{"nrhp_refnum":"80002809","name":"Speight House and Cotton Gin","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"E. Church St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Edenton","county":"Chowan County","state":"NC","lat":36.12598910600008,"lon":-76.60800075499998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1980-09-22","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A brick Queen Anne style plantation house with an associated brick cotton gin, smokehouse and other outbuildings, just inside the town limits of Edenton, Chowan County, North Carolina. The house was built in 1900 for Will Oscar Speight.","why_significant":"The house is stylistically rare in the Albemarle Sound area and unusual among Queen Anne houses for its extensive use of exposed brick for ornament. It is associated with W. O. Speight, founder of the Edenton Brickworks, who intended the house to showcase brick construction. The site also represents the region's agricultural recovery after the Civil War and may yield information on farming, ginning and brick construction.","narrative":"Built in 1900 on the eastern edge of Edenton, the Speight House is a two-and-one-half story brick residence in the Queen Anne style, with a hip roof broken by multiple cross gables, projecting polygonal bays, corbeled chimneys and ornamental brick pilasters. It was built for Will Oscar Speight and his wife Minnie Lee Perry Speight, who managed her family's farmland. Speight founded the Edenton Brickworks, which supplied brick for projects across the Albemarle region, and he used the house to show what decorative brick construction could achieve. The style was unusual in a region where Greek Revival forms lingered, and exposed brick ornament is uncommon in Queen Anne houses generally. The site keeps a brick smokehouse, a brick L-shaped cotton gin built in the following two years, an octagonal chicken coop and small frame dependencies. The farm produced seventy to ninety bales of cotton annually and reflects the region's agricultural revival after the Civil War.","period_of_significance":"1900-","architect_builder":"Will Oscar Speight (builder); family tradition says an architect from Norfolk, Virginia was employed","architectural_style":"Queen Anne","criteria":["B","C","D"],"status_note":"Occupied as a private residence; condition listed as good and unaltered, with only minor changes over the years.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:58:56.17737-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/17/7196/47719617/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/80002809.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47719617","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speight_House_and_Cotton_Gin","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18158301"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/chowan-county/speight-house-and-cotton-gin-80002809/"}