United States Post Office and Court House

About this property

The L. Richardson Preyer Federal Building is a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina. It was completed in 1933, and was renamed in honor of United States Representative and District Court judge L. Richardson Preyer in 1988. It is located at 324 West Market Street. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. Built pursuant to the Public Buildings Act of 1926, the Preyer Building was designed by the Washington architectural firm of Murphy & Olmsted with supervision by the Office of the Supervising Architect under James A. Wetmore. The George H. Rommel Construction Company of Louisville, Kentucky, acted as General Contractor. The Greensboro building was built as a post office, courthouse and Federal Building. The people of Greensboro had anxiously awaited construction of a new, badly needed facility. Construction was begun in December 1931, and when the building was dedicated on July 6, 1933, more than 5000 people attended the dedication ceremony. After the postal service moved out completely in the late 1980s, the entire first floor work space was converted to courts and related offices. As of 2010, the building serves primarily as a courthouse for the Middle District of North Carolina. The site of the building has some significance. Prior to the construction of the Federal Building, the Sloan House, a house built of timbers of the original Guilford County Courthouse stood on the site for 100 years. It was said that the armies of General Green and Lord Cornwallis fought around this house during the Revolutionary War. Later the house was reported to be home of Greenboro's first mayor. The site is at the edge of the downtown commercial are and directly across the street from the Guilford County Government complex. The courthouse is an Art Deco style building. The main entrance is on the south elevation with auxiliary entrances on the north and west. The building is 202 feet 8 inches (61.77 m) at the west and east elevations and 150 feet 4 inches (45.82 m) at the north and south elevations. Originally, entries to the building were on the south, north and west for the postal lobby. At the present time, the south entry is used as the main entry; the west entry is closed and the north entry, at the basement level, is used on a limited basis. The Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse is a four-story structure with a fully occupied basement and an attic (vacant). Resting on a Mount Airy granite base, the walls above are clad in Indiana limestone. The ornamentation is also limestone. The south, main, elevation consists of fifteen bays with the five central bays projected at the entry pavilion. The entry pavilion facade consists of the three entry doors at the first-floor level with a set-back at the third-floor level, and another set-back at the attic level. Ornamentation consists of a carved denticulated panel of the lotus motif. Windows at the second and third floors are slightly recessed and hung in pairs. They are separated by aluminum spandrel panels ornamented by a diamond motif.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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