The Perry Goodrum House
Perry Goodrum was a Supervisor of the Gem Yarn Mill. The “Perry Goodrum House” is the older of the two houses. Perry W. Goodrum bought the lot in 1900 and erected the residence sometime thereafter. His family owned the house until 1989, but Perry died in 1911 of typhoid fever. The cause was probably contaminated water from a community well that still exists behind the Goodrum House. Goodrum was an administrator at the Cornelius Gem Cotton Mill (aka Oak Street Mill).
In October 1995, the Town of Cornelius produced a comprehensive evaluation of the built environment of the Town. This study determined that the Perry Goodrum House and the Gabriel-Puckett House are historically significant because: "Along Catawba Avenue and North Main Street, members of the middle class occupied a variety of Queen Anne cottages and, by the 1920s, bungalows. Exemplary Queen Anne cottages include the Perry Goodrum and William Puckett houses (sic.), which stand side by side on Catawba Avenue. Both were built before 1910, and are one-story, frame, hip-roofed dwellings, with projecting gable-roofed bays and turned-posts porches trimmed with millwork. As Cornelius grew in the early twentieth century, its progress was measured most clearly by the tree-lined blocks of handsome residences built for the local elite as well as the middle class. The great majority of residential areas remains well-preserved. They are characterized by mature shade trees and shrubbery, and houses that represent both traditional, regional forms as well as the the most popular architectural styles of their time."
In 2021, Lake Norman Realty encouraged Preserve Mecklenburg Incorporated (PMI) to take an exclusive, assignable option to purchase the houses and four tax parcels of land ready hopefully to assist in developing a financially viable preservation/development strategy for the two historical houses and the four "new homes" tax parcels. PMI holds a historical land easement on the rehabilitated homes for use by the Cain Center for the Arts and the developer was able to construct 6 new market rate homes.