Historic home gets a facelift
For more than 100 years, the Warren-Whitehurst House has greeted visitors to the intersection of Kenan and Daniel streets with a cheery blue facade, a white picket fence and an expansive front porch.
Neglect and a foreclosure have left the facade faded, the fence rotted and the porch has lost its inviting feel.
“I just fell in love with this house,” said Omar Salazar. “When I saw it, I just said, ‘Wow.’”
The Queen Anne-style house was foreclosed by the State Employees Credit Union, but more than four years of unsuccessful searching for a new owner left the bank leaning toward demolition of the historic property. Preservation of Wilson helped to market the property, but Executive Director Kathryn Ferrari Bethune said the group couldn’t find a buyer to sign on the dotted line to take on the project.
Meanwhile, Liz and Joe Uditis brought in Salazar, their master carpenter friend who worked for family business Rockin’teriors in Raleigh, to look over a property on Vance Street they were planning to restore.
(The Wilson Times, 731/2016)