139
store to J. B. Powers for $1,800. Ben and Hattie Powers apparently built their house about 1893.
Dr. Powers was a physician and invested in numerous real estate and commercial ventures in downtown Wake Forest. In 1897, he gave Hattie a half-acre lot between Main and Middle now College Streets, adjacent to their home, and several other lots on the railroad tracks. These sales verify a family tradition that Ben fell ill about 1897 and, believing he was dying, constructed a brick store on the corner lot beside his house in order to provide income for his family. Hattie is said to have designed the store, which originally rented to a grocery and dry goods com- pany. Tenants throughout the years include Z.V. Peed and Co. Dry Goods, Williams Club House Restaurant, Miss Jo Williams’s Cafeteria, Benn Dodd’s medical practice, the Pi Alpha Delta law fraternity, and Stevens Bookstore. The store become known as “The Corner” about 1976 when Kathleen Chandley renovated the downstairs into The Corner Ice Cream Shop, a popular business that she operated until the building was sold in 2007 to the Ludases. Dr. Powers’s death in 1926 shocked the town where he had practiced medicine for forty-seven years. By 1930 his seventy-one-year-old widow Hattie moved next door to live with her daughter Hallie C. and her son-in-law Thomas M. Arrington. It was Fannie Powers Dodd who remained in the homeplace until her death in 1961 then the property passed to Carey Dodd who remained there until his death in 1975 at the age of seventy-five. It remained in the family until 2007 when the house and store were sold to current owners Marty and Debra Ludas. The Powers House and Store are part of the Wake Forest National Register Historic District and Local Historic District. The property was designated as a local historic landmark in 2016. The Ludas’ have carefully restored the house and rehabilitated the building.
I.O. Jones House, 1903 The I.O. Jones house was built in 1903 by Robert Freeman and his wife, Genoa Rox Hunter as a wedding present for their daughter, Elizabeth and her husband Ira Otis Jones on a lot acquired from T. E. Holding. Mr. Freeman, his son-in-law, I. O. Jones, and O. K. Holding started the Wake Forest Supply Company, initially a general store and later named Jones Hardware. Mr. Jones had previous hard- ware experience with Briggs Hardware in Raleigh.
The house was always filled with people, not only the children and their families, but friends and students from the college. Rooms were often rented to students. Elizabeth was known for her gardens. There were gardens on both sides of the house, a rock garden in the back, a vegetable garden, and a grape arbor. Every spring the townspeople were allowed to tour them. In 1964 the house was sold to Harold and Thelma Washington.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online