By Old Greensborough is the historic heart of downtown Greensboro, a walkable stretch of South Elm Street and its neighboring blocks where the city’s earliest commercial and civic ambitions are still written in brick, terra cotta, and cast iron. From an Italianate villa designed by one of America’s first celebrity architects to an 18-story 1920s skyscraper that once towered above the entire state, the architecture here is unusually rich for a city of Greensboro’s size. This guide walks you through the landmarks worth seeking out, with practical details for both visitors and locals who pass these buildings every day without knowing their stories.
What and Where Is Old Greensborough?
Old Greensborough centers on the South Elm Street commercial corridor and the surrounding Downtown Greensboro Historic District, a National Register district whose contributing buildings were largely constructed between about 1885 and the 1930s. The result is a layered streetscape: late-nineteenth-century three-story brick storefronts in an Italianate-influenced commercial style sit alongside 1920s movie palaces and Art Deco department-store facades. Today the district mixes boutiques, antique and craft shops, restaurants, and bars into ground floors that once housed dry-goods merchants and five-and-dimes.
The best way to experience it is on foot. Park once downtown and plan a loop that takes in the museums, the theaters, and the storefronts. The official Visit Greensboro guide to Old Greensborough is a useful starting point, and the City of Greensboro’s Historic Preservation office maintains information on the district’s protected buildings.
Blandwood: The Oldest Italianate House in America
A short walk west of the commercial core, Blandwood is the area’s single most significant piece of architecture. Originally a modest farmhouse built around 1795, the home was transformed in 1844 into a Tuscan-style villa for John Motley Morehead, the North Carolina governor often called the “Father of Modern North Carolina.” The design came from Alexander Jackson Davis of New York, one of the most important American architects of the nineteenth century, and Blandwood is widely regarded as the oldest surviving example of Italianate architecture in the United States. Its hallmarks are immediately legible from the street: a central three-story tower, smooth stucco walls, and a low, broad roofline that broke sharply from the boxy Federal and Greek Revival houses around it.
Blandwood earned National Historic Landmark status in 1988. Tours go beyond the architecture and decorative arts to tell the fuller story of the household, including the lives of the people the Morehead family enslaved, among them Hannah Jones and Tinnan Morehead, whose labor sustained the estate.
Plan Your Visit: Blandwood Museum
- Address: 447 W. Washington Street, Greensboro, NC 27401
- Phone: (336) 272-5003
- Website: preservationgreensboro.org/blandwood-museum
- Hours and admission: Hours and tour formats vary by season, so confirm current details on the official site before you go. Recent public visiting has been offered on Saturdays with self-guided admission around $5 per person, and group tours are available by appointment.
The Jefferson Standard Building: North Carolina’s First Skyscraper
If one building announces Greensboro’s early-twentieth-century confidence, it is the Jefferson Standard Building. Completed in 1923 as the headquarters of the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company (today part of Lincoln Financial Group), the 18-story tower rose to roughly 374 feet and was, until the Nissen Building in Winston-Salem surpassed it in 1927, the tallest building in North Carolina. At its debut it was also the tallest building between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.
Company president Julian Price hired New York architect Charles C. Hartmann and, famously debt-averse, paid for the building outright. Hartmann gave it a U-shaped footprint to pull daylight and fresh air deep into the offices, and dressed the facade in terra cotta and granite that blends Neo-Gothic, Neo-Classical, and Art Deco detailing. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and marked its centennial in 2023. A matching Gothic Revival addition, now the Lincoln Financial Building, opened in 1990 and is the tallest building in the city. The interior is a working office building rather than a museum, but the exterior is one of the best things to admire from the sidewalk along North Elm Street. You can read more at the Jefferson Standard Building entry on Wikipedia.
