High Point's Dog House Marks 84 Years as Downtown Development Reshapes City

Since 1942, the Dog House has been serving generations of High Pointers their famous hot dogs and hamburgers from a counter seat on North Main Street. Now in its 84th year, the classic lunch spot is drawing renewed attention as downtown High Point undergoes the most sweeping wave of development the city has seen in decades.

The way the story goes, the six friends who opened a pool hall in 1942 only started serving hot dogs so that patrons wouldn't have to leave to get something to eat. Jean Freedle bought the Dog House in 1975, and though she's semiretired, she still loves talking to the carousel of regulars who come around each day. That continuity, family running the counter while the city shifts outside, is the thread that runs through the Triad Business Journal's "Triad Icons" feature on the restaurant.

The Dog House sits at 664 N. Main St. and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Many locals have grown up going to the Dog House with their own parents and grandparents and now take their kids in order to keep their long-time family traditions. The hot dog comes loaded, slaw, or all the way, and Freedle maintains they all taste best at the old-school lunch counter.

As famous as the restaurant is in High Point, it has also gained statewide notoriety after being featured in Our State Magazine's top 10 NC hot dog restaurants. The chili slaw dog, in particular, has become the order regulars cite most, alongside the mustard slaw variation.

The backdrop to the anniversary is a downtown that looks markedly different from the one the Dog House has occupied for eight decades. Downtown High Point's entertainment district continues to grow with a mixed-use development project that will bring diverse food and entertainment options, a rooftop bar, and more to the heart of downtown. The downtown core has grown particularly through redevelopment efforts around the High Point Market, including the live-work-play redevelopment at Congdon Yards, a historic factory space. Meanwhile, the city is also updating its development ordinance, which sets standards for land use and development citywide.

Through all of it, the Dog House has kept its hours, its counter stools, and its menu largely unchanged. You could easily imagine from a quick look around the surroundings that you had been swept back to the 1950s. That quality is precisely what the Triad Business Journal's "Triad Icons" series is documenting: a family-run hamburger and hot-dog counter that has not just survived downtown's transformation but remained a fixed point within it.