RALEIGH -- The old green house sits beside Hillsborough Street, its windows gaping, its lawn strewn with liquor bottles, its porch inhabited by squatters. Its once-grand Victorian facade is crudely obscured by a concrete-block nightclub, attached where the front porch once stood.
Built by the prominent Raleigh family that founded Briggs Hardware, the 100-year-old house is a fading relic of the days when Hillsborough Street was lined with turn-of-the-century mansions and traversed by streetcars. Now that it's on the verge of demolition, a few people are rallying to save it.
Preservation North Carolina, a nonprofit dedicated to saving historic structures, began searching this month for a buyer willing to foot the cost of rehabbing the home.
The three-story structure must also be detached from the nightclub and moved to a new site, because it sits on land owned by a developer who plans to transform the area into new homes and shops.
Saving the old mansion is likely to cost at least half a million dollars, and time is short.
City may force demolition
If it is not brought up to code in the next few months, the city will force its demolition. An inspection this summer found it unsafe for habitation.
"It's had a tough life," said Elizabeth Sappenfield, director of urban issues for Preservation N.C. "But it's definitely savable. We deal with a lot of things that are in much worse shape than this."
Sappenfield said she has already found a few prospective buyers for the home, which is full of original woodwork and tiled fireplaces. A grand curving staircase stands just inside the front door. While it is not on the National Register of Historic Places or in a city historic district, Sappenfield said it is a prime example of the Victorian architecture prevalent in Raleigh's first suburban neighborhoods.
It is also covered in asbestos shingles, pocked with rotting wood and crumbling ceilings, and strewn with trash, old furniture and the remnants of countless tenants. In one room, dozens of hand-written letters postmarked from the 1930s are scattered on the floor. In the attic, 60-year-old toys have been left behind.
Karl Larson, an amateur historian and Raleigh native, said the house has been derelict ever since he can remember. When he was a teen in the 1960s, it was a rooming house, and its strange cinder-block appendage was a strip club called Brite Spot. He thought of it mostly as a curiosity until recently, when he discovered it might fall to the wrecking ball.
Larson, along with his collaborators on the photography Web site Goodnight Raleigh, are now researching the home's history and trying to galvanize support for its preservation.
"We've been watching significant buildings in Raleigh come down one by one, and this was a catalyst to do something," Larson said. "We think it's worth the effort to preserve it."
In recent years, it has become known as the "Jackpot House," the current name of the attached nightclub. But for the past 80 years or so, it has been more a testament to broken dreams than to luck.
Larson said his research into the deeds shows that the Briggs family sold the house in the late 1920s. A few years later, at the height of the Depression, it went into foreclosure, starting its long decline.
It became a fraternity house and then, around 1950, when many Hillsborough Street mansions were being replaced by commercial buildings, the storefront was added. The attached building first housed a restaurant, then the strip club and then a succession of bars.
The house has been vacant for several years. Most recently, it was rented to a group of artists for use as studios.
In December 2008, it was purchased by the Charlotte company FMW Real Estate, which now owns nearly 6.7 acres around the intersection of Hillsborough and Morgan streets, including the International House of Pancakes, an abandoned bakery and the former Esso station that most recently housed TaoAuto.
FMW partner Jim Zanoni said the company hopes to eventually build a mix of housing, restaurants, shops and office space in the "neglected area."
Zanoni said the company does not plan to make the repairs that city inspectors say are necessary to avoid the home's demolition. But he said the company would gladly allow Preservation North Carolina to move the house.
"We're looking at the land," Zanoni said. "But I really hope they'll be able to find a home for it."
