Cove Grove Plantation, Hertford North Carolina

Date added: April 08, 2024

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Cove Grove is an unusually graceful and impressive coastal plantation house, combining the boldness of the Greek Revival with much of the delicacy of the late Federal period. Its dramatic double porches engaged under the main roof and its well-executed exterior and interior detail make it an outstanding member of an important regional group of houses, of which it is stylistically apparently the earliest. Its builder, Benjamin Skinner, was a notable member of a family of regional and state importance.

Benjamin Smith Skinner (1795-1861) acquired several small tracts of land in the Old Neck section of Perquimans, beginning in 1818, to form Cove Grove Plantation. About 1830 he built the Cove Grove mansion, which has been owned by his descendants ever since. (A tradition says he wished to provide his wife, Elizabeth, with a dwelling like that of her father, Colonel James Leigh of Land's End. Another tradition claims Colonel Leigh himself built Cove Grove for his daughter and Skinner. The similarities between Cove Grove and Land's End are striking, but Cove Grove shows far greater Federal influence and is probably the earlier of the two.)

A prominent planter, Skinner was a patron of education, being a subscriber or trustee of Union Hall, Farmington, and Harveys Neck Academies. He was also the virtual founder and principal supporter of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in Hertford and first senior warden of its vestry. He died on the eve of the Civil War, bequeathing Cove Grove to his son and namesake. Benjamin S. Skinner, Jr. (1839-186) enlisted in the Perquimans Beauregards (Co. F, 27^th Regt., N.C.T., C.S.A.) in 1861. In 1863 he became captain of the company, and in 186) he was killed in battle at Reams Station, Virginia.

Because of economic disruption and the early death of Captain Skinner, Cove Grove was sold at public auction in 1870 and was purchased by the captain's younger brother, Joshua Skinner (185-1911), who died in 1911 leaving Cove Grove to his three children during their lives and afterward to their children. In a 1923 division, the home farm was allotted to Dr. Joshua John Skinner (1882-1969).

Dr. J. J. Skinner was a biochemist with the United States Department of Agriculture and the author of several scientific articles on plant nutrition and soils. He bequeathed Cove Grove to his sons Joshua Hopkins Skinner and Frank Brightwell Skinner (1915-1967).

Building Description

Cove Grove is a large transitional Federal-Greek Revival plantation house in an undisturbed wooded setting on Old Neck Road, an early road lined by several plantation houses. The house is one of a regional group of houses related by form, detail, and family. It combines the overall massiveness and boldness of forms of the Greek Revival with the delicacy of detail characteristic of the Federal period. The two-story frame structure is five bays wide, and is dominated by dramatic full-height porticos that extend across the front and rear facades and are covered by extensions of the main gable roof. The facades are flush-sheathed, the sides covered with lapped weatherboards; the latter are covered over with asbestos siding. Both porches feature tall, somewhat attenuated unfluted Ionic columns separating the five bays; those on the front rise uninterrupted, but the rear porch has a second-level gallery with lateral steps between the levels in front of the central doorway. The columns, which rest on a sturdy brick round-arched arcade, are handsomely executed, with well-molded bases and capitals with an egg-and-dart echinus resting on a bead molding. The simple entablature features a modillion cornice that carries about the house.

The treatment of the central entrance bay is consistent with the dramatic scale and fine detail of the porch. Visually framed by the two central columns are a first-level fan-lit entrance and a second-level doorway with transom and sidelights, opening onto a small balcony. The lower entrance provides a focal point for the facade: the double door is flanked by sidelights flanked in turn by pairs of symmetrically molded pilasters that carry a striking, outsized fanlight with a bold molded arch and keystone. The large area of the fanlight is articulated only by six simple muntins radiating from the central hub. The door at the second level is a single one, with sidelights beneath a full-width transom, each with geometry tracery. These elements are outlined by well-articulated Greek Revival surrounds consisting of symmetrically molded bands with corner blocks at each intersection and a double Greek key motif at the top center. The delicate iron balcony, with railings composed of elongated lozenges joined by floral bosses, is supported on curvilinear brackets. The remaining bays of this facade contain windows with molded frames and sills, with nine-over-nine sash at the first level and six-over-nine at the second, an arrangement consistent throughout the house.

The side elevations have a striking configuration characteristic of the group of houses to which Cove Grove belongs: on each side rise two chimneys; the wide gable roof has two planes of slope, steep between the chimneys, and less steep from the chimneys in unbroken lines to the cornice of each porch. The west side has four bays at the first level, two beneath the chimneys and one to the front and rear; the rear bay at the second level is blind; and two windows occur in the gable. The east side has only two bays marked, one between the chimneys and one to the front with a single gable window; the rear first-story bay is covered by a small shed entrance wing of later construction. The rear facade has a central entrance at the first level and at the second, doors in the second and fourth bays; there is an exterior transverse stair to the central second-level entrance.

The interior, which follows a center-hall plan two rooms deep, continues the combination of Greek Revival and Federal elements. The plan, with the two parlors joined by wide sliding doors framed by an arch, some of the detail, and the paneling scheme of the doors themselves, are characteristic of the Greek Revival and relate to the other houses of the group, which are more thorough-going Greek; the mantels, the door and window frames, and the treatment of the stairs, however, are Federal in feeling--far more so than in the other houses. The first-floor rooms feature simple molded chair rails and baseboards.

The west parlors are the most elaborately treated, having full-blown three-part Federal mantels. That in the front room has symmetrically molded pilasters carrying a frieze with sunbursts in high relief on end blocks and center tablet, beneath a double dentil cornice and shelf adorned with gouge-work; the cornice breaks out over all three elements, the shelf only over the end blocks. Joining the two rooms is a large arched doorway containing sliding double doors with vertical ranges of horizontal raised flat panels outlined by broad moldings. Flat-paneled pilasters carry a rather wide molded arch with a deeply molded keystone accented by a central vertical row of round beads. The soffit of the arch is flat-paneled, and the inner corners of the doors are notched to fit around the keystone when closed. The rear room has a mantel of similar but slightly simpler design. That in the front east parlor is of the same form but with flat-paneled pilasters and flat panels replacing the sunbursts as ornament; the rear east parlor has flat-paneled end blocks and no center tablet.

The first-floor hall is quite an impressive room, lighted by the over sized fanlight of the front door. It is bisected by a transverse arch like that in the adjoining parlors, differentiated by a bead-and-reel molding on the keystone. A wainscot with raised flat panels with square-indented corners is present. The stair rises in two flights at the rear of the hall with an intervening transverse landing. The open string is ornamented with simple wave-pattern brackets, and slender balusters square in section carry a graceful rounded handrail, which terminates over the tapered newel in a carved element characteristic of the group of houses, rather like a stylized paw and also resembling a robust scallop shell; eleven rounded sections radiate from the back focus, and it is by far the most delicately detailed of the examples seen, including those at Land's End and the Edmund Skinner House.

The second-story rooms are more simply finished, having walls plastered above molded baseboards. The mantels have molded architraves and backbands that carry end blocks and a plain frieze beneath a molded cornice and shelf. In two of the rooms applied moldings form lozenge patterns on the end blocks.

To the southwest of the house is a small latticework gazebo with a cupola.