C.V. Whitley House featured on tour

By MaryBeth Carpenter

The home of Colon Vaiden and Nelle Whitley, a prominent and grand home at 324 W. Gannon Avenue, will be featured in Zebulon’s Historic Home tour on April 29. Presented by Preservation Zebulon, the tour will present six homes that are about 100 years old and in the newly established National Register Historic District in Zebulon.

The C.V. Whitley home was built in 1928 for one of the town’s premiere residents, Colon Vaiden Whitley, who was President of Zebulon Supply Company, which later became Whitley Furniture.  C.V. Whitley took over the business after his father and its founder, R.J. Whitley, passed away in 1924. C.V. was head of Whitley Furniture and converted it from a farm supply and undertaker company into a full furniture store with a state-wide reach.  In 1932 this second floor store became known as Whitley Furniture Inc. and the farm supply business on the first floor retained the name of Zebulon Supply Co.

The general store carried furniture, farming supplies, and heavy and fancy livestock feeds, including bran, dairy and chicken feed. In a warehouse across the street on Vance were stocks of one and two horse wagons and farming implements through the 1940s. In 1959, C.V. Whitley’s daughter, Nancy, and her husband Amos Estes began to run the business, and became full owners upon the death of C.V Whitley, in 1966. Nancy and Amos Estes ran the business until they retired in 1993. The store closed in 2022 as Amos’ children Charles Whitley Estes and Nelle Carroll, who managed the store for the past 30 years, decided to retire.

C.V. Whitley, from Preservation Zebulon collection

C.V. Whitley was also honored with a high school in Wendell named in his honor. The school’s name was changed later. Amos Estes recalls bringing his children there as they were growing up to visit their grandparents, and living there with Nancy. The house left the Whitley family ownership in 1996. After changing hands several times, the house was bought in 2021 by David Martin.

He has spent the last two years doing a lift and lay on the entire roof due to the many roof leaks, making the home structurally sound, and renovating the entire house. He removed walls, expanded the kitchen, created two upstairs porches off of bedrooms, added a stone wall and landscaping, moved the laundry room to the upstairs and expanded the Master Bedroom and Bath. The result is a showplace as a residence for his entire family. “I wanted to honor the history and at the same time modernize the house to today’s standards making it suitable for my family,” David Martin explained. “We are happy to open it to the community during the Historic Home Tour.”

Tickets for the Zebulon Historic Home Tour can be purchased at this link: https://secure.givelively.org/event/preservation-zebulon-inc/zebulon-historic-homes-tour-2023

MaryBeth Carpenter is Executive Director of Preservation Zebulon Inc.