Masonboro Sound Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Along the sound side of New Hanover County near Wilmington, North Carolina, this district holds a cluster of resort cottages built from the 1870s into the twentieth century, with a few later year-round houses. Its oldest surviving building is a small shingled cottage from the 1830s, and the district is also associated with late colonial summer houses that were later lost to fire and storm. The Live Oaks mansion, completed in 1913 to designs by Henry Bacon, is the keystone of the group and was built for Walter Linton Parsley as a year-round residence. Masonboro Sound developed as a private, non-commercial summer colony for families from Wilmington, without hotels or pavilions, and its shaded lawns, live oaks and marsh views are treated as central to its character. The district is regarded as the oldest known coastal resort in North Carolina and the only surviving nineteenth-century soundside summer colony in the state. Its houses are mostly wood frame with weatherboard or shingle, and many outbuildings and docks remain.