DeGraffenried Park Historic District

DeGraffenried Park is a six-block residential subdivision about a mile west of central New Bern, platted in 1926. Its grid of large lots holds fifty-seven houses, most built between 1926 and 1956, along with many matching detached garages, some with upper-level apartments that were rented to military families during and after World War II. Houses are set well back behind broad lawns and unusually wide grassed medians. Concrete sidewalks and four original concrete light poles with urn-shaped globes line Queen Anne Lane. Early development before the Depression produced mostly two-story brick Colonial Revival houses. Later construction added a Jacobethan Revival house designed by architect Raymond Fuson, a rare Craftsman house, Tudor cottages, bungalows, wartime Colonial Revival cottages and postwar Cape Cods and Ranch houses. Remnants of an old pecan orchard survive in the northern blocks. The district was listed because it keeps its original plan, landscape and architecture largely intact, giving a coherent picture of suburban growth in New Bern from the late 1920s through the mid-1950s.