Gentle Friends, I think I'll wrap up my trip today... my last day in North Carolina Dale and I drove down to New Bern to visit the
Governors Palace. The original Palace burned in 1792, the building there now was reconstructed in the 1950's using the original plans and source material.
The only building from the 18th century still standing on the property is the Stable Office building which, by the 1950's had been turned into apartments. The site now has the reconstructed Palace, reconstructed kitchen/office building and stable office block. Along with the Palace, the grounds have been replanted with mid-20th century "colonial revival designed gardens" and a few smaller out buildings.
A front view of the palace with the kitchen/office to the left and stable office to the right
Impressive gates open onto the front drive
The Palace and other buildings are made of locally sourced bricks and are laid in a Flemish bond pattern, which is...a header brick between two stretcher bricks
To see inside one must take the colonially garbed docent-led tour, which begins on the front steps at the front door.... it's a nice way to start... you are led into a front hall and then into....
... the library - the Palace is filled with many lovely antiques and the library is filled with books of the period that any English gentleman might have...
The largest room in the Palace is the Assembly/Dinning Room, with portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte overlooking the proceedings...
... a small withdrawing-room has a gorgeous bookcase and tea table....
and a super set of needlepoint covered chairs surrounding a card table...
... the small dinning room was set out with a dessert course...
... this small room is a sort of butlers/housekeepers room...
... in the central hall was this table and a great Chinese punch bowl...
... I stepped back and took this snap of the beautiful cantilevered flying staircase in the great stair hall...
... on of the main bedrooms on the second floor....
... this was originally intended to be the Master bedroom but turned out to be the hottest bedroom in the house, it is situated centrally overlooking the back gardens towards the river so Governor Tryon chose another room that would get cross breeses and bebit cooler....
... this little room is M'lady's dressing room, and laid out on the sofa and chairs are costumes and period garments that she might wear...
... for some reason, I only have this corner shot of the Governor's bedroom with a tea table and chair...
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... from the second story we hustled down the back stairs to the basement to see the Housekeepers room.....
... and the butler's room.... the furniture was still all up on blocks to protect it from any water that might rise. Remember, I visited just after a hurricane passed through and there was still plenty of flooding going on in Eastern NC. If you look along the brick wall you can see the original 18th-century brick foundations that the "new" Palace was built on...
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.... looking at the stable office building...
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... from the house, we headed over to the kitchen office building where they were .....
...baking up an apple type pie. There were two lovely ladies there answering questions and talking about what went on in this building during the 18th century...
... this is the servents hall and wash room...
... this is the kitchen gardens and bit over grown but full of things that would have been found there in the 18th century...
... one of the lovely gardens created in the 1950's, that still held lots of mum's from the "
Mumfest" earlier in the month...
... included in the ticket price were two other historic houses to tour so we headed over there to catch a tour.... the first house we saw was the "John Wright Stanly House"...
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John Wright Stanley bought the property the house sat on originally in 1779, and the house was completed in 1787 - and is considered one of the finest examples of late Georgian architecture in the state...
... the house has been moved three times to save it from demolition and has gone through many incarnations from private residence to boarding house then public library and finally a restored historic house that is just beautiful. Although we could take as many pictures as we wanted to the two large front rooms on the first floor were off limits, as they contained many things on loan from Stanley family memebers... just like at Mt Vernon....
.. another lovely stair hall...
... in the front upstairs bedroom, they had a vignette set up with a piece of needlework in a tambour frame sitting on a locally made dressing table...
... the second bedroom..
... and a couple of shots of the master bedroom set with a tea table... notice the super garniture of Chinese export porcelain on the mantle...
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The second house on tour was the "George W Dixon House" - built in 1828 for the successful merchant and a New Bern Mayor, George Dixon. It is a fine example of neoclassical architecture - although built when he was flush eventually it was lost to foreclosure. During the Civil War and the Federal occupation of New Bern the house served as a hospital for the 9th Vermont Infantry.
The house epitomizes life in the first half of the 19th century when the town was a prosperous port and one of the state's largest cities. It is furnishings, reflect the Federal/Empire period as it was interpreted in America.
... a snap of the front of the house, the original part of the house is the main block you see here...
... this is a snap I took from the Palace side or back of the house, here you can see the later Victorian additions added in the 1840's and the 1870's...
... the front room is covered is a really loud wall paper that was made especially for the house...
... another shot of the front room... boy, that paper was "busy"...
..and it wrapped into the dining room...
... the front upstair bedroom was also covered in period paper, and as with the downstairs rooms just full of lovely period furniture.
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From New Bern we headed back to Ayden, and stopped at a great Antique mall, I'll show you next week what I picked up..... That's about it for the trip, I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed rehashing everything!! Thanks again for stopping by do stop again!!
Take care,
edgar
