Wedding DJ at Kress Terrace in Greensboro, NC

The Space

Kress Terrace occupies the fourth floor of the S.H. Kress Building, an Art Deco landmark built in 1930 and designed by architect Edward Sibbert, who went on to design more than fifty Kress stores nationwide between 1929 and 1944. The building originally housed a five-and-dime department store, selling affordable, everyday merchandise in an elegant setting, and it operated in that role until closing in 1973. The rooftop here was also the site of civil rights demonstrations in 1960, part of Greensboro’s larger sit-in movement.

The venue keeps the building’s original character rather than smoothing it over: distressed brick, dark plank hardwood floors, and the high ceilings the 1930s construction allowed are all still part of the room today. Kress Terrace itself has hosted events for years, pairing that history with a working double-doored connection between an interior ballroom and an open rooftop terrace, so the same event can move between an enclosed room and open-air space without leaving the building.

Capacity & Layout

The interior ballroom runs 2,500 to 2,600 square feet and seats up to 200 guests, while the rooftop terrace adds another 4,000 to 4,500 square feet, bringing total seated capacity to 300 when both spaces are used together, or up to 225 for a standing cocktail reception. That split lets a couple stage a ceremony or cocktail hour on the rooftop, with its downtown views, then move the seated reception into the ballroom, or run the whole event across both spaces at once.

Double glass doors connect the interior ballroom directly to the rooftop terrace, and the terrace itself can be covered with tents, which means weather does not have to force a choice between indoor and outdoor for the whole event. Suite 300, on the building’s third floor, is available as a separate space entirely, useful for a ceremony held apart from the reception or as a second room for a rehearsal dinner earlier in the wedding weekend.

Amenities

A bridal suite is available on site for wedding-day preparation, and the building offers secure, covered parking with an adjacent parking deck, a real convenience downtown where street parking for a full wedding guest list is rarely practical. Catering is available on site with customizable packages, and outside caterers are also welcome, giving couples flexibility rather than being locked into one vendor. Bar service runs across both the indoor and outdoor areas.

The building itself carries real decorative detail worth knowing about ahead of time: terracotta reliefs, coats-of-arms, ornamental metal work, and tobacco leaf and narcissus flower motifs across the exterior, all original to the 1930 construction and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. That kind of built-in detail means a couple is not decorating a blank room from scratch, the Art Deco character is already doing real visual work before a single centerpiece goes on a table.

Location & Getting There

Kress Terrace sits in downtown Greensboro, close enough to Piedmont Triad International Airport for about a 16-minute drive, and within roughly 23 minutes of High Point, 28 of Burlington, and 34 of Winston-Salem, a central spot for a guest list pulling from across the Triad. The downtown setting means guests arriving from out of town have hotels, restaurants, and parking decks within walking distance rather than needing to drive between venues on a wedding weekend.

With an enclosed ballroom on one side of a set of glass doors and an open rooftop on the other, sound behaves differently depending on which space is in use: the ballroom’s hard plank floors and high ceiling carry a DJ setup cleanly indoors, while the rooftop terrace, open to downtown air, needs speakers aimed directly at the guest area rather than relying on walls to hold the sound in, especially once those glass doors are open between the two.