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William Tryon, a British officer and colonial official, served as Governor of North-Carolina from 1765 to 1771. Tryon had seen the need for a centrally-located Government House while serving as lieutenant governor. After assuming office as Governor, Tryon wanted to emulate the British Colonial structures popularized at the time. He recruited London architect John Hawks to design and build what would become Tryon Palace.
The Design of Tryon
In 1766, William Tryon petitioned the government for a grant of £5,000 for the building of an Edifice to be used for government purposes. After plotting and designing what would become the governor’s home, Tryon told the legislature that the sum was not substantial enough for the plans he and Hawk had created. Building it “in the plainest manner” would cost no less than £10,000 without including the outbuildings he envisioned. The North Carolina legislature authorized the funding and construction began.
Hawks agreed to supervise the construction for three years and went to Philadelphia at Tryon’s behest to hire workers; Tryon said native North Carolina workers would not know how to construct such a building. Tryon was able to convince the legislature to increase taxes for the house.
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Hawks designed the Palace in the manner of a number of fashionable country houses in the vicinity of London – Georgian in style, with symmetry maintained throughout. It was soon regarded to be one of the finest public buildings in the American colonies. Completed in 1770, Tryon Palace served as the first permanent capitol of North Carolina and home to the Tryon family.
Tryon Palace was the site of the first sessions of the general assembly for the State of North Carolina following the revolution and housed the state governors until 1794.
In 1798, a fire destroyed the original Palace building. An extensive 30-year campaign to rebuild the Palace and restore the grounds was launched by the people of New Bern, state leaders, world craftsmen, and generous, dedicated citizens such as Mrs. James Edwin Latham. Their efforts led to the triumphal reopening of the Palace in 1959. Today, the Palace lives on as a testament to history, community, and rebirth.
A Home Fit for A Governor
Governor Tryon, his wife Margaret Wake Tryon, and their daughter Margaret lived in the Palace for just over a year. They left New Bern in June 1771, when Governor Tryon was appointed to the governorship of New York.
Josiah Martin, the second royal governor to live in the Palace, fled in May of 1775 at the beginning of the American Revolution and his furnishings were later auctioned off by the newly formed state government. Patriots made the Palace their capitol and the first sessions of the General Assembly met there to begin designing a free and independent state. Four state governors used the Palace: Richard Caswell, Abner Nash, Alexander Martin, and Richard Dobbs Spaight.
In 1791, the Palace was the scene of a dinner and dancing assembly held in honor of President George Washington, who was exploring New Bern while on his Southern Tour.
Shortly after in 1794 the capitol of North Carolina was moved to Raleigh. Rooms in the remaining Palace were rented for various purposes, including a Masonic lodge, a private school, and a boarding house. In February of 1798, a fire started in the cellar, where hay was being stored. The fire quickly devastated the main building, which collapsed, but the Kitchen and Stable Offices were saved. The Kitchen Office was demolished in the early 19th century; the Stable Office survives.
Controversy
The construction of the house exacted great controversy in the North Carolina backcountry where most viewed it as an unnecessary, extravagant display of England. Extra taxation to fund the project had been levied by the governor on the citizens of the province, who had already felt overburdened with taxation.
More resentment and contempt brewed after the Tryon Family left just a year after of living in the newly completed home, for a government office in New York.
It proved to be too much and served as a major catalyst in North Carolina’s War of the Regulation, which served as a catalyst to the American Revolution.
Rebuilding
In the 19th century, George Street was extended over the original Palace foundation and dozens of houses and businesses were built on either side. At the end of the street, a bridge crossed the Trent River. In the 1930s a movement began to restore North Carolina’s first capitol. The movement gained strength when volunteers tracked down John Hawks’ original architectural plans.
In 1944, Mrs. James Edwin Latham, a Greensboro resident and native of New Bern, challenged the State of North Carolina to join her in restoring the Palace. She guaranteed her commitment through the establishment of a trust fund dedicated solely to the Palace restoration. In 1945, the legislature created the Tryon Palace Commission, a body of 25 persons appointed by the governor, and charged it with the reconstruction of the original Palace from its original plans on its original foundation. As part of its commitment, the state further agreed to maintain and operate the restoration when it opened to the public.