The Carolina Theatre: Showplace of the Carolinas
Two blocks over on South Greene Street stands the Carolina Theatre, which opened on Halloween night in 1927 as “The Showplace of the Carolinas.” Built by the Publix-Saenger chain for more than $500,000, it was designed by architects J. H. de Sibour of Washington and James B. Workman of Greensboro, and it was reportedly the first commercial building in the city to have air conditioning. Behind a terra cotta facade, audiences found chandeliers, gilded railings, and ornate plasterwork, plus vaudeville acts, orchestras, newsreels, and films.
By the early 1970s the theater was slated for demolition until the United Arts Council of Greensboro raised the money to buy and restore it, reopening it as a community performing arts center in 1978. A 1981 fire forced a second restoration. Today it remains a working venue for concerts, films, and live performances, so the easiest way to see the restored interior is to catch a show.
Plan Your Visit: Carolina Theatre
- Address: 310 S. Greene Street, Greensboro, NC 27401
- Box office phone: (336) 333-2605
- Website: carolinatheatre.com
- Box office hours: Generally Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Confirm event tickets and showtimes online.
134 South Elm: The Woolworth Building and the Greensboro Sit-Ins
No tour of Old Greensborough is complete without the former F. W. Woolworth’s at 134 South Elm Street. Built around 1929 in the commercial style of the era, the store became one of the most consequential buildings of the twentieth-century civil rights movement. On February 1, 1960, four N.C. A&T students sat down at the whites-only lunch counter and refused to leave, sparking the sit-in movement that spread across the South.
The building now houses the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which opened in 2010. Remarkably, the original lunch counter and stools remain in place in their original footprint, making the architecture itself part of the story. Visits are by guided or self-guided tour. Read background at the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
Plan Your Visit: International Civil Rights Center and Museum
- Address: 134 S. Elm Street, Greensboro, NC 27401
- Phone: (336) 274-9199
- Website: sitinmovement.org
- Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Sunday.
- Admission: Tour options recently ranged from roughly $15 to $20 for adults (less for students), depending on whether you choose the staff-guided signature tour or the seated tour and walkthrough. Confirm current pricing online.
Commercial Landmarks Along South Elm Street
Beyond the headline attractions, the district rewards a slow stroll. Look up as you walk and you will spot a sampler of early commercial design that locals pass daily without a second glance:
- The Kress Building (1929) and other former department-store facades show off Art Deco and decorative terra cotta detailing typical of the chain-store boom.
- The Vanstory Building (c. 1885) is among the district’s oldest survivors, a three-story brick structure in the Italianate-influenced vernacular of the 1880s.
- Former department stores including Efird’s, Belk, and Montgomery Ward anchor blocks that have been adapted into restaurants, offices, and shops, a good example of preservation through reuse.
For a deeper read on the district’s history and building inventory, the Downtown Greensboro Historic District overview is a solid reference.
Anchor Your Walk at the Greensboro History Museum
A few blocks northeast, in the city’s Cultural District, the Greensboro History Museum makes an ideal first or last stop because it puts the buildings you are about to see into context. Housed near the corner of Summit Avenue and Lindsay Street, it holds roughly 10,000 artifacts, restored log houses, a blacksmith shop, and exhibits like “Voices of a City.” Best of all for budget-conscious visitors and locals alike, admission is free.
Plan Your Visit: Greensboro History Museum
- Address: 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro, NC 27401
- Phone: (336) 373-2043
- Website: greensborohistory.org
- Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Monday.
- Admission: Free.
Where to Stay Nearby
If you want to wake up within walking distance of these landmarks, downtown Greensboro has several full-service and boutique hotels bookable through standard travel sites such as Expedia, including properties clustered around the Elm Street corridor and the convention district. Staying downtown lets you leave the car parked and explore Old Greensborough, the museums, and the evening restaurant scene entirely on foot.
Planning tip: Hours, tour formats, and admission prices at house museums and theaters shift with the seasons and with special events, so confirm the day’s details on each official website before you set out, and aim to start your walk in the late morning so you can fit Blandwood or a museum tour in before the dinner crowd fills South Elm Street.