This booklet, planned for young student readers, discusses a group of colonial homes scattered over North Carolina, which remain and can be seen today. They begin in the early 18th century, for earlier homes have long since disappeared. The fate of these first buildings is likewise the fate of most of the churches, courthouses, and other non-domestic structures built during colonial times. Homes, therefore, chiefly constitute the first group or body of architecture remaining from the early and mid-18th century.

Architecture of the final years of the colonial period will be mentioned only lightly. During this later time new ideas of elegance came into North Carolina architecture, as in the well known Tryon Palace, to which we will refer later. For many people who have not thought very much about colonial architecture, these elegant later buildings, and also those of the early Republic, stand somehow for all or the best of “colonial” architecture, and the exciting architecture of an earlier, bustling, genuinely colonial period is not recognized. It will be useful in this booklet, therefore, to focus on the architecture of the earlier 18th century and see the simple, vigorous ideas of this period.

These buildings are of surprising variety—they are made of brick, stone, or wood; they are large and small, plain or fancy in one way or another. A reason for such diversity is that the colonists, coming from different foreign countries and settlements in America, brought with them differing ideas about what a building should look like and how it should be constructed. These early buildings, however, do hold together as a group. More important, they show the rise of architectural ideas especially suited to the hot Carolina summers. Thus, we view our material both as expressive of a genuine “colonial” period, and as establishing ideas which reflect Southern life.

Besides talking about colonial architecture as an important aspect of colonial history, this booklet has two special purposes. One is to interest the student in architecture itself. Some people go through their whole lives without ever being conscious about buildings they like or dislike; they do not wonder why one building looks gay, another sober, and others pompous or unpretentious. This study will provide a number of approaches to architecture. Using everyday vision, so to speak, we will see photographs of buildings from outside and inside, in long-shot and close-up. We will see buildings in plan views and diagrams which show in a few lines what a photograph cannot. We will look down on buildings and cities from high in the air (via maps). And we will look with X-ray eyes into the construction of buildings. In these and other ways a person begins to experience the manifold realities of architecture and to understand how architecture ranks with painting and sculpture as a great, compelling art. Buildings and cities are the material frame created by man, in which he can breathe and live life as he desires it.

The other special purpose of this booklet is to induce the student to investigate old buildings in his or her area—to find them, prowl through their basements and attics to see how they were made, make sketches and take photos of them, look up records, and talk to old citizens about them. People who do this are detectives in a sense; it may take months before the mysteries of a particular building are solved. This is very important work. Each day old buildings are destroyed without any record for architectural history. Such a record can be made only by someone on the spot over an extended period of time—someone like the reader of this study.