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

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52 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 (only those pebble walks to the south of the house have been lost). His rubble-stone terraces also remain, as do many of the garden follies and statuary he used as decorations (although some of these have been moved around to different garden locations since his death). The axiality and symmetry of Draper-Savage's gardens persist,and they reflect the formality of Renaissance garden designs as they were reinterpreted in the 19th and 20th centuries by landscape architects school at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. What remains still reflects, at a structural level,his interest in gardening as well as intention to create Beaux-Arts and Colonial Revival-style landscapes to further frame the historic house. The pastoral setting for the house is foundational to the property's integrity in terms of setting, and the cultural landscape created by Draper-Savage equally contributes to the property's history and its significance. Therefore, the proposed Moorefields Historic District is eligible at the local level of significance under Criterion C in the area Landscape Architecture, for its ability to reflect the estate's history as a site of leisure for members of the elite. CRITERION D: SIGNIFICANCE IN RELATION TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL POTENTIAL Moorefields is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places at the local level of significance under Criterion D in the areas of Archaeology: Historic: Non-aboriginal and Ethnic Heritage: Black. The current 76-acre Moorefields property is part of a natural landscape that bore witness to eons of human habitation by aboriginal peoples and almost three centuries of occupation by post- Contact Period European-Americans and enslaved African Americans. The entire property's potential to yield additional information on several peoples is high. For example, the estate is located on an upland ridge between two tributaries and is thereby the type of environment that is commonly associated with pre-Contact Period indigenous settlement patterns. Furthermore, the property is a vestige of a larger tract first patented by Colonel John Gray in 1752. The site of his Grayfields house,which"was the site of the first session of a Court of Common Pleas and Quarters Sessions held in Orange County" on September 9, 1752, is still unknown.160 Buried beneath Moorefields is centuries of history, but the highest potential rests in the proposed 9.15-acre Moorefields Historic District. As recent archaeological reports maintain, The potential for the property to yield additional archaeological deposits has been proven east of the manor house and is likely to be true of other parts of the property, especially on the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the manor house and other domestic occupation or activity areas. These archaeological deposits, including artifacts and features, would likely be related to the occupation of Alfred Moore, Alfred Moore Jr., Edward Thayer Draper-Savage, and other site occupants, including the enslaved.161 In 2020, archaeologist Emily Nisch Terrell with the assistance of two volunteers investigated the old kitchen yard east of the house by laying a grid of 27 shovel test pits (STPs) over one-tenth of an acre. Terrell noted"a rise in the land in this area [that] is particularly interesting as it is distinct and discrete and its size matches what one would expect from a small structure."162 Among the 322 historic artifacts that Terrell's team uncovered were pieces of fired brick and mortar as well as hand-wrought nails, evidence that a structure (or more than one) once occupied the location. Section 8 page 50