GREENSBORO — After a visit in 2018, she packed up and left a job in health care and information technology in Atlanta to move here and finish her father’s passion project — restoring the old Magnolia House.
Greensboro woman honored for her work restoring the Historic Magnolia House
Now the former “Green Book” site at 442 Gorrell St. serves as a bed and breakfast, restaurant and event venue.
Last month, Preservation N.C. honored Magnolia House owner Natalie Pass Miller with one of its Gertrude S. Carraway Awards of Merit for her work on the venerable building, which opened as a bed and breakfast in January after decades of renovation work.
The award recognizes “outstanding people, projects, businesses and organizations in the field of historic preservation across the state,” the organization said Wednesday in a news release announcing the award.
Pass Miller was recently honored in Winston-Salem as part of Preservation N.C.’s annual historic preservation conference.
The Carraway Award is named for Dr. Gertrude S. Carraway, a noted New Bern historian and preservationist.
Built in 1889 as a single-family residence in what is now the South Greensboro Historic District, Magnolia House is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In September, it was inducted into Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
During segregation, the Magnolia House could be found in “The Green Book” — a state-by-state listing of safe places Black people could stay overnight while traveling through the segregated South. It hosted notable entertainers such as Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Lena Horne and baseball greats Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige.