Castle keepers: Renovation project revitalizes Burlington landmark
Castle keepers: Renovation project revitalizes Burlington landmark
BURLINGTON — When Mark Teears wanted to get a pizza delivered to the house he’s renovating near downtown, he learned that he needn’t bother being too specific beyond the general vicinity and appearance.
“I called Domino’s and they said, ‘Where do you live?’ ” Teears said. “I said, ‘The big stone house,’ and they said, ‘You mean the castle? That’s all you needed to say.’ ”
The “castle” at the corner of West Davis Street and Fountain Place has been a landmark in Burlington for almost a century. It’s a unique home that anchors one end of Fountain Place, a tree-lined boulevard in a first-ring suburb a few blocks west of downtown that features a number of architectural styles, from stately Colonial homes to Cape Cod cottages.
But the castle itself, built in 1918, defies easy categorization. Joe Thompson, president of New Age Builders in Greensboro, is supervising the renovation work and he’s not quite sure what to call the two-story granite house, which features parapets around the edge of a seemingly flat roof.
“I would almost describe it as whimsical,” Thompson said. “It’s not Colonial, it’s not Queen Anne, it’s not Federal. It’s just ‘Early Castle.’ ”
Mark Teears gets a laugh when he offers another possibility: “Castle Revival.”
Mark and his wife, Karen Teears, bought the house about two and a half years ago, not long before they got married. They own and operate New Growth Press, a small publishing company in Greensboro that prints Christian counseling materials about family, grief, abuse and other issues. They are taking their time with the renovation, continuing to live in Greensboro while New Age Builders does the work.
“Before we were married, Mark lived in Raleigh and I lived in Greensboro,” Karen said. “We started looking at all these different houses. Mark wanted something that was kind of unique. You know how you look online at houses, and I saw this house, and I was just like, ‘Wow!’ ”
At first they tried renovating it themselves, but after a few months decided the work was better left to professionals. The last straw came after they had removed five or six layers of old flooring in the kitchen, only to discover a forest of tacks securing the next layer.
“There were a million tacks everywhere,” Karen said. “That was the point where we said we can’t do this ourselves.”
The house was constructed from granite quarried in Mount Airy and hauled to Burlington aboard railroad flatcars, according to a N.C. Historic Structure Data Sheet on file with the city’s Department of Planning and Community Development. Built for Realtor Harold C. Pollard, it was owned for most of the 20th century by the family of C. Freeman “Diamond Pete” Neese. He was born April 25, 1887, the first child born in Burlington after the name changed from Company Shops, and he owned and operated his family’s namesake jewelry store, C.F. Neese, a downtown institution for decades. In 1926, Neese co-founded the only circus ever based in the city, Heritage Brothers.
The 4,100-square-foot home originally had 14 rooms, including six bedrooms and three baths. The Teears had New Age expand the kitchen by tearing out a small downstairs bedroom and a closet-sized bathroom. The changes were suggested by a friend of a friend, Michael Franck, an architect in Washington, D.C., who has served as a consultant on the project.
“They had some really good ideas, I think,” Thompson said. “They’ve really changed the focus of the house. They’re enlarged the kitchen, which before was more of a service-style kitchen.”
There’s an enclosed sun porch on the east side of the house, and an open porch on the west side. In addition to the granite walls and parapets, the house has built-in cabinets in the living room, transom windows above most of the doorways, and three exterior balconies off its second-story rooms.
While the house is in good shape, the stone construction presents some unique challenges in the renovation process, which is expected to take another year.
“Just the fact that stone is intermingled into the walls makes it very challenging,” Thompson said. “When you open up a wall, and the stone goes into the cavity ... it’s really hard to get insulation in, it’s hard to get wiring around it, to replace rot, different things like that. It’s just harder to work with.”
Neighborhood stories abound about the house, including claims that it’s haunted. One challenge New Age has not had to face, despite local legend, is the presence of a swimming pool on the roof.
A climb up an irregular built-in ladder, through a narrow opening in an upstairs bedroom closet, reveals nothing more than a few puddles of rainwater on the roof. And the roof turns out to have a moderate slope that you can’t see from the sidewalk.
“The roof, in fact, is not flat,” Thompson said. “It has a pitch to it, but you can’t see it behind the parapet wall.”
Contact Eddie Huffman at 373-7335 or eddie.huffman@news-record.com.
The Castle crank windows 081609
Homeowner Mark Teears demonstrates the crank windows in the home's sunroom.
Nancy Sidelinger Special Sections Photographer
