"The Cupola House is a historic house museum in Edenton, North Carolina. Built in 1756–1758 (as determined by dendrochronology), it is the second oldest building in Edenton, and the only known surviving example in the American South of a "jutt," or overhanging second floor. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.
The Cupola House is a two-story gable-roofed house with external brick end chimneys. It is now covered with weatherboards; recent research suggests it may originally have been covered with rusticated siding, similar to the siding still in place on the cupola. Mount Vernon and the Redwood Library have similar siding. The roof is covered with wooden shingles. Two main rooms flank a central passage, which was an uncommon layout in colonial North Carolina but was not rare in other colonies. The unique aspect of the house is its combination of a cupola with an overhanging upper story. The cupola is octagon-shaped and covered in wood that has been cut to imitate stonework.
Inside, the house features elaborate finishing which denotes the "social hierarchy" of the rooms. The stair brackets of the staircase in the central hallway feature carved floral decorations and moldings, while the doors leading to the two main rooms are surmounted by pediments. The house includes ornate mantels and woodwork on first and second floors. The cupola is reached from the attic by a "barrel stair," a spiral stair framed within vertical wood sheathing that looks like a large barrel.
The house lot was originally more spacious, extending to Edenton Bay. The property was owned by a succession of merchants, including Richard Sanderson, a shipowner. Francis Corbin, the Earl of Granville’s land agent, bought the lot in 1756 and built the current residence.
The Cupola House is one of several sites of historic Edenton. Other historic sites open for tour include the James Iredell House, Roanoke River Light, Barker House, Chowan County Courthouse and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Edenton is a town in, and the county seat of, Chowan County, North Carolina, United States, on Albemarle Sound. The population was 4,397 at the 2020 census. Edenton is located in North Carolina’s Inner Banks region. In recent years Edenton has become a popular retirement location and a destination for heritage tourism.
Edenton served as the second official capital of North Carolina, during the colonial era as the Province of North Carolina, though other than housing the governor’s official residence, it did not otherwise house any other governmental functions. It served as capital from 1722 to 1743, when it was moved to Brunswick. The town was the site of the Edenton Tea Party, a protest organized by several Edenton women in 1774 in solidarity with the organizers of the Boston Tea Party. It was the birthplace of Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved African American whose 1861 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is now considered an American classic. Edenton gained notoriety for a famous wrongful conviction during the Satanic panic era of the late twentieth century. Today, Edenton’s local economy is primarily driven by tourism, and as a popular retirement location." – info from Wikipedia.
The fall of 2022 I did my 3rd major cycling tour. I began my adventure in Montreal, Canada and finished in Savannah, GA. This tour took me through the oldest parts of Quebec and the 13 original US states. During this adventure I cycled 7,126 km over the course of 2.5 months and took more than 68,000 photos. As with my previous tours, a major focus was to photograph historic architecture.
Now on Instagram.
