Historic Site Overview

The Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department and Greensboro Public Library set out to create a special community facility that would provide much-needed amenities for the surrounding community while also embracing its rich history and culture. The new Windsor Chavis Nocho Community Complex (WCNCC) embraces a novel way of thinking about what park, library, and recreation center facilities can mean to the community. The new facility will weave all three of these program components together and perform seamlessly without being defined solely as one type of building. Part of what will make the design of this facility unique is its connection to the people who will use it; distilling the essence of the community and integrating it into the DNA of the complex results in a building distinctly tied to its surroundings and visitors. In order to do this, the design team needed to research the local history and listen to the community regarding what the place meant to them. Public engagement became a significant part of the early design process and it allowed us to hear firsthand from people who were around when the Windsor Recreation Center, Nocho Park, and Vance Chavis Library were each established. What follows is a summary of what we found through our public engagement sessions and research about the History of East Greensboro.

The key to a successful community is ensuring that residents have the amenities required to thrive in their day-to-day life, and the communities that are served by the current Windsor Recreation Center, Vance Chavis Library, and Nocho Park have flourished for decades. These wonderful facilities are located within an area that carries a rich history and is defined by a triangle of seminal educational institutions, such as North Carolina A&T State University, Bennett College, and Dudley High School. These institutions were born out of a unique congregation of African American excellence and ingenuity that survived slavery, Jim Crow, and other systematic policies that were put into place to keep them from reaching their full potential.

Early Beginnings
Segregation was the catalyst for the development of African American neighborhoods in Greensboro around 1900. Many of the White residents moved to the west side of Greensboro and the Black residents were forced to relocate to East and South Greensboro. Many new neighborhoods were established during this time, such as Warnersville, College Hill, and Westwood. Two prominent churches that are still standing today, Providence Baptist Church and St. Matthews Church, drew Black families to establish communities in those areas. Many neighborhoods popped up near Benbow Road and Florida Street and included residences and retail areas that served the Black community.

Nocho Park was considered the premier historic neighborhood of East Greensboro and was established in 1923. Many middle-to-high income Black residents began to build attractive houses, new schools, and even a hospital in this area. Washington Street School was one of the first schools to be built in 1913 and L. Richardson Memorial Hospital, which is the oldest surviving hospital in the area, was established in 1927 and was listed as Greensboro’s first modern medical facility for African American residents. In 1929, Dudley High School opened to serve the growing African American community within Nocho Park. All of these facilities still exist today and are a tribute to the tenacity and endurance of the Nocho Park community.

Founding of Nocho Park|Windsor Recreation Center|Vance Chavis Library
Nocho Park was named for Jacob Robert Nocho who was an African American teacher, humanitarian, and community leader. Nocho started out his life in Pequea Valley Pennsylvania in 1840. He was a college educated man who attended Lincoln University, the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Nation. Nocho moved to Greensboro to become a principal at a free African American school established at St. James’s Presbyterian Church between 1868 and 1872. He became heavily involved in politics and was voted in as the first black federal postal clerk in 1878. During his life, Jacob Robert Nocho became an influential leader in Greensboro, and hosted many famous African American leaders including J.C. Price and Booker T. Washington.

Although Nocho Park was named after Jacob Robert Nocho, many people called Abraham Peeler the father of Nocho Park. Many of his letters and papers are housed at the Greensboro History Museum and document the creation of both the park and recreation center. His powerful letters were carefully crafted to navigate the politics of asking for funds from the same leadership that supported the disparity between the treatment of and deployment of resources to White and Black people. In 1937, Nocho Park opened the first Windsor Recreation Center that was funded by the Works Progress Administration Act (WPA). The center was named for William Blackstone Windsor (1879-1932) who was the Superintendent of the Greensboro Negro Schools. The new recreation center included a bath house, swimming pool, tennis court, and playground. The park was also enhanced with new hiking trails and picnic areas. It was “recognized as one of the best Negro recreation centers in the South” according to historian Ethel Stephens Arnett.

In 1968, the Windsor Recreation Center was replaced by a newer facility and lost some of the features that were once celebrated, like the large “lake-sized” swimming pool. The new facility brought additional amenities to the Nocho Park community, including indoor basketball facilities and a modern outdoor pool to rival community centers around Greensboro.

Vance Chavis was an educator, politician, and activist and became an educational institution for many African Americans in Greensboro. Chavis studied and received degrees from several universities including Johnson C. Smith, North Carolina Central University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Wisconsin. He used his education to teach others and taught several subjects at Dudley High School from 1929 to 1955, after which he moved on to become assistant principal and then principal of Lincoln Junior High School in the late 1950s. Chavis was active in politics and a leader in the civil rights movement. He became the first African American man in the United States to be appointed to a redevelopment commission. Because of his many accomplishments, the Southeast Branch of the Greensboro Public Library system was named the Vance H. Chavis Library in his honor.

Current Condition of the Nocho Park Community
The Nocho Park community went through many changes during the 1950s and 1960s, including the creation of a city-wide thoroughfare plan known as the “Babcock” plan and the development of housing projects within the already well-established community. The first roadway to dissect the community was US Highway 29, now known as O’Henry Boulevard. This caused a physical divide within the Nocho Park community and also drove already low housing prices down even further. The second roadway that cut through the heart of the Nocho Park community was East Lee Street, now known as East Gate City Boulevard. This roadway not only divided a community, but it also divided Nocho Park from Windsor Recreation Center.

If the roadway plans did not completely damage the fabric of the Nocho Park community, then the development of new public housing in the core of the community would. Morningside Homes and Ray Warren Homes were built in the 1950s and introduced housing that was viewed as substandard and overcrowded. These new developments reshaped the Nocho Park community and surrounding neighborhoods to this very day. City planners tried to rebuild areas of East Greensboro that were blighted by the Babcock plan by building modern ranch style homes and apartment complexes, but many of the historic commercial and institutional properties were still lost.

Despite the deterioration of its historic and cultural fabric, the Nocho Park community is still thriving and will soon experience a renaissance. Windsor Recreation Center and Nocho Park still offer amenities and a place to gather for the local community. Vance Chavis Library is touted as a library for the community and houses an extensive African American collection of both fiction and nonfiction materials, acting as the main branch in the system with a discrete mission to expand collections and awareness of the accomplishments of Black authors and scholars. It was home to Greensboro Public Library’s first computer lab, ushering in a new era for the Library’s commitment to provide such assets to their respective communities.

The new Windsor Chavis Nocho Community Complex is purposefully influenced by local and community wide engagement. The programming takes the community into consideration as the primary mission driver. The design will draw on modern technology to allow for state-of-the-art amenities to benefit the building’s visitors, while meaningfully celebrating the rich history and culture of the Nocho Park neighborhood and the East Greensboro community.