Agenda - 12-04-2017 - 5-a - Joint Public Hearing with the HPC Regarding the Proposed Desig. of the Dr. Arch Jordan House in the Caldwell Comm. as an OC Local Historic Landmark

Browse Search

12 1 - NPs Form 10-900-a - OMB Approval No.1024-0018 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic P faces Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 3 Dr.Arch Jordan House Orange County,North Carolina with such decorative features as a tongue-and-groove wooden sheathing which adorns the center hallway and the upstairs walls and ceilings;heavily molded and distinct mantels surrounding the fireplaces in each of the main rooms,and an elaborately curved staircase. While other rural Orange County properties display Italianate features,the Dr.Arch Jordan house remains the most complete and most ornate rural model of this genre in the county. Significant as well in the area of Social History under Criteria A,the Dr.Arch Jordan house and property were closely associated with rural medical practice,the rural economy centered in the cross-roads general store,and the central social institution of the Presbyterian church. Dr.Jordan inhabited the house from the 1870s to 1905,using the house as the nucleus of his medical service to the Caldwell community. He was also quite involved as a teacher and trustee of the nearby Caldwell Institute,a local school, and established along with his brother a general store and pharmacy across the road from his house. In 1905 three nearby Presbyterian churches jointly purchased the property to use as a manse,and ministers living there from 1905 to 1929 served these local churches. In rural Orange County districts like Little River Township,dominated by scattered family farms,it was the church above all other institutions that that served to cohere local communities and provide a center for neighborhood social life. Cross-roads communities such as Caldwell developed around the key institutions of the church,the school,or the general store. The Dr.Arch Jordan house,associated with all of these vital rural institutions,provided a central hub to the social life of this rural Orange County community for over half a century. Architectural Context: The Dr.Arch Jordan House is historically significant primarily as a well-preserved example of Late Victorian Italianate architecture.Its highly ornate and detailed design provides a wonderful example of this architectural style. Originating in the"romanticism of the Picturesque movement,"this style was most popular in the years from 1850 to 1880,although rural North Carolina adaptations appeared into the early twentieth century.3 Italianate architecture was characterized by overhanging eaves with(sometimes elaborate)bracketed cornices,"elongated,round-headed and sometimes paired windows capped with projecting hooded or pedimented and bracketed moldings,"porches with columns and hip-roofed construction,and an overall projection of verticality--all features clearly present in the Dr.Arch Jordan House 4 Dr.Jordan was among those wealthy Orange County residents who"chose picturesque versions of a quote from Gabrielle M.Lanier and Bernard L.Herman,Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic:Looking at Buildings and Landscapes(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 147-48; Catherine W.Bishir,North Carolina Architecture(Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1990),286-88. a Lanier and Herman,Everyday Architecture, 149;Sterling Boyd,"Introduction"in Marguerite Schumann,ed., Grand Old Ladies:North Carolina Architecture During the Victorian Era(Charlotte,NC:East Woods Press, 1984), 18-19.