Old Irving Park is an almost 1.25 square mile area of Greensboro just north of downtown and Fisher Park and is considered a North Carolina classic, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and home to the city’s largest and most architecturally significant dwellings that overlook its winding streets, golf course, and parks. The development of Irving Park began on April 3, 1911, with the incorporation of the Greensboro Country Club. 

Irving Park was born from the ideal that rural environs were superior to that of the city and in 1911 insurance executives and real estate developers Alexander W. McAlister, Alfred M Scales, and RG Vaughn formed the Irving Park Company and unveiled their plans for a luxurious neighborhood a mile north of city limits. This ideal tapped into evolving concepts of recreation, density, zoning, exclusivity, nature, and aesthetics. The result was the development of a planned, heavily restricted, and landscaped community that set a standard for suburban development in Greensboro for the next century and establishing it as Greensboro’s most exclusive neighborhood.  

To help assure the suburb’s success, they engaged John Nolen, one of the country’s most prominent planners and landscape architects, to design its curving streets and other natural amenities.  They also engaged New England architect A Raymond Ellis to design some of its first residences.  To further ensure success, they arranged, prior to opening the development to have trolley service extended up Elm St to Sunset Drive. You can find mostly Colonial and Tudor Revival style homes, but other styles seen are Neoclassical, Georgian, and Mediterranean Revival and Prairie style.  There are a number of the famous Charles Barton Keen designed homes (Reynolda House is one famous example in Winston-Salem)