The Simmons-Allen House

Some houses are simply addresses. A few are records — of a family, a town, and a moment when both were becoming something new. The home at 228 North Main Street is one of the few.

Known to the historic record as the Simmons-Allen House, it stands on the stretch of North Main once called "Faculty Avenue" — the earliest residential street in Wake Forest, lined with the homes of the professors who built Wake Forest College. To care for this house is to care for a piece of that street's memory. That is not a responsibility we take lightly.

The earliest address in town.

North Main Street is the historic spine of Wake Forest. For generations it was known as Faculty Avenue, because it was here that the faculty, staff, and families of Wake Forest College made their homes — within walking distance of a campus founded in 1834 on the former plantation of Dr. Calvin Jones, whose own 1820 house still survives a few doors north as the Wake Forest Historical Museum.

The entire corridor is now protected within the Wake Forest Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, with a period of significance reaching from the 1820s into the mid-twentieth century. A home on this street is not merely old. It is part of a designated, documented landscape — one whose exterior character the town itself works to preserve.

A professor's family home.

The house carries the name of the Simmons family, tied closely to the early college. William Gaston Simmons graduated top of the Wake Forest College class of 1852, studied law at the University of North Carolina, and in 1855 returned to his alma mater as a professor — teaching mathematics, and later natural science and chemistry, while serving the college as bursar and treasurer.

His devotion ran deep. When the Civil War forced the college to close, Simmons remained in Wake Forest, and when it reopened in 1866 he was one of only two faculty members still on the roll to help rebuild it. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Foote Simmons, raised their family in the town across those years of war and recovery — the household into which this home on North Main took shape.

The year a door opened.

The Simmons family did not only witness history on this street — they made it. In 1883, Evabelle Simmons, daughter of Professor William Gaston Simmons, enrolled at the all-male Wake Forest College, becoming the first female student in the institution's history.

For four years she followed her brother Henry to class, was permitted to recite alongside the men, published poetry in the college's literary magazine, and was admitted to the Philomathesian Society — one of the two scholarly societies at the heart of campus life. By the records of the time, she outranked her brother and most of her classmates in academic standing. Afterward, she taught public school in Wake Forest.

The Simmons home belongs to that exact era — a household where the boundaries of who was allowed to learn were being quietly, permanently redrawn.

Built in the vernacular.

The Simmons-Allen House is described in the historic record as a two-story frame dwelling in the vernacular gable-and-wing form, wrapped by a covered porch — a regional building tradition rather than the work of a named architect, as was typical of fine town homes of its day. Built in the late nineteenth century and thoughtfully expanded in the early 1900s, it grew as the family and the town grew around it.

Its enduring details tell the story: hardwood floors across both stories, a living room anchored by a fireplace and built-in bookshelves, generous porches made for Southern evenings, and a private rear yard with a carriage house — the outbuilding of a household built before the automobile. Later stewards undertook extensive renovation, marrying modern systems to the home's original character so it could enter its next century intact.

A home worth keeping in standard.

A house like this asks for more than cleaning. It asks for stewardship — care that respects original wood, aged surfaces, and the patina that only time can give, without the harsh chemicals that strip and dull what makes a historic home rare.

That is the whole of our method. We maintain with 275°F dry vapor steam, HEPA filtration, and certified non-toxic products — physically removing what doesn't belong while protecting what does. For a home well over a century old, and for the guests who will one day stay within it, that is not a luxury. It is the only standard that fits.