Mrs. Latham died in 1951, shortly before the reconstruction of the Palace began. Her daughter, Mrs. Mae Gordon Kellenberger, took on leadership of the restoration. The first restoration challenge was to clear the site. This involved removing more than 50 buildings and rerouting North Carolina Route 70, including a bridge over the Trent River. Archaeological digs followed. They soon uncovered the original Palace foundations, directly under the site that the highway had occupied. Layers of stucco were removed from the Stable Office, the only remaining part of the 1770 complex.
Then the painstaking job of reconstructing the Palace began. Craftspeople from across the country and abroad were brought in to do the work. In the meantime, trips to England yielded furnishings appropriate to the period of the original Palace. Earnings from Mrs. Latham’s trust underwrote all of these time-consuming and costly tasks.
The Palace was opened to the public in April 1959, as North Carolina’s first great public history project. The furnishings at the Palace are primarily English. Governor Tryon made a very detailed inventory of his possessions following the destruction by fire of his later home at Fort George, New York. This inventory, which revealed the Tryon’s’ taste in furnishings, was used as a guide in refurbishing the reconstructed Palace. Today, guides in period dress conduct tours of the building. Both floors are open, as well as the cellar, which has recently been reinterpreted according to descriptions contained in architect John Hawks’ letters.
Tryon Palace Today
The Tryon Palace Historic Site includes several structures besides the main building. The Stable Offices is the only original structure still standing. The Kitchen Office is separate from the Palace, as was usual at the time.
After the 1798 fire, the grounds were divided into lots and sold. In the early 1830s, a house, The George W. Dixon House, was built for George W. Dixon, a wealthy merchant tailor and former mayor of New Bern. The Robert Hay House, built at the start of the 19th century, was purchased in 1816 by Robert Hay, a Scottish immigrant and wainwright.
The John Wright Stanly House is an outstanding example of Georgian architecture and has served as home to several generations of his family, some of whom were important figures during the American Revolution, the early national period, and the Civil War. The New Bern Academy was the first school in North Carolina established by legal mandate, in 1766. Like the Palace, the original academy building was destroyed by fire, this one in 1795. The current structure was built between 1806 and 1809.
The Gardens
Encompassing more than 16 acres of gardens and landscapes, the Palace Gardens were designed by noted landscape architect Morley Jeffers Williams in the 1950s and represent the formal garden style of 18th-century Britain.
None of the historic garden plans has ever been implemented at the Palace. The current gardens, designed by Williams, reflect the gardens at the time of the Palace Restoration. Before undertaking the Palace project, Williams had served on the faculties of Harvard and North Carolina State Universities and assisted in the restoration of the gardens at Mount Vernon and Stratford Hall. His designs are in the colonial revival style that was widely employed in the mid-20th century.
The formal “parterre” gardens of the Maude Moore Latham Garden and the Gertrude Carraway Garden display clipped hedges, flowers, and paths in patterns. The spring display includes daffodils, tulips, and many other spring flowers. The Kellenberger Garden reflects the Colonial era with arrangements of marigolds and celosia which were popular in the 18th century. There is always an abundance of herbs and vegetables growing in the Kitchen Garden.
Also included in the site are gardens surrounding three historic houses – one with a formal lawn and camellia collection, town garden, and swept yard/working garden. Three additional gardens reveal the splendor of the Victoria era. The Etteinne Mitchell Riverside Garden includes a diversity of native plants, which are both beautiful and play an important role in the local ecosystem. The plants selected survive both periods of flooding and of dry soil, and provide food and shelter for numerous animals.
The North Carolina History Center at Tryon Palace and the Palace Gardens are open 10 AM to 5 PM, Monday – Saturday, and from Noon to 5 PM on Sunday. A full one-day pass can be purchased for $15 or a garden pass may be purchased for $6.
Information gathered from Tryonpalace.org and NCpedia.org