaker’s cottage, stables, tennis courts, swimming pools, and an elevator.
Greensboro's architectural legacy from the prosperous period extending from 1910 through the Great Depression represents an unrivaled period of wealth and commerce in the city's history. Quality of design, craftsmanship, and civic pride culminated to create a family of residential architecture that is exceeds any other period in terms of scale, design, and quality of construction.
Irving Park was listed on the National Register in 1994.