The house at 500 Salt Street in Winston-Salem is shown above. It is in excellent condition given that it was built in 1825, and its little plaque notes that it is the "Christman House." The significance of this house or the role of Christmans in any but the most recent history of Winston-Salem (say, about the last 25 years) is not easy to find on the internet. In fact, which Christman the house is named for is unclear, as some sources refer to the Jacob Christman House and others refer to the John George Christman House. Zillow knows almost all (and estimates the value of this house to be $464,500), but discloses little else about the Christman House except that it has 3 bedrooms and a finished basement. Here's a follow up on the Green Park Inn auction mentioned in an earlier posting (July 18): the Blowing Rock property, hotel, and all of the hotel furnishings attracted a high bid of only $750,000. Given that the winning bid was expected to fall into the 2-3 million range (and given that the hotel only closed on May 24 of this year), what does this tell us? The blog is a little puzzled, but suspects that affluent vacationers to areas where the scenery is the main attraction just buy their own vacation home, prizing privacy over seeing and being seen.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Christman House
The house at 500 Salt Street in Winston-Salem is shown above. It is in excellent condition given that it was built in 1825, and its little plaque notes that it is the "Christman House." The significance of this house or the role of Christmans in any but the most recent history of Winston-Salem (say, about the last 25 years) is not easy to find on the internet. In fact, which Christman the house is named for is unclear, as some sources refer to the Jacob Christman House and others refer to the John George Christman House. Zillow knows almost all (and estimates the value of this house to be $464,500), but discloses little else about the Christman House except that it has 3 bedrooms and a finished basement. Here's a follow up on the Green Park Inn auction mentioned in an earlier posting (July 18): the Blowing Rock property, hotel, and all of the hotel furnishings attracted a high bid of only $750,000. Given that the winning bid was expected to fall into the 2-3 million range (and given that the hotel only closed on May 24 of this year), what does this tell us? The blog is a little puzzled, but suspects that affluent vacationers to areas where the scenery is the main attraction just buy their own vacation home, prizing privacy over seeing and being seen.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Confederate etiquette
At the cemetery on Monday evening, Jon wondered why the confederate battle flag on several of the grave markers was depicted "backwards" - that is, left-facing instead of right-facing. The blog's research department believes that it has the answer, which saves sensitive blog readers from having to do their own search (some search terms, including "confederate," need to be deployed very, very cautiously). The answer appears to be that the confederate battle flag was often part of a two-sided flag, with the state flag on the other side. Most state flags (for example, the state flag of North Carolina) are only being flown correctly if they are right-facing (the same is true for the U.S. flag, as the canton should always go in the upper left corner). But the confederate battle flag does not have this requirement. So, there is unlikely to be a deeper meaning hidden in these grave marker depictions, which are clearly meant to honor a memory rather than to provoke.
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