History of Our Residents
page 1 | page 2 | page 3
Information from the National Register of Historic Places:
Architects | Development Companies | Residents | History of Winston-Salem | Ludlow's PlanThe Park | Streetcars
The roster of products is indicative of the prosperity of the time, and those only in manufacturing. With the jobs came people and with the people came the need for services and even more numerous employment opportunities. Washington Park was home to a prosperous and growing middle class. Living in the neighborhood were clerks, bookkeepers, machinists, traveling salesmen, factory workers, woodworkers, teachers and others. One street over from the mansions of Cascade lived dozens of less illustrious families: R. J. Linville, a chauffeur for Camel City Coach Co., lived at 29 Gloria Avenue; James A. Pickard, a postal carrier and insurance agent, lived at 101 Gloria; William A. Kaltreider, assistant pastor of Home Moravian Church and a missionary, lived at 106 Gloria, and William R. Hudspeth, one of several foremen at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., lived at 329.
Residents moved to the neighborhood from elsewhere in the city, from the county, and 'from off.' W.H. Smith's first trip to Winston was in 1906 at age eight on a wagon load of tobacco from Rockingham County with his father and brothers. He later lived in Winston-Salem and rode the streetcar daily to work downtown at R.J. Reynolds Plant No. 8 from 1921 until the cars stopped running in December of 1936. Mr. Richard Sheets came to Winston-Salem in 1911; he worked at the Red Chair Factory in Sunnyside for two years before getting a job with SPU. This was similar to the pattern of many who moved to Winston and worked for a chair factory while waiting for the better paying jobs to open at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. During this time R.J. Reynolds made its payroll in silver dollars in order to show how much its operation contributed to the community.
The development of Washington Park was aimed at a white, middle- to upper-middle class clientele. Only Rawson Street and the 100 block of Acadia appear to have been black. The houses in these areas are working-class dwellings which housed tobacco and furniture workers as well as those who worked as maids, cooks, chauffeurs and gardeners for wealthy white families. Odell King who lived on Rawson Street was chauffeur and gardener to the Craiges on Cascade. Because there were few black families, black and white children played together. Many of the black families here were related, and an impressive number owned their houses. Shelton Penn bought land on Rawson Street as early as the 1890s; his son James V. Penn built a house there by 1915, and other family members built nearby.
end