Forsyth has lost a treasure of historic buildings

A row of 1914 shop fronts is demolished for a transit center.

An International style car dealership falls for condominiums.

A 19th-century farmhouse is razed for a subdivision.

Since 1980, Forsyth County has lost a third of its significant historic properties -- about 500 buildings -- a new survey has found.

This time the loss has come less from such traditional enemies as time and termites than from development, sprawl and changing tastes, several local preservationists said.

Heather Fearnbach, an architectural historian at Edwards-Pitman Environmental Inc., discovered the trend as she spent the past year updating a 1978-80 survey of 1,500 buildings around the county built before 1930.

Fearnbach was hired by the State Historic Preservation Office and the city-county planning department to update a 1978-80 study. Gwynne Taylor, a local preservationist and Vicki Smith, a member of the city-county planning department did the original study and published their findings in 1981 in From Frontier to Factory: An Architectural History of Forsyth County. Fearnbach said she was not surprised by the findings. Many cities around the state have experienced similar losses.

"It takes time and effort to make preservation of old buildings work within development plans, and people don't want to take the time," she said.

The picture is not entirely bleak, preservationists said. A whole new group of buildings from 1930 to 1970 is coming of age and offers new opportunities to gain historic status. And around the city, people are finding creative new uses for old buildings that remain.

In addition, after 30 years of trying, an attempt to establish a local preservation group is finally bearing fruit.

Preserve Historic Forsyth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting old buildings, held its first meeting last month. The group will be working to educate people about the importance of preserving old buildings, collecting histories of buildings, and soliciting grants for various restoration projects.

"It's important to realize that buildings are not just architectural artifacts -- they can contribute to community character and quality of life," Fearnbach said. "Every time a building's lost, the nature of a place is changed forever. You can't get that back. It's gone forever."

Saving old buildings often requires a balance between demands for economic development and a community's belief that preservation should be a priority, said Derwick Paige, the deputy city manager.

"A lot of it becomes the economics of a project," he said.

Most developers feel that historic character adds value to a project if dealing with modern building codes doesn't add too much to the cost, he said. Sometimes, developers determine that it is more efficient to tear down a building.

The 1929 Pepper Building on West Fourth Street is an example of a building that should be saved, some people in the community have said. The building had been slated for demolition for the creation of a new Civic Plaza. Current plans call for it to be renovated.

"Somebody's going to have to pay the price tag," Paige said of that project. "If it's something the community sees as a critical piece of the fabric, we as a community have to be willing to absorb that cost."

Dennis Richter, a principal in Boulevard Centro, the developer of the West End Village condominium project at the corner of West Fourth and Broad streets, said that as a matter of policy, his company tries not to take down buildings that have been deemed historic.

Tearing down old buildings often makes developers the target of public criticism and many of them would rather avoid that, he said.

However, there is often disagreement about what is historic, he said. Just because something is old doesn't necessarily mean that it should be preserved.

His company's project resulted in the destruction of one of the few examples of International Style in the city -- the Modern Chevrolet building. The International Style emerged in the 1920s and 1930s and featured lots of steel and glass. Although some preservationists were upset, Richter said he had a hard time regarding the building as historic.

The dealership had been renovated many times, and indeed, it replaced old homes, he said. "It never really crossed our minds that we were taking down anything of historic value."

What his company tried to do was create a pleasing design for its condominiums that blended into downtown and would possibly become historic in 50 years.

The historic value of some buildings is obvious. Goler Metropolitan AME Zion Church on East Fourth Street is historically significant because the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came there to register voters, she said.

But it is also a great example of the classical-revival style of architecture.

Other old buildings are vulnerable to changing times and changing tastes. In the 1920s-40s the area around East 14th Street was a center for black professionals, who built many elegant homes. But the area declined after the older families moved out to the suburbs, as they have done in other downtown neighborhoods.

