Where to Stay in High Point, North Carolina

What is High Point known for?

High Point is called the furniture capital of the world, and the International Home Furnishings Markets held every spring and fall turn its showroom floors into the trade's meeting ground for a week and a half at a time. Cotton mills ran here too. Pickett Cotton Mills and the Highland Cotton Mills Village Historic District still mark the older industrial ground, and the Carolina Casket Company name survives from the same trade in Piedmont wood and cloth.

What are the main landmarks in High Point?

Market Square is the address the furniture trade knows, the showroom block that gives High Point its twice-yearly crowd. Mills and schools fill the rest. Pickett Cotton Mills, the Highland Cotton Mills Village Historic District, William Penn High School, the Allen Jay School Rock Gymnasium, the John Haley House, and the Kilby Hotel are the named landmarks, with Sherrod Park and the First Baptist Church among them.

The Carolina Casket Company name still appears on the list, a piece of the wood trade that ran alongside furniture.

What is the history of High Point?

Cloth and wood built High Point. Pickett Cotton Mills and the Highland Cotton Mills Village Historic District record the mill phase, when a Piedmont town organised itself around spinning frames and the housing that went with them, block by block. Furniture carried the name outward.

Manufacturers multiplied across the area until High Point answered to the name furniture capital of the world, and the International Home Furnishings Markets fixed that reputation twice a year, every spring and every fall. Market weeks run seven to ten days each time, long enough to lift the whole Piedmont Triad for the fortnight. The built record survives in pieces.

The Washington Street Historic District, the Uptown Suburbs Historic District, William Penn High School, and the Kilby Hotel each hold a part of the city's story that the showroom floors do not tell. Three counties take the overflow. High Point grew inside Guilford County but did not stay there; its outskirts run into Randolph, Davidson, and Forsyth, and the city sits within the Piedmont Triad alongside Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

The John Haley House and the Hardee Apartments carry names from that older growth, and the Carolina Casket Company records another line of the same wood economy.

Where is High Point?

High Point sits in the Piedmont Triad. Guilford County holds the city, while its outskirts spill over into Randolph, Davidson, and Forsyth, so the built-up ground crosses four county lines before it thins out. Greensboro lies to the northeast.

Winston-Salem completes the Triad, and the three cities share the Piedmont ground that gives the region its name.

What is the climate of High Point?

The Piedmont sets the weather here. High Point lies in the temperate band with no water near enough to hold its temperatures steady, so the swing between the warm half of the year and the cold half is wider than it would be nearer the coast. Market weeks fall in the mild months.

Spring and fall carry the furnishings trade into High Point at the two points in the year when the Piedmont air suits long days of walking showroom floors.

How do you get to High Point?

Greensboro is the near approach. High Point lies south and southwest of Greensboro inside the Piedmont Triad, close enough that arrivals for the furnishings market routinely arrive in one Triad city and sleep in another. Winston-Salem sits on the other side of the same region, and road distances between the three cities are short enough that Guilford County traffic treats them as one place during market weeks.

Cars do most of it.