Summerfield Historic District

Summerfield is a crossroads village in northwestern Guilford County, eleven miles north of Greensboro, where Summerfield Road meets Oak Ridge Road. Its core was built by shopkeepers, doctors and pharmacists serving surrounding farmers. Two brick stores built by George J. Smith in the 1870s anchor the intersection, the Brittain Store with corbelled brickwork and blind-arch friezes. On the southwest corner stands the Alexander Strong Martin House, a two-story brick Greek Revival house dating to about 1835 or earlier. Henry Clay Brittain, a merchant, built a large frame Queen Anne house between 1898 and 1903, milling its lumber on a sawmill he set up on his property. The district includes residences from the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, and its cohesion comes from its size, setbacks, old trees and surrounding farmland still visible behind most buildings.