The history of this North Carolina town is a romantic one with great history with cultivating landscape. For the past 40 years, the 26-acre estate has been proud to conserve this cultural heritage of the Southern Literary in NC Community. The 9,000 SF existing historic facility holds the gem of this town with artifacts and literature from great Carolinian authors that still inspire artists of our epoch. Now the users are looking forward to the next 40 years and the living literary history demands a larger home.
A village scheme was adopted to match the familial scale of the Historic outbuildings on the site. The New Facility is a courtyard building with a garden promenade that connects the Historic Building and the new facility. Terminating the garden axis is a double height auditorium and cafeteria capped by a barn-like gambrel roof and glass façade that spills into the courtyard. Proud arches greet the courtyard viewer and run across the ceiling of the cafeteria in an expressive sculptural form. The collection of buildings around the new courtyard holds artist residences, a green house and the new Literary Hall of Fame. These outbuildings are treated as smaller houses in a diversity of brick, stone, and shiplap siding to suggest an organic incremental development of the village.Classrooms separate the Lobby and the back of house services, which are visually concealed behind the tall pitched roofed theater. The complex therefore functions with the efficiency of a modern cultural center. All public spaces are fully handicap accessible with special care being given to handicap theater seating. A glass vestibule serves as the entrance and is graced by a water feature that evokes the poetry of the place. The whole village is set back in the “wilderness” of the property to allow visitors to experience the grounds in their approach of the facility.