Kenansville Historic District

Kenansville, the Duplin County seat in southeastern North Carolina, was laid out in 1818 and grew rapidly in the two decades before the Civil War. The historic district covers about 50 acres, roughly sixty percent of the town, and includes seventy-one buildings. Its character comes from eleven Greek Revival houses and two churches, all frame buildings with Doric detailing, pedimented porches and center-hall plans. Local touches include breezeways, enclosed stairs, folding doors that channel breezes into summer rooms, and latticed secondary porches. A Federal-style house, an Italianate house, a Masonic lodge from 1860 and a 1911-1912 Neo-Classical courthouse complete the group. The original grid plan has given way to streets radiating from the courthouse square, so houses sit on spacious wooded grounds. Because growth has been negligible since the boom, the town preserves one of the state's most uniform collections of Greek Revival architecture, alongside its schools, churches and civic institutions.