The stately brick house that sits on a lot facing West Fourth Street, between Summit Street and Brookstown Avenue, has a long and interesting history. In fact, it is referred to as the oldest building in downtown Winston-Salem.
The house was built about 1815 by Van Neman Zevely. He married Johanna Sophia Shober in 1809 without approval of the lot system, which meant he could not live in Salem. He purchased property northwest of Salem from his father-in-law, Gottlieb Shober. The area around North Cherry Street was nearly wilderness at that time. The house was two-stories tall, with an attic and a basement. At one time there was a greenhouse on the south, and there were orchards and gardens extending the length of Cherry Street to Seventh Street.
Van Zevely operated a mill on Belo’s Pond, where he installed the first wool-carding machinery in North Carolina. Van Zevely’s first wife, Johanna Shober, died in 1821. His second wife, Anna Rebecca Holder, died in 1825. His third wife was Susan Elizabeth Peter (1786-1873). He and his first wife had at least five children. One of the children, Augustus Theophilus Zevely, studied medicine in Philadelphia and operated the Zevely Hotel in Salem.
In 1828, Zevely was elected one of two vice-presidents of the Stokes County Sunday School Union. Shortly afterward, he and his wife established a Sunday School in the dense woods of what is now the Buena Vista section of Winston-Salem. The Sunday School was known as Pleasant Hill. Zevely had a special zeal for ministering to people in the mountains of Virginia, and made many trips to the mountains as an evangelist. His work laid the foundations for Moravian church congregations in the Blue Ridge.
Zevely retained his house in the 700 block of Oak Street until 1859. Over time the acreage of his property was reduced, but the house remained intact. The house was purchased by Periwinkle Corporation in 1974 and it was moved in September of 1974 to its present location on West Fourth Street.
The house traveled through the downtown streets, down Trade Street and Liberty Street and West Fourth Street, to its new home at 901 West Fourth Street. The house was rehabilitated to take care of the repairs and to upfit it to be a restaurant, called the Zevely House Restaurant.
Today, the restaurant is known as Bernardin’s Restaurant, https://www.bernardinsfinedining.com/location/winston-bernardins/
This lot is also where the Boggs/Dillard house (discussed in the March 25th post) was located.
See more photos of the Zevely House moving to the new location on Digital Forsyth at: https://www.digitalforsyth.org/photos/?q=zevely+house&fcpl=on&st=1840&nd=2021&b=r&o=a&s=advanced&dv=true
Black and white photographs courtesy of Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection. Color images courtesy of Molly Grogan Rawls.
