Constructed in 1790 for Samuel Moore, the house was first rescued by local resident and WWI Red Cross nurse Annie Yancey Gwyn, who maintained all existing original materials and the surviving outbuildings. The house, by then listed on The National Register of Historic Places, was next purchased in 1994 by the Ewalt family, who restored the estate for modern living and created an historically appropriate setting for the home. To its original three levels—with parlor, dining room, two upper-level bedrooms, and a basement-level canning kitchen, library, and den—were added two flanking wings housing two additional master bedrooms, a kitchen, family room, and two offices. The house, described by architectural historian Ruth Little as “one of the most handsome Federal style houses in the Northern Piedmont of North Carolina,” exemplifies that style, attributed locally to a design by Thomas Jefferson. The interior features elaborately detailed woodwork, architraves with block capitals, nine fireplaces, a staircase with tulip brackets above a guilloche stringer, and porches on every level.
Of considerable importance to the historic character of the home is its very private setting on a knoll at the end of a cedar-lined lane framed by huge boxwoods, magnolias, and oaks. The rear elevation affords a sweeping vista of terraced grounds, a spring-fed pond, and a swimming pool with pool house. Restored farm buildings east of the house include a tobacco barn restored as an artist’s studio, a log-saddlebag cabin, now a guest cottage with kitchen, bath, and two fireplaces, a two-story tobacco barn and packing house, now an equipment garage, and a third restored tobacco barn, now a workshop. A screened summer house incorporates two two-story-tall chimneys. The surrounding two-hundred acres of fields and managed forestland give the appropriate landscape for the Northern Piedmont historic estate’s period and history.