The Pines Preservation Guild

11/04/2026

Two homes, almost fifty years apart, and both worth celebrating.

2025 Residential winner: Lamont Cottage in Southern Pines, built around 1916 and rehabilitated by the Friends of Weymouth.

2024 Residential winner: the Norris L. and Sara Hodgkins Residence in Southern Pines, built around 1962 and rehabilitated by Denise Krauza and Jesse Coyle.

Know a home that got this kind of care? Nominations for 2026 are open through Friday, December 18 at 5pm.

Nominate a home here: https://www.pinespreservation.org/preservation-awards

10/30/2026

Nominations are open for our third annual Historic Preservation Merit Awards. We’re recognizing projects anywhere in Moore County that took good care of a building over 50 years old, in two categories: Commercial and Residential.

You don’t need to own the building to nominate it. Nominations close Friday, December 18 at 5pm, and winners will be honored at the Party for Preservation in February 2027.

Nominate a project at https://www.pinespreservation.org/preservation-awards

10/28/2026

Section 106 is about having a voice. This week, PPG got to use ours.

Our president, Leslie Brians, joined a panel at the PreservationNC conference, “Navigating the Threats to Section 106,” with Ellen Turco of Richard Grubb and Assoc., Shawn Patch of New South Associates, Inc. and Ryan Carter of NCSEA Leadership Board.

The room was full of preservationists from across North Carolina, and the conversation was about how organizations can get the word out when this review process is under threat.

We were proud to share how PPG has been talking about Section 106 here in Moore County, and to see PPG represented on the screen alongside other groups doing the work.

Section 106 is the part of federal law that asks agencies to consider historic places before they act, and it gives communities a say. A new proposal in the U.S. Senate, S. 5653, touches historic preservation, and we’ll share a specific way you can help very soon.

Follow along and turn on post notifications so you don’t miss it. And send this to someone who wants to protect old places in Moore County.

10/27/2026

That’s a wrap on the PreservationNC conference in High Point!

Our home base was Market Square, the historic Tomlinson Furniture Factory and one of North Carolina’s earliest historic tax credit projects. Today it welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors to High Point twice a year for the furniture market.

The field sessions showed more of the same. High Point’s Southern Railway Passenger Depot, built in 1906 and 1907, is the city’s symbolic heart, and it still stands thanks to efforts that began in 1990 to save it from demolition. The Melrose Hosiery Mill made hosiery from 1922 to 1956 and is now COHAB•SPACE a community place with studios, showrooms and an event venue for local artists, designers and makers. Its Building 1 earned a Gertrude S. Carraway Award of Merit.

Monday evening’s reception and ramble took us through historic homes along W. High Avenue and Oak Street, from a 1905 manor to a 1922 bungalow.

Thank you PreservationNC for a great few days. We’re bringing a lot of ideas home to Moore County. 🌲

Oh, and our own Leslie Brians spoke on a Section 106 panel! The full story is coming tomorrow. Stay tuned!

10/15/2026

Sixty years ago today, on October 15, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act into law.

In the early 1960s, America was building fast. Highways and urban renewal projects were reshaping towns and cities, and historic neighborhoods were often the first thing cleared. When demolition began on New York’s Pennsylvania Station in 1963, people across the country started asking what their communities were giving up, and whether anyone had stopped to think about it first.

Congress listened, and the act worked because of how it went about it. It didn’t freeze places in time or forbid change. Instead, it created the National Register of Historic Places and asked one simple thing of federal projects: before you build, consider what’s already here, and talk with the people who know it best.

That idea has shaped how communities like ours care for the places that make them home, including the historic buildings in Moore County.

Sixty years later, preservation still starts with neighbors who notice.

Happy 60th, NHPA.

09/25/2026

Senator Tillis and Senator Budd need to hear from you! Call them before 5 pm tomorrow (Friday, September 25) and let them know that you want Section 106 left alone.

• Senator Thom Tillis 919-856-463
• Senator Ted Budd 984-349-5061

If you want more information about the importance of Section 106, click the link in our bio to learn more.

P.S. If you have friends in UT, RI, NM, or WV this is an especially important message to pass on. The senators in these states are still on the fence.

09/24/2026

Historic preservation gets misunderstood a lot. So we're answering some of the questions we hear most.

What actually protects a historic home in Moore County, NC? What doesn't? What can (and can't) a group like ours do? Swipe through to find out, and if you've got a question we didn't cover, ask us in the comments so we can answer it in a future post.

09/19/2026

Southern Pines lost another piece of its history today when the 1904 Emery House at 410 N Page Street was used as a fire department training exercise. This circa 1904 Folk Victorian, built by Rev. C.M. Emery, was a contributing structure to the Southern Pines National Register Historic District.

The PPG conducted a historic structure report of this building in 2023 and, while suffering from deferred maintenance, the building was of sound condition and found to be an excellent candidate for Historic Preservation Tax Credits. Other options, such as sale or moving the structure, were presented to the owners by members of our board, and they ultimately decided to proceed with the donation for demolition.

This is a reminder of why the Pines Preservation Guild exists. We’re a Moore County nonprofit dedicated to protecting the historic buildings, sites, and stories that make this place what it is, through research, advocacy, and education.

Preservation isn’t about stopping progress. It’s about making sure the choices we make today don’t erase what took generations to build.

If you care about keeping Moore County’s history standing, we’d love for you to get involved. Visit www.pinespreservation.org to learn more.

08/24/2026

Missed our column in The Pilot yesterday? Read about how the proposed changes to Section 106 by the ACHP threaten the historic places in Moore County and what you can do about it.

When U.S. 1 was widened from two lanes to four in the early 2000s, the historic towns of Vass and Cameron could have been changed beyond recognition. Instead, they were

08/14/2026

When US-1 was set to be expanded to four lanes in 1990, these historic places stood along the route. A federal law called Section 106 required identification of each one to determine the path with the least impact.

Eleven were identified, including the Leslie-Taylor Farmstead, which is still standing today.

A rewrite of Section 106 by ACHP would make that discovery step optional. It’s hard to protect what’s not documented and because the Moore County courthouse burned down in 1889, along with the records it housed, this step matters even more here than in other places.

The public comment period for Section 106 could open at any time. Join our newsletter at https://www.pinespreservation.org/newsletter so you can speak up when it does.