The Whitsett Historic District is situated in the rolling countryside of eastern Guilford County, seven miles east of Greensboro. It lies adjacent to the boundary dividing Guilford and Alamance Counties within an incorporated community originating at the T-configured intersection of two-lane roads, NC 61 and Whitsett Park Road (State Route 3064). Long vistas of open land surrounding the community recall the larger and earlier context of settlement in the area by eighteenth century Quaker and German Lutheran farmers. But as a community without a pronounced agricultural or commercial orientation, Whitsett developed around the Whitsett Institute, a prestigious private college preparatory school which operated between 1884 and 1919. Although the institute is now gone, several associated houses and boarding houses still focus on its former site now occupied by a 1921 public school building currently serving as the town hall. These houses, which have remained relatively unchanged during the last five decades, line the grassy verges of the main roads extending to the north, south and east of the former institute site. Many of the lawns are shaded by large oaks and magnolia trees planted early in the community's development. With remarkably little infill development over the last eighty years, and the original main road configuration intact, the built environment continues to evoke a time when community life revolved around the institute.