If you were looking for Odell Byerly’s house in Sedgefield back in the ’60s, you would have found 5703 Anson Road eventually and maybe would have guessed, correctly, that this must be the place. The one with the big columns, like the big columns that made Byerly’s Antiques an I-85 landmark for 40 years.
The Byerly House is a classic Colonial Revival. It’s gracious, rather formal and big — 4,600 square feet. It’s for sale now for $650,000.
The house has four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. It’s elegant and almost entirely white from one end to the other. The open kitchen is up-to-date. The keeping room and breakfast room open to the veranda (keeping rooms seem to be quite the thing again). The property is an acre and a half. It includes a three-car garage.
When Byerly built his house in 1953, the heyday of brick ranches and split levels was just beginning. What we now call Mid-Century Modern was drawing a few adventurous spirits. But Greensboro’s king of antiques wasn’t having any of it: It was Colonial Revival for him, at a time when Anything Revival was being consigned to the dusty past.
Byerly built the house and lived there until his death in 1970, when he left it to Perry Ruth Byerly (his wife, I would guess). The house wasn’t sold until 1998. Since 1999 it has been owned by a series of trusts.
Odell Byerly opened his antique store in High Point in 1937. From 1958 to 2000, it was located on I-85 at the Groometown Road exit, where Byerly’s Antiques became an Interstate landmark with its towering Corinthian columns. It was a sad day when it was torn down in 2000 for an expansion of the interstate. The store relocated but it wasn’t the same and closed four years later. The only picture I could find of it is from a postcard.
Listing for 5703 Anson Road, Sedgefield
Greensboro Historic Homes For Sale 