Superintendent's Residence and Utility Group: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, National Park Service

Goetcheus, Cari; Callahan, Peter

The Superintendent’s Residence and Utility Group is an approximately 10-acre parcel within the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, located in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina. The site is divided into two use zones: a residence, and a maintenance facility. The extant significant features are the Superintendent’s Residence, Utility Group, Inflammable Storage Building, and the designed landscape which surrounds the residence, gardens, and maintenance facility. The period of significance for the Superintendent’s Residence and Utility Group is 1935-1942, representing the Park Development Era for the National Park Service (NPS). This landscape is reflective of the design philosophy adopted during this period, when facilities and structures were designed to be compatible with the cultural and historical character of a park or natural landscape. Thus, the design of the Superintendent's Residence drew upon regional architecture and Moravian and Colonial Revival styles. The structures reflect the historical period of Guilford, though notably only log or frame structures were present at the time of the Revolutionary War battle. The overall complex resembles a farmstead in its cluster arrangement and structures and is representative of Colonial Revival design style. This blends formal English and European Renaissance tradition with naturalistic English garden landscapes, built on the tenet of connecting separate landscape features in order to create a unified and visually coherent whole. This often involves the use of walls, walkways, and plantings to compartmentalize areas. These principles were extended into landscape design, which employed geometric order in gardens close to homes while allowing natural landscape forms to extend to the yard beyond, similar in style to historic colonial times. The garden at this site is divided into small plots outlined by walks, with tree groupings planted in a naturalistic area. With significant funding from the Public Works Administration and the New Deal Program in the 1930s, the 1934-5 construction was characterized by high quality materials and craftsmenship. The landscape retains integrity of its topography, vegetation, and Park Development site plan. The significance of the design and style of the site remain distinct within the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, which was the location of a Revolutionary War battle on March 15, 1781.

Superintendent's Residence and Utility Group: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, National Park Service

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