East of the C&G Railroad tracks, Washington Avenue and Main Street turn south into Greenville’s early-twentieth-century white residential district. The city’s professionals and merchants commuted to and from their downtown offices and stores on Greenville’s streetcar system, which ran on Washington south to Robertshaw Street. A variety of bungalows enliven the neighborhood, including the five matching stuccoed bungalows of Allen Court (c. 1940) at 218–226 S. Washington. Farther south are several fine Craftsman bungalows, most notably at 440 S. Washington (c. 1917), where geometric stickwork decorates the jerkinhead porch gable, and flared knee walls anchor the house to the ground. Novelist and historian Shelby Foote lived from childhood to early adulthood in the 1914 bungalow at 502 S. Washington and wrote his first five novels here. Smaller Spanish Colonial Revival bungalows are at 631 (c. 1930) and 854 S. Washington (c. 1935).
The half-timbered two-towered house (1913) at 625 S. Washington was built for lumbermill owner George Leavenworth and conforms closely to a plan published in Gustav Stickley’s The Craftsman in September 1906. Craftsman features are seen in the textured stuccoed walls, wooden detailing, paired windows, two-story porches, and red tile roofs. The interior mostly follows the flowing plan as published, using sliding doors as partitions. J. Frazer Smith designed the M. L. Virden House (1929–1930; pictured above) at 755 S. Washington. The tile roof and dark brick of this two-and-half-story Tudor Revival house are a study in browns, accented by cast-stone window surrounds and a curved pediment over the entrance.