{"nrhp_refnum":"85001341","name":"Myrtle Lawn","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"SR 1003","address_restricted":false,"city":"Enfield","county":"Halifax County","state":"NC","lat":36.14138405250006,"lon":-77.59386811172539,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-06-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Agriculture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A twelve-acre plantation complex near Enfield, Halifax County, North Carolina, centered on a two-story frame house built in two phases (ca. 1816 and the 1840s or 1850s) with surviving domestic outbuildings.","why_significant":"The complex is an unusually complete example of an antebellum plantation center in Halifax County, with a variety of building types and construction methods, including earthfast and log construction. The house joins conservative Federal detailing with later Greek Revival and Italianate elements. It was also owned by the locally prominent Whitaker family from the eighteenth century into the mid-twentieth.","narrative":"Myrtle Lawn is a plantation complex on twelve acres near Enfield in Halifax County, North Carolina. Its main building is a two-story weatherboarded frame house, five bays wide and two rooms deep, begun about 1816 by Absalom Benton Whitaker and enlarged by two bays in the 1840s or 1850s. The expansion deliberately kept the Federal character of the older section, so the two phases are hard to distinguish from outside, apart from the ornate sawnwork porch. Around the house stand a carriage house, a temple-form plantation office, a dairy, a log vegetable storage house set directly on the ground, storage buildings and the ruin of a slave house. Several use wooden foundation blocks or earthfast methods that persisted well into the nineteenth century. Members of the Whitaker family owned the property for nearly 150 years. The complex is notable for its completeness, its range of building types and its record of plantation life before and after the Civil War.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Federal, with Greek Revival and Italianate motifs","criteria":["A","B","C","D"],"status_note":"Occupied and in excellent condition overall; the owners have stabilized the structures, except for the ruinous slave house.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:51.300032-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/42/7206/47720642/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/85001341.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47720642","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrtle_Lawn","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18711622"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/halifax-county/myrtle-lawn-85001341/"}