Travel and background

The oldest listed buildings in each of the ten launch states

John HarrisonUpdated October 2026

By the construction dates stated in their own National Register nominations, the oldest listed buildings in the ten states this site covers run from St. Luke’s Church in Virginia (about 1632) and the Fairbanks House in Massachusetts (about 1636 to 1638) to the Rufus Putnam House in Ohio (1788) and the Serra Chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano in California (dedicated 1778). One pick per state is in the table; the runners-up and the caveats follow.

This guide is current as of October 2026 and covers New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Ohio, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia and North Carolina. It will grow as more states are added. The site is independent and not affiliated with the National Park Service, which keeps the Register.

How the list was made, and why it is not definitive

The National Register is a list of significance, not of age, and the National Park Service does not keep a “built” field. The only construction dates in the system are the ones each nomination states. So this list was built from the nominations:

1. We took every indexable listing in the ten states that the Register classes as a building under 36 CFR 60.3 (a structure built to shelter human activity) and that has a nomination text in our database: 22,874 buildings.
2. We searched each nomination summary and its period of significance for construction years before 1800, keeping only years attached to words such as “built”, “begun”, “circa” or “dated”, so that street numbers like “1500 Broadway” did not count.
3. We read the full narrative for the earliest candidates in each state, and separately checked well-known early buildings by name, then dropped anything the nomination itself describes as a later building on an early site.

Four caveats apply to every entry:

• Dates are what the nomination says. Most of these forms date from 1966 to 1980. Where the file records a later revision we give it, but nominations are not updated every time a historian publishes.
• Re-dating happens. Virginia’s Thoroughgood House was nominated as about 1636; a later amendment, citing tree-ring analysis and archaeology, moved it to about 1720. In Massachusetts, the Deane Winthrop House went from about 1638-1650 to 1675 and 1696 after tree-ring testing in 2001, and the James Blake House from about 1650 to 1661 after testing in 2007. Georgia’s Harris-Pearson-Walker House was first presented as a 1760 house and later re-dated to about 1797.
• Reconstructions and moves. Several of the oldest “buildings” have been dismantled and re-erected, rebuilt after fires, or moved; we note each case.
• Only buildings. Ruins, archaeological sites and reconstructed forts are listed as sites or districts, so Pennsylvania’s Printzhof foundations, Illinois’s Fort de Chartres and Georgia’s tabby Horton House ruin do not appear. Early churches inside districts, such as the 1767-69 Jerusalem Lutheran Church at Ebenezer, Georgia, or the 1792 Midway Church, are also outside the scope.

With that said, here are the candidates, state by state, oldest nomination date first.

Virginia

• St. Luke’s Church, near Smithfield. The nomination puts construction at about 1632 and calls it the oldest surviving church of English foundation in the country; the tower’s third stage was added in the late 1600s. National Historic Landmark.
• Pear Valley, near Eastville. A one-room frame cottage with a Flemish-bond brick end; historians date it anywhere between the 1640s and the 1680s. Landmark.
• Warren House, Surry County. A 1677 deposition says Thomas Warren built a fifty-foot brick house here in 1652; the nomination notes the present house’s windows and woodwork look about fifty years later, though the dimensions match.
• Bacon’s Castle, Surry County. Built probably in the early 1660s for Arthur Allen; the earliest surviving cross-plan house in America and the one firmly dated 17th-century house in the group. Landmark.
• Lowland Cottage, Ware Neck, 1666-1676; Old Mansion, Bowling Green, about 1670; and Lynnhaven House, Virginia Beach, second half of the 1600s, follow.

Massachusetts

• Fairbanks House, Dedham. Begun about 1636-38 by Jonathan Fayerbanke and enlarged in stages; the nomination says it may be the oldest surviving frame dwelling in the country. Landmark, still owned by the family association.
• Balch, John, House, Beverly. Probably begun 1636; note that the original portion was “re-created” in 1961, with early framing left visible.
• Whipple, John, House, Ipswich. First section about 1640, conjecturally 1638; moved a block in 1927. Landmark.
• Sparrow, Richard, House, Plymouth, 1640.
• Spencer-Pierce-Little House, Newbury. A stone house the nomination can only place between 1631 and 1701. Landmark.
• For a precisely dated house, the Capen, Parson, House in Topsfield has its raising date, June 18, 1683, carved on a chimney girt.

New York

• Water Mill, Southampton. A grist mill built in 1644 by Edward Howell and moved across the road in the first half of the 1700s. It is a mill, not a house, but the Register lists it as a building.
• Old House, The, Cutchogue. Built by John Budd in 1649 at Southold and moved ten miles to Cutchogue in 1659. Landmark.
• Wyckoff, Pieter, House, Brooklyn. Begun about 1652 as one room; the nomination calls it the earliest known Dutch saltbox frame house in America. Landmark.
• Hawkins Homestead, Stony Brook, about 1660, moved about 100 yards around 1720.
• Bowne, John, House, Flushing, 1661, and Bronck, Pieter, House, Coxsackie, 1663 (Landmark), are the earliest with no recorded move.

