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Early Twentieth Century Styles (2.1.1.1.5)

Neo-Classical Revival (2.1.1.1.5.2)

The Neo-Classical Revival style is characterized by an imposing appearance and elaborate classical detailing. Its hallmark is a monumental central portico career by two-story columns (usually in pairs) that often overlaps a one-story porch extending beneath the portico, across the façade, and down one or both of the side elevations. Additional decoration is found at elaborately detailed door and window surrounds, balustrades, denticulated cornices, and pedimented dormers. Fully realized examples were constructed only by the wealthiest homeowners.

The Charles O. Robinson House (201 East Main Street, 1914), designed by New Bern architect Herbert W. Simpson, is one of the finest examples of the style in North Carolina. The monumental City of the Corinthian portico is echoed by the vitality and sheer number (forty-four) of smaller Corinthian columns that carry the extensive one-story porch across three sides of the house before terminating on the rear with a porte cochere. While the monumental Ionic columns on the Judge Isaac M. Meekins House (310 West Main Street, 1903), designed by Raleigh architects Rose and Ekin, are single and not paired, the elaborately enriched pediments over the façade's doors and windows, plus the exuberance of miniature false balconies on the second story, provide an imposing character. The Mary Blades Foreman House (309 West Main Street, 1912-1913) is of smaller scale than the Robinson and Meekins houses. Although the monumental Tuscan portico is off center, the one-story porch wraps along only one side elevation to provide a symmetrical three-bay arrangement of the first story. This same arrangement is employed on the very similar but even more modestly scaled Ballard-Finck House (1003 West Church Street, ca. 1914).