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At the intersection of Davie and Market streets, across from the J. Douglas Galyon Depot, there’s a barren plot of land—a quiet void at the center of Greensboro’s bustling downtown. Concrete slabs adorned with graffiti and wildflowers hint at a former life.
A postcard sent from Greensboro to Baltimore in 1956 paints a grand view of the 13-story King Cotton Hotel, which opened at that very intersection in January 1927 with 250 guest rooms. Hundreds of cards arrived in local mailboxes announcing its formal opening.
“Every room is an outside room,” wrote the Daily News’ A.W. Stamey. “The hotel is considered one of the handsomest and most complete structures of its kind in the country. It represents an investment of close to one million and a half dollars.”
When the O. Henry Hotel opened eight years earlier, it was difficult to get developers interested in Greensboro. That hotel had to be funded with community stock subscriptions. The King Cotton, built in the second half of the roaring 20s, was the “long cherished dream” of James Edwin Latham, a cotton merchant and real estate broker who started the J.E. Latham Co. in 1910.
The hotel was more than just a place for travelers to lay their heads. It had a soda shop, a barbershop, and a grand ballroom where people flocked to dances, paying 75 cents at the door.
Over the decades, its guest book boasted many famous names, including former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and screen legend Bette Davis. The hotel was once the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s offices, too. In 1949, it was sold to the Alsonett Co. hotel chain, which then owned the O. Henry as well.
The King Cotton ultimately closed in 1965. Two years later, the building caught the eye of Basil “Bill” Agapion of the AAA Realty Co. Agapion, a real estate magnate who owned hundreds of housing units in Greensboro. Agapion died last year, but his family’s company is still among the largest landlords in the city.
Segregation and previous owners prevented Black travelers from staying at the King Cotton or O. Henry hotels. Agapion transformed the King Cotton into racially integrated housing for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students. But his reputation as one of the city’s largest landlords was a complex one. In the 1970s, his company faced a rent strike for improved conditions at his properties, organized by a young civil rights organizer and N.C. A&T student named Nelson Johnson.
After years as a defining part of the city’s skyline, the King Cotton was demolished in 1971. More than 10,000 onlookers gathered to see it implode and disappear in “pink milk-colored clouds,” the Daily News reported. Some were sad to see it go, others glad. It had fallen far from its glory days and was behind on its taxes.
“I’ll never dance there again,” eyewitness Sosik Serunian told the Daily News.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The city bought the King Cotton site land for $525,000 in 1971. Four years later, it sold the parcel to the Greensboro News Company, which owned the Daily News and Daily Record, for $391,928.
For years, the Greensboro News Company operated out of the building that is now home to the city’s Cultural Arts Center. In a period when people and businesses were leaving downtown, former mayor Jim Melvin wanted to keep the company there.
“To close the deal, the Redevelopment Commission took a bigger than usual ‘write-down’” and “sold the property for about $146,000 below its minimum appraisals,” wrote the Daily News’ Steve Berry and Stan Swofford.
The news company wasn’t the only entity that eyed the old King Cotton’s site. The Guilford County School Board was interested in building an occupational educational center there.
Guilford County Commissioner Robert Shaw called the city’s deal with the news company a “ripoff” for the taxpayers, and roundly criticized the Greensboro Redevelopment Commission’s decision to sell the property to the news entity.
The company that would become Landmark Communications had owned the Daily Record and Daily News, morning and afternoon papers respectively, since 1965. In 1984, they were merged into a single paper, the News & Record.
For decades, generations of journalists documented city life from the paper’s home at 200 E. Market Street, as the landscape continued to morph.
The daily paper declined even as the downtown area around it saw a revitalization, beginning in the 2000s. The News & Record was sold off, its staff downsized, and was relocated from the paper’s longtime home. The building was abandoned, fell into disrepair, and was the site of a murder in August 2023. Ultimately, the building was torn down last summer.
The 6.4 acres of land are still owned by Greensboro News & Record, Inc. and valued at $5.4 million, according to Guilford County property records.
What’s Next
The King Cotton Hotel and the News & Record building were downtown icons that helped define their eras.
Now, the future of downtown Greensboro may be shaped by what follows them.
Zack Matheny is a Greensboro city councilmember and president of Downtown Greensboro Inc., the nonprofit economic development organization with a hand in shaping downtown. Like Latham, Agapion, and Melvin before him, he has a long-term—and sometimes controversial—vision for downtown.
“We’re blessed to have a significant amount of land to be developed,” Matheny told The Thread.
“That’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness because we didn’t develop it 50 years ago,”
Matheny spoke to The Thread just before his State of Downtown speech. The challenge, Matheny said from his Elm Street office overlooking the bustling city center, was trying to get everything he wanted to discuss into the speech. A lot has changed downtown, and more business is coming—specifically to this empty lot.
“They tore that down, that beautiful building,” Matheny said while gazing at old pictures of the King Cotton Hotel on his computer monitor.
And just as King Cotton came tumbling down, so did the O. Henry.
“That’s where a lot of people stayed, and you think about these old hotels and how much we would love to have them back,” Matheny said.
The O. Henry was replaced by the Bellemeade parking deck, built in 1989.
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” Matheny said with a nod to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”
The parking deck is currently being demolished due to structural issues related to the materials used when it was built.
Matheny wants this free space to become so much more than that. The two buildings were emblematic of their time. What comes next will reflect ours.
Taking a red pen to a map of downtown’s business improvement district, Matheny started drawing borders around unused space, coming to a halt at the empty lot at E. Market Street.
“We, as a community, want to make sure whatever goes there is done in the most appropriate manner. That’s something that’s weighing on a lot of us.”
Zack Matheny, city council member and president of Downtown Greensboro Inc.
“This is your anchor,” he said.
“We’ve got to get this right,” he said, because what’s built on that plot will be there for decades.
DGI’s mock-up of what could go there predicts a flashy multi-use stadium and mixed-use development.
After the State of Downtown on May 1, Matheny told The Thread that he’s been talking to rugby, United Soccer League, and Major League Soccer teams.
“Downtown, you’ve got to maximize the land use, and so most of it I would hope would be mixed-use,” Matheny said. There’s also been interest in a music amphitheater. Housing, too.
Matheny said he’s open to all those conversations.
“We, as a community, want to make sure whatever goes there is done in the most appropriate manner,” Matheny said. “That’s something that’s weighing on a lot of us.”
Right now, DGI is in the middle of designing Thrive35, the plan for downtown’s future, with the community through workshops and surveys.
At a recent Thrive35 community event held at SouthEnd Brewing Company, people milled around the room writing down comments and placing stickers on what they’d like to see more of downtown. Grocery stores were a common response.
The Thread spoke with Keith Holliday, a former paperboy who would grow up to become the mayor of Greensboro from 1999 to 2007. He was the president and CEO of the Carolina Theatre for five years before going to work with DGI, where he’s now a development consultant. Holliday, now 72, remembers King Cotton—but mostly from old photos
Ask any city what they’d do if they had unused space like the former King Cotton’s site, Holliday said.
It’s a “heck of a gift,” he said.
Gale is a Report for America Corps member. Before joining The Assembly, she spent two years covering local government and community issues in Greensboro and Winston-Salem for Triad City Beat. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from North Carolina State University.
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