Playmore-Bowery Road Historic District

On a ridge about a mile east of Highlands, North Carolina, a group of summer cottages sits among rhododendrons, hemlocks and hardwoods above Horse Cove. The district covers about 220 acres reached by the gravel Bowery Road. Its centerpiece is Playmore, a two-story Italianate house built in 1879-1880 for Samuel Prioleau Ravenel by carpenter Francis Poindexter, for a quoted price of $3,503.50. Originally called Wantoot, it was sold in 1914 to New Orleans attorney Jules Blanc Monroe, whose descendants still use it. Its interior features unpainted chestnut paneling and floors of alternating ash and walnut. Other resources include Wolf Ridge, a 1914 Ravenel house, The Fling, a 1922 Colonial Revival house, the log-built Log Jam, Kalalanta, Treetops, Thornton Cottage, and Ravenel Park with Sunset Rock. Frame construction and stone walls, piers and chimneys give the area a consistent character, and it shows how a fashionable mountain resort developed from 1879 into the 1930s.