Historic Spencer Love House in Greensboro torn down by new owner Roy Carroll

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — A historic home in Greensboro is being torn down Wednesday by its new owner, Roy Carroll , billionaire developer and founder of The Carroll Companies .

The home, located at 710 Country Club Drive in the national registered historic district Irving Park , has passed through the hands of multiple notable local figures, including Burlington Industries founder J. Spencer Love, former Greensboro Mayor Benjamin Cone and former U.S. ambassador to Finland Bonnie McElveen-Hunter.

It is currently owned by Country Club Cleburne LLC.

“We had hoped to renovate the home, but ultimately found that was not a feasible option to meet our needs,” Carroll said in a statement on Wednesday. “We were able to salvage fixtures and elements of architectural value to incorporate in our plans. We intend to preserve the picturesque, scenic trees on the property, and to undertake the great responsibility of protecting the iconic feel and aesthetic of the Irving Park neighborhood.”

According to documents submitted to the National Register of Historic Places , the Spencer Love House was “one of the grandest classically informed houses in the city.” The home’s style is described as “Georgian Revival in its use of classical organization and ornamentation” with “a high hipped roof with segmental-arched dormers, a modillion block cornice, a scrolled pediment entrance, and decorative brick lintels and keystones.”

According to Guilford County property records, the home sits on about three acres. The home has a living area of 10,834 square feet with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and three half-baths.

The house was built by Love , founder of the global textile leader Burlington Industries, in 1937.

In 1941, Benjamin Cone, who was Greensboro mayor from 1949 to 1951, purchased the home. Benjamin Cone’s father co-founded Cone Mills with his brother Moses H. Cone in 1895. Benjamin Cone served as chair of Cone Mills and Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, which was built in his uncle’s memory.

The home would later belong to McElveen-Hunter, founder and CEO of PACE Communications. She was the former U.S. ambassador to Finland from 2001 to 2003 and was the first female chair of the American Red Cross Board of Governors. She received the United Way’s National Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award in 2024. McElveen-Hunter purchased the home for $2.94 million in 1997, according to records.

On Feb. 28, Country Club Cleburne LLC purchased it from 710 Country Club LLC for $4.5 million on Feb. 28.

Brenda Keech lives nearby in Latham Park and said that for more than 30 years, she has taken walks past the historic home and admired it.

“I’ve always loved this house. I love … the whole thing,” Keech said.

For some, its demolition comes as a surprise.

“We know for a fact that the house is in really good condition, maybe needed some improvements and things like that because it is a historic house, and historic houses take a lot of continuous work,” said Preservation Greensboro Community Outreach Director Kathryn McDowell.

Katie Redhead, a broker with Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate, and Chad Waclawczyk, owner and managing broker with Carolina Home Partners by eXp Realty, worked together to sell the home.

They were not aware of the plans to tear the house down.

“It was impeccably maintained … Nothing was ever permitted as part of inspections … I honestly believe a category five hurricane could come through, and that house would be standing,” Waclawczyk said.

It had been on the market since 2021, but there wasn’t any urgency to sell the home.

“Would another buyer have done that? We’re very doubtful, but we don’t know,” Redhead said.

Although the home is in a nationally registered historic district neighborhood, Preservation Greensboro said there are only a few things that would have kept the home from being demolished.

One is a preservation easement, which would legally allow a property to go from buyer to seller to buyer in a national district and keep it from being demolished.

Previous owners did not have that done for the home.

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