Hope Mansion

Architecture

Hope Mansion is a five-bay Federal-style house set on a full above-ground basement. Its design is based on a Palladian model and is distinguished by a double portico, hipped roof, widow’s walk, and Chinese Chippendale balustrades. The floor plan is adapted from a design in Abraham Swan’s The British Architect, a copy of which David Stone owned.

Inside, a central hall provides access to the principal rooms on the first floor. The second floor includes a large drawing room and the library that housed David Stone’s collection of approximately 1,400 volumes. Much of the home’s original woodwork survives, and the rooms are furnished throughout with period furnishings.

Outbuildings

A reconstructed outdoor kitchen and dairy stand mere steps from Hope Mansion’s warming kitchen, located in the above-ground basement. The reconstructed kitchen occupies the site of Hope’s original outdoor kitchen.

An early nineteenth-century barn stands behind Hope Mansion. Originally located near the Virginia–North Carolina border, it is a rare surviving example of post-in-the-ground construction, a building method used in the colonies from the early seventeenth century.