The Booker-Benton House, 1110 West McGee Street
Benjamin Briggs of Preservation Greensboro recently wrote about the Booker-Benton House at 1110 West McGee Street, a home with a remarkable history.
“The Booker-Benton House is a rare surviving structure built by an African American family at the height of the Jim Crow Era, in the midst of the historically white College Hill neighborhood. …
“The 1100 block of West McGee Street was an African American enclave within a largely white neighborhood. … After the Civil War, African-American citizens sought to avoid high costs of land by living in the area alongside and behind the white-owned homes of South Mendenhall Street. Some of these early residents purchased land from Cyrus P. Mendenhall, once mayor of the city and a Quaker. Others rented their homes.”