{"nrhp_refnum":"98000689","name":"Oakforest","other_names":["Tryst Oak","Seawell House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"9958 Seawell Dr.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Wake Forest","county":"Wake County","state":"NC","lat":35.942167976000064,"lon":-78.52401502799995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1998-06-11","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Oakforest is a two-story frame house in Wake Forest, Wake County, North Carolina, combining an early nineteenth-century Federal hall-and-parlor house with a mid-nineteenth-century Greek Revival expansion, on about seven acres of a former plantation.","why_significant":"The nomination argues Oakforest is a rare Wake County survivor from the Federal and Greek Revival periods and is locally significant in architecture. Both sections of the house retain a high degree of integrity from their construction periods. Two nineteenth-century outbuildings, a smokehouse and corncrib, also reflect the area's plantation economy.","narrative":"Oakforest is a two-story frame house near Wake Forest, North Carolina, set on about seven acres left from a 200-acre plantation that Benjamin Smith deeded to his son John in 1803. John Smith built the earliest part, a Federal-style hall-and-parlor house, before 1809. In the mid-nineteenth century it was enlarged and reoriented into a Greek Revival center-hall house, and around 1865 the Jones family added a two-story rear ell. The original Federal portico with its carved columns survives, as do interior features from each period, and an old boxwood allee lines the front drive. A smokehouse and a corncrib remain from the working plantation, along with three later non-contributing buildings. The property was listed because it is a rare Wake County example of Federal and Greek Revival architecture, with both building phases retaining a high degree of integrity and a rural setting that recalls its past as a homestead.","period_of_significance":"First decade of the nineteenth century to ca. 1865","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Federal; Greek Revival","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"Still used as a single dwelling with secondary structures; the rural setting has been preserved and the house retains much of its historic integrity despite 1960s porch changes.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:50.084308-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/35/7185/47718535/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/98000689.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47718535","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakforest","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15263212"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/wake-county/oakforest-98000689/"}