Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro is a city in Guilford County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 299,035 in the 2020 census and estimated at 307,381 in 2024, making it the third-most populous city in North Carolina and the 69th-most populous city in the U.S. The Greensboro–High Point metropolitan area has an estimated 801,000 residents. It is the most populous city in North Carolina's Piedmont Triad region, home to about 1.7 million residents.
In 1808, Greensboro was planned around a central courthouse square to succeed Guilford Court House as the county seat. The county courts were thus placed closer to the county's geographical center, a location more easily reached at the time by the majority of the county's citizens, who traveled by horse or on foot. Three major Interstate Highways in the Piedmont region of central North Carolina were built to intersect at this city.
Among Greensboro's many notable attractions, some of the most popular are the Greensboro Science Center, the International Civil Rights Museum, the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Greensboro Symphony, and the Greensboro Ballet. Annual events in the city include the North Carolina Folk Festival, First Fridays in Downtown Greensboro, Fun Fourth of July Festival, North Carolina Comedy Festival, and Winter Wonderlights. From 2015 to 2017, Greensboro hosted the National Folk Festival.
The Greensboro Coliseum Complex hosts a variety of major sporting events, concerts, and other events, including the ACC men's basketball tournament and women's basketball tournament. Local professional teams include the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the South Atlantic Baseball League, the Greensboro Swarm of the NBA G League, the Greensboro Gargoyles of the ECHL, and the semi-professional Carolina Dynamo soccer club of USL League Two. Amateur teams include Greensboro Roller Derby and college teams in four NCAA programs. The Sedgefield Country Club is currently host to the annual PGA Tour event Wyndham Golf Championship. Greensboro would serve as the Atlantic Coast Conference headquarters for 70 years, until the league relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2023.
History
Early history
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the inhabitants of the area that became Greensboro were the Saura, a Siouan-speaking people. Other indigenous cultures had occupied this area for thousands of years, typically settling along the waterways, as did the early settlers.Quaker migrants from Pennsylvania, by way of Maryland, arrived at Capefair in about 1750. The new settlers began organized religious services affiliated with the Cane Creek Friends Meeting in Snow Camp in 1751. Three years later, 40 Quaker families were granted approval to establish New Garden Monthly Meeting. The action is recorded in the minutes of the Perquimans and Little River Quarterly Meeting on May 25, 1754: "To Friends at New Garden in Capefair", signed by Joseph Ratliff. The settlement grew rapidly over the next three years, adding members from as far away as Nantucket, Massachusetts. It soon became North Carolina's most important Quaker community and the mother of several other Quaker meetings established in the state and west of the Appalachians.
After the Revolutionary War, the city of Greensboro was named for Major General Nathanael Greene, commander of the rebel American forces at the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15, 1781. Although the Americans lost the battle, Greene's forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British Army of General Cornwallis. After the battle, Cornwallis withdrew his troops to a British coastal base in Wilmington.
Greensboro was established near the geographic center of Guilford County, on land that was "an unbroken forest with thick undergrowth of huckleberry bushes, that bore a finely flavored fruit." Property for the future village was purchased from the Saura for $98. Three north–south streets were laid out intersecting with three east–west streets, Gaston, Market, and Sycamore. The courthouse was built at the center of the intersection of Elm and Market streets. By 1821, the town was home to 369 residents.
In the early 1840s, the state government designated Greensboro as one of the stops on a new railroad line, at the request of Governor John Motley Morehead, whose house, Blandwood, was in Greensboro. Stimulated by rail traffic and improved access to markets, the city grew substantially, soon becoming known as the "Gate City" due to its role as a transportation hub for the Piedmont. The railroads transported goods to and from the cotton textile mills. Many of the manufacturers developed workers' housing in mill villages near their facilities.
Though the city developed slowly, early wealth generated in the 18th and 19th centuries from cotton trade and merchandising resulted in owners' constructing several notable buildings. The earliest, later named Blandwood Mansion and Gardens, was built by a farmer in 1795. Additions to this residence in 1846, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, made the house influential as America's earliest Tuscan-style villa. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Other significant houses and estates were developed, including Dunleith, designed by Samuel Sloan; Bellemeade; and the Bumpass-Troy House. Since the late 20th century, the latter has been adapted and operates as a private inn.
