Orton Plantation (Boundary Increase)

Orton stands on the west bank of the Cape Fear River near Winnabow, with a brick core dating to about 1735 when Roger Moore built his house there. In the 1840s the house was enlarged into a two-story Greek Revival temple form with a Doric portico, and Neoclassical Revival wings and interior work followed in 1910 under architect Kenneth Murchison. The house passed through a series of owners, including Governor Benjamin Smith, and was reclaimed in the 1880s as a winter hunting retreat after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Its gardens, developed in the early twentieth century with designs by landscape architect Robert Swann Sturtevant, are among the best known in the Southeast. The property is regarded as a major example of the romanticized Southern mansion, combining layered architectural periods and a wealthy plantation history based on naval stores and rice.