Agenda 02-03-2026; 8-i - National Register Recommendation for Moorefields

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50 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service/National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No.1024-0018 Moorefields (Additional Documentation) Orange County, N.C. Name of Property County and State side (west) elevation (see Figure 1). The structure of the garden is not unlike Henderson's Herb Garden (1938) or the parterre room within the Elizabethan Gardens (1954). Draper-Savage's rectangular garden was defined by four broad, axial, and orthogonally-laid pea-pebble walks. Its cruciform plan was created by two intersecting pebble walks meeting in a centralized rond-pont. The four quadrants were occupied by rectangular greenswards, while two narrow planting strips edged the garden on the northern and western ends. By 1955, the northeastern greensward was planted and bordered by small, shaped conifers while the southwestern greensward held a bust (one of his own sculptures)atop a wooden pole;the other three greenswards were still merely open lawn shaded by mature canopy trees. Historic Photographs show that Draper-Savage continued to build upon and embellish his gardens over time. By 1963,the West Parterre Garden's greenswards were crisply-edged and defined by grass borders. The rectangular planting beds within featured evergreen topiary at the corners; groundcover or ornamental flora in the center; and manicured shrubbery. Draper-Savage adorned the garden with more statuary, including another bust, a concrete pagoda on a pedestal, and a concrete birdbath(see Figure 9). How Draper-Savage placed and framed his gardens also informed how he altered the Moorefields house, or vice-versa. Between 1958 and 1968,Draper-Savage removed the exterior stairs from and enclosed the south porch, meaning its only access was from the house interior. Such an act made the porch a viewing platform of the south lawn. Historic aerial photographs from 1955, 1960, and 1964 show that Draper-Savage first extended the West Parterre Garden's pebble-walk grid to the south then to the southeast--directly in front of the house's south fagade within the curtilage circumscribed by Moorefields' looped drive. These pebble walks, however, had been removed from the landscape and the south lawn returned to its present naturalistic appearance by 1982. The Kitchen (East) Garden Terrace, however, remains. Between 1949 and 1968, Draper-Savage built an elevated terrace on the east side of the house that was accessed from a side door at the northern end of the house's side (east) elevation (see Figures 3, 4, and 10). The packed-earth terrace is defined on the west and east sides by a low rubble-stone wall. On the south end are three shallow, rubble steps that bleed into the gravel driveway. In period photographs, Draper-Savage had adorned the terrace with circular concrete planters as well as another concrete pagoda statue. To the east of the terrace, Draper-Savage had what he called the"kitchen garden."Today,the kitchen garden is a small, rectangular patch delineated by irregular, coarse rubble stones set into the earth, but it dates to 1982. Historic aerials show that the North Parterre Garden—the largest of the garden rooms—was in rudimentary form in 1960. Draper-Savage had built the small rubble-stone terrace by then had defined the garden room as a large,rectangular space defined by low-lying planting beds. By 1963, when Draper-Savage opened Moorefields to the public for an annual garden tour known as the "Spring Pilgrimage," he had completed the North Parterre Garden. A photograph of the garden accompanying the notice in The News of Orange County shows a long, broad, axial walk flanked by narrower, intersecting walks forming a series of X-shaped patterns."' However, other historic photographs show that Draper-Savage was constantly changing elements in the garden design: while photographs taken in 1962 show low, rubble-stone walls around the north parterre garden's rubble-stone terrace, by 1965 these had been replaced by medium-height, clipped hedges (see Figure 11). The same 1965 photograph shows the North Parterre Garden as open, with "its long Section 8 page 48