Civil War and last days of the Confederacy
In the mid-19th century, many of the residents of the Piedmont and western areas of the state were Unionist, and Guilford County did not vote for secession. But once North Carolina joined the Confederacy, some citizens joined the Confederate cause, forming infantry units such as the Guilford Grays to fight in the American Civil War. From 1861 to March 1865 the city was relatively untouched by the war, although residents had to deal with regional shortages of clothing, medicine, and other items caused by the US naval blockade of the South.In the war's final weeks, Greensboro played a unique role in the last days of the Confederate government. In April 1865, the commanding officer of the Army of Tennessee, General Joseph E. Johnston, instructed General P. G. T. Beauregard to prepare to defend the city. During this time, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the remaining members of the Confederate cabinet had evacuated the Confederate Capital in Richmond, Virginia, and moved south to Danville, Virginia.
When Union cavalry threatened Danville, Davis and his cabinet managed to escape by train, and reassembled in Greensboro on April 11, 1865. While in the city, Davis and his cabinet decided to try to split up and make their way west of the Mississippi River to continue the war effort and avoid capture. Shortly thereafter, the cabinet left Greensboro and separated. Greensboro is notable as the last place where the entire Confederate government met as a group; some consider it the Confederacy's final capital city.
At nearly the same time, Governor Zebulon B. Vance fled Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, before the forces of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman swept the city. For a brief period beginning April 16, 1865, he and other officials maintained the state capital in Greensboro. Vance proclaimed the North Carolina Surrender Declaration on April 28, 1865. Later, he surrendered to Union officials in the parlor of Blandwood Mansion. Historian Blackwell Robinson wrote, "Greensboro witnessed not only the demise of the Confederacy but also that of the old civil government of the state."
Once surrender negotiations were completed at Bennett Place between General Johnston and General Sherman on April 26, 1865, Confederate soldiers in Greensboro stacked their arms, received their paroles, and headed home.
Industrialization and growth
After the war, investors worked to restore the textile mills and related industry. In the 1890s, the city continued to attract attention from northern industrialists, including Moses and Caesar Cone of Baltimore. The Cone brothers established large-scale textile plants, changing Greensboro from a village to a city within a decade. By 1900, Greensboro was considered a center of the Southern textile industry, with large-scale factories producing denim, flannel, and overalls. The resulting prosperity was expressed in the construction of notable 20th-century civic architecture, including the Guilford County Courthouse, West Market Street United Methodist Church by S. W. Faulk, several buildings designed by Frank A. Weston, and the Julius I. Foust Building of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, designed by Orlo Epps.During the 20th century, Greensboro continued to increase in population and wealth. Grand commercial and civic buildings, many of which still stand today, were designed by local architects Charles Hartmann and Harry Barton. Other notable industries became established in the city, including Vicks Chemical Co., Carolina Steel Corporation, and Pomona Terra Cotta Works. During the first three decades, Greensboro grew so rapidly that there was an acute worker housing shortage. Builders set a construction goal of 80 to 100 affordable housing units per year to provide homes for workers. Greensboro's real estate was considered "the wonder of the state" in the 1920s. Growth continued even through the Great Depression, as Greensboro attracted an estimated 200 new families per year. The city earned a reputation as a well-planned community with a strong emphasis on education, parks, and a profitable employment base.
Greensboro has two major public research universities, North Carolina A&T State University, a historically black college established in the late 19th century, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. During the height of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, students from A&T were the major force in protests to achieve racial justice, desegregation of public facilities, and fair employment, beginning with the Greensboro Four, who sat in at the segregated lunch counter at Woolworth's in 1960 to gain service. The largest civil rights protests in North Carolina history took place in Greensboro in May and June 1963. In the 21st century, the universities are leaders in new areas of research in high tech and science, on which the city hopes to build a new economy.
Wartime and postwar prosperity brought development, and designs commissioned from nationally and internationally known architects. Walter Gropius, a leader of the German Bauhaus movement in the United States, designed a factory building in the city in 1944. Greensboro-based Ed Loewenstein designed projects throughout the region. Eduardo Catalano and George Matsumoto were hired for projects whose designs have challenged North Carolinians with modernist architectural concepts and forms.