Recently when Fearnbach was surveying buildings on East 14th Street, she said she found only half of the 12 buildings that she was looking for from the original survey. Some of them were lost to road widening, others to the expansion of church parking lots.

LeAnn Pegram, who works with the city's planning department, said that if anything, the state of preservation downtown is on the upswing.

"While we've had sprawl and growth in the outlying areas, we've begun to see an emphasis and interest in a return to the city," she said. "As a result, people are seeing the value of these buildings and how they can be reused."

She said she is more concerned about the loss of rural buildings, rural landscapes and historic vistas in the countryside. Three historic 18th- century Moravian settlements have either been lost to development or are in danger of being lost, she said. Settlements consisted of the churches and the land and buildings around them.

They include Friedberg Moravian Church, which is in the southern part of Forsyth County near Davidson County, and is the most highly developed. Friedland Moravian Church, which is in the southeastern part of the county near Dell, is in the process of being developed. Hope Moravian Church, which is close to the booming area of Clemmons, is the most intact of the three, but is threatened by development.

"There's wonderful farmland and rural vistas," Pegram said. "It's important in the context of Moravian history."

Local preservationists have long been concerned about the loss of buildings in the county, said David Gall, a founding board member of Preserve Historic Forsyth.

The group has about 40 members, he said, and is dedicated to protecting and advocating for historic resources in the county. The group has attracted architects, preservationists and people who own or are interested in old buildings.

"I think Forsyth County is a wonderful place to live, and it's creating growth pressures," he said, "and we need to have a balance in our county of growth and historic preservation. Preservation is integral to our life in this county."

The group has not set a firm agenda for the coming year, he said, but several ideas have been discussed.

Preserve Historic Forsyth has talked about issuing a list of 10 most-endangered properties, he said. The group has also talked about collecting oral histories from county residents and integrating preservation into the school curriculum.

John Larson, the vice president for restoration at Old Salem, said that the idea of such an organization has been discussed since at least the late 1970s when Historic Winston maintained a county museum in the old Wachovia Bank building on West Fourth Street. Lots of material went into storage when the museum closed, and the idea of a preservation group was discussed again in the 1980s and 90s.

He said that people have long wondered why Winston-Salem has not been able to establish a preservation group, and he suspects that it has something to do with the dominance of Old Salem as a local attraction.

"A lot of people think preservation was done with the completion of Old Salem," he said. "What has happened is the whole landscape of historic preservation has expanded."

People are now interested in the industrial history of Winston before it merged with Salem, he said. They are interested in black history, rural history and historic neighborhoods.

What is different about the new preservation effort, Larson said, is that it is not coming from the preservation establishment.

"What's happened now, is the current movement is very much grass roots," he said. "It's got some stronger legs on it."

And with a new broader interest in which buildings are worth study, comes a new generation of historic buildings to study.

Part of Fearnbach's work in the second phase, she said, will be looking at 142 new properties to determine their historic significance. Some she has found by way of tips she got, some by driving around may have been missed or considered too common to be notable during the first survey. Many of those buildings are outside the city limits and in newly incorporated areas, she said. Most of them date to the period between 1930 and 1970, she said.

Pegram said that people need to remember that old buildings are on a continuum. Some are lost, but as time passes, new buildings become old buildings and eligible for historic status.

"It's not something that's a fixed point in the past and we're losing it all," she said.

"We're gaining Craftsman bungalows, period cottages and early suburban ranch-style developments."

For example, the Crystal Towers apartment building on West Sixth Street is a great modern building, Fearnbach said, as is the main part of the downtown library and the 1970s Greek Orthodox Church on Keating Drive.

Pegram said that the city's suburban development, which has destroyed some old rural buildings, also provides rich opportunities for study.

"I think an interesting thing for us to get our teeth around in the future is how we deal with contemporary architecture," she said. "What is the best of the best? Which ranch subdivisions are the West Ends of tomorrow?"

■ Mary Giunca can be reached at 727-4089 or at mgiunca@wsjournal.com.