Reinhardt, Franklin D., and Harren-Hood Farms

Two neighboring farms on rolling hills in south central Catawba County form this district of about 166 acres. The older farm centers on a two-story frame Greek Revival house built in the mid-1840s for Franklin D. Reinhardt, a legislator and county magistrate who held over 500 acres and 16 slaves in 1850. Its four-column Doric portico, sidelighted entrance, and stair drawn from an Owen Biddle design closely match the house of his brother William Pinckney Reinhardt nearby. The second farm holds a late Victorian farmhouse built about 1908 by Alonzo D. Harren on land bought from Reinhardt. Mrs. Ella Hood farmed it after 1925. Granaries, a timber-frame cattle barn, and the shared fields and woods tie the two farms together, and a pasture lets both farmsteads be seen in one view. Together they illustrate agricultural development in the county from the antebellum years into the twentieth century and two periods of local house building.