Perched high above the sidewalk just off busy Market Street in Wilmington near New Hanover High School, the house is easy to miss whether you're walking or driving past.
Stately live oaks draped with Spanish moss swoop down from the small but heavily shaded front yard, obscuring the modest-looking but deceptively large, 8,000-square-foot brick house at 1417 Market St.
The Hargrove Bellamy house, sometimes called the Hargrove Bellamy Mansion, is one of Wilmington's lesser-known and more mysterious historic homes, in part because it's been largely unoccupied for years, if not decades.
The home's current owner has vowed to "bring it back to its former glory." From the outside, however, the impressive structure appears to be in much the same shabby,
potential-laden condition as it was some two and a half years ago.
The Hargrove Bellamy Mansion was built around 1928 for the scion of a famous Wilmington family, the Bellamys. Hargrove Bellamy was the grandson of John D. Bellamy, the lawyer, businessman, Congressman and 1898 coup/massacre conspirator who in 1860 built the famous Bellamy Mansion, now a museum, at Fifth Avenue and Market Street.
The Hargrove Bellamy is one of at least four mansion-like Bellamy houses that have existed on Market Street over the decades, at least two of which have been lost.
According to a blog post on the website of the Bellamy Mansion, the massive Rachel Thompson house at 513 Market St., which used to sit next to the Bellamy Mansion and was purchased by Hargrove's father, Robert Bellamy, in 1890 — it was also known as the Tabb Mansion — burned down in 1980.
The house of Hargrove's uncle, the John D. Bellamy Jr. house at 602 Market St., was built in 1858 and purchased by Bellamy Jr. in the 1890s. He massively remodeled it, adding a distinctively shaped tower locals called "the German helmet." It burned down in 1972.
Certainly, the Hargrove Bellamy house is much more unassuming than the eye-poppingly massive Bellamy Mansion or "the German helmet."
From the outside, at least.
Stunning pictures in a 2021 post from OldHouseDreams.com, a website that showcases historic homes for sale across the U.S. and Canada, show a grand entry hall, a gorgeous spiral staircase, a "walnut-wood-paneled library" and a "redwood-paneled game room with large fireplace and half kitchen," looking at once impressive and quite the worse for wear.
The 2021 post noted "years of neglect and disrepair," "engineering that withstands the test of time" and a roof restoration from the mid-2000s "that retained the original 80-year-old slate tiles."
Certainly, the house has the best bones that money could buy in the 1920s, and was structurally sound as of 2021.
New Hanover County property records list the house's current owner as J. Long Custom Homes LLC of Wilmington, which purchased the Hargrove Bellamy in January 2023 for $710,000. It's currently valued at about $1.6 million on real estate website Zillow.com, same as it was in 2024.
A 2024 Facebook post from J. Long Custom Homes read, "The Hargrove Bellamy Mansion is a beautiful home. We are excited to be the ones who get to bring it back to its former glory."
Multiple attempts to reach someone with J. Long Custom Homes via phone, text, email and in person were unsuccessful.
J. Long Custom Homes is the house's sixth owner since the heirs of Hargrove Bellamy sold it for $200,000 in 1994. It was then sold for $850,000 in 1999, then for $1.2 million in 2007.
The house was sold twice in 2016, first for $850,000 in May of that year, then for $400,000 in December.
A storm window in the front of the house that was broken in 2024 remains shattered, and the non-brick portions of the house still need painting. A gigantic back yard, which extends all the way to Princess Street, appears to be well-kept.
The property passed an inspection for plumbing work in 2024, according to publicly available documents.
A neighbor whose property borders the Hargrove Bellamy's backyard said he's lived there for six years, and while work on the mansion has been done intermittently, and there are work vans parked there occasionally, he hasn't seen much activity in recent months.
John Staton is the arts and culture reporter for the StarNews. You can reach him at jstaton@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Future remains unclear for Wilmington's 'other' Bellamy mansion
