Richardson Houses Historic District

Near Reidsville, North Carolina, the district consists of three houses built by the Richardson family on about thirty acres, surrounded by outbuildings that together show a working tobacco and grain plantation. The oldest house, a hall-and-parlor Greek Revival dwelling, dates to about 1842 and is probably the oldest building surviving in Reidsville. Robert Payne Richardson Sr., who was twenty-two when it was built, later became a prominent planter, merchant and tobacco manufacturer. A second house, built about 1860, shows transitional Greek Revival and Italianate features. In 1912 his son Robert Payne Richardson Jr. built Belmont, a Neo-Classical Revival residence regarded as one of the finest in the state. The district is significant for its surviving buildings, its landscape and the continuous ownership of one family from the 1840s into the twentieth century. Its history also records the decline of the family's fortunes as farming became less profitable and the land was sold off.