Southern Comfort, Yanceyville, North Carolina

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Offered at $1,750,000

It is a rare and happy occasion when an historic property meets a talented and capable owner who can remint it to its original grandeur. But for such a property to encounter two such owners in its lifetime is exceptionally fortunate, making the preservation, restoration, and enhancement of the historic Moore-Gwyn-Ewalt House outside the small North Carolina town of Yanceyville in Caswell County a true Cinderella story. Constructed around 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 Wally and Pat Ewalt. The Ewalts have devoted their time and energy to restoring the house, renovating it for modern living and creating a 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 convenient to US Highway 158 and 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, all that remained of an early kitchen building. The surrounding two-hundred acres of fields and managed forestland give the Moore-Gwyn-Ewalt House the appropriate landscape for its period and history.

Estate Gallery