Pennsylvania

• Lower Swedish Cabin, Clifton Heights. Traditionally dated about 1650, but the nomination says the evidence for Swedish construction is disputed, which is why it is not the top pick.
• Morton Homestead, Prospect Park. Swedish-Finnish log cabin of 1654, joined in the 1790s to a second cabin of 1698; ancestral home of John Morton, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
• Wall House, Elkins Park, earliest section believed to date from 1682.
• Pemberton, Phineas, House (Bolton Mansion), Levittown, oldest wing 1687.
• Wyck House, Germantown, 1690 (Landmark); Pusey, Caleb, House, Upland, completed by 1696 and called the earliest surviving English-built house in the state; and Massey, Thomas, House, Broomall, brick section 1696.

North Carolina

• Newbold-White House, near Hertford. The nomination identifies it as the dwelling of Joseph Scott, granted the land in 1684, and records the Perquimans Precinct Court meeting there in 1689-1691. It gives no single year.
• Cupola House, Edenton, about 1725, remodeled 1756-58. Landmark.
• Sloop Point, Pender County, probably 1726-1731.
• Myers-White House, Bethel, before 1730.
• St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Bath, begun 1734 and the earliest surviving church in the state; Palmer-Marsh House, Bath, about 1744 (Landmark).

Illinois

• Old Cahokia Courthouse, Cahokia. A French Colonial vertical-log house built shortly after 1737, dismantled for the 1904 St. Louis fair and re-erected on its original foundation in 1939 using surviving material.
• Church of the Holy Family, Cahokia, upright-log church built 1786-1799 and still in use. Landmark.
• Jarrot, Nicholas, Mansion, Cahokia, begun 1799, finished 1806; its nomination calls it the earliest known house still standing in Illinois, a claim that depends on how one treats the courthouse. Landmark.
• Creole House, Prairie du Rocher, about 1800, and Menard, Pierre, House, about 1802 (Landmark), round out the state’s French Colonial survivors.

Texas

• Church of Nuestra Senora de la Candelaria y Guadalupe (San Fernando Cathedral), San Antonio. The colonial church was begun in 1728 and completed in 1749; an 1868-73 Gothic Revival church was built over it, keeping the old apse and transept as the sanctuary.
• Alamo, The, San Antonio, church built 1744-1757. Landmark.
• Ysleta Mission, El Paso County. The church was built in 1744, but a 1907 fire destroyed most of it and it was rebuilt on the surviving sacristy and walls.
• Spanish Governor’s Palace, San Antonio, keystone dated 1749. Landmark.
• Mission Concepcion, San Antonio, church dedicated December 8, 1755, with traces of its original frescoes surviving. Landmark. Presidio Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la Bahia near Goliad dates from 1749 but was rebuilt in stone between the 1760s and about 1795 and restored in 1963-67.

Georgia

Georgia’s listed buildings start late because so little colonial fabric survives above ground.

• Wild Heron, near Savannah, probably built 1752-1756 on a 1747 grant; the nomination calls it one of the state’s oldest surviving dwellings.
• Old Rock House, near Thomson, about 1784, possibly the only stone residence of its period in the state.
• Roe-Harper House, between 1786 and 1803, the only known half-timbered house in Georgia; moved to Baldwin County in 1982.
• Fort Hollingsworth-White House, a fortified log dwelling of 1793.
• Two cautions: the Alexander-Cleveland House (most probably 1791) remains on the list but burned in June 1982, and Glen Echo is dated 1773 only by family tradition, with details the nomination says suggest the early 1800s.

California

• Mission San Juan Capistrano. The adobe chapel known as Serra’s Church was dedicated in 1778 and is the only surviving church where Junipero Serra said Mass; the wider complex was built 1777-1817.
• Mission Dolores, San Francisco, built 1782-1791 and described as the oldest essentially unaltered structure in the city.
• Royal Presidio Chapel, Monterey, 1791-1795, the last presidio chapel in the state. Landmark.
• San Gabriel Mission, church begun 1791 and completed 1805, with a bell tower rebuilt in 1828.
• Montanez Adobe, San Juan Capistrano, 1790s, one of the few surviving neophyte dwellings; Carmel Mission, stone church 1793-1797, whose roof collapsed in 1852 before restoration began in 1924 (Landmark).

Ohio

Ohio’s oldest buildings cluster around Marietta, the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory.

• Putnam, Rufus, House, Marietta. Part of the curtain wall of the Campus Martius fort built in 1788, enlarged after 1796 and now enclosed inside the Campus Martius Museum; the nomination calls it the oldest known dwelling in Ohio.
• Ohio Company Land Office, Marietta, a hewn-log office thought to date from 1788 and moved behind the same museum.
• Miller-Leuser Log House, Anderson Township, tentatively about 1796 on circumstantial evidence.
• Buckeye Station, near Manchester, 1797, the oldest documented braced-frame building in the state; Moore, Philip, Stone House, 1797.
• Treber Inn, 1798; Sawyer-Curtis House, 1798; and Stone, Capt. Jonathan, House, Belpre, 1799, moved 400 yards by oxen in 1825.

Checking a building yourself

Every property page on this site links to the original nomination in the National Archives catalog or NPGallery, and the address lookup will tell you whether a given address is listed. If you want to understand how to read the dates and the evidence behind them, see reading a nomination form and the four criteria and seven aspects of integrity. If you believe a nomination’s date is wrong, the correction route is through the State Historic Preservation Office, which can file additional documentation with the National Park Service.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Researched from the sources above and drafted with AI assistance; published under the editor's name, corrections welcome. See the editorial policy.