Edgecombe Tourism, NC

pin-icon 500 Main St Tarboro, NC 27886

Blount-Bridgers House

 Blount-Bridgers House (The Grove)
Ca. 1808; 130 Bridgers St., Tarboro
 
The grandest early 19th-cd. House in Tarboro, it was built for politician Thomas Blount on a 296-acre tract north of town and singled out in 1810 as “a very good house, the best that is in the county.”  The large frame dwelling typifies the scale and quality of the largest planters’ house of its era, standing 2 stories plus attic atop a high basement.  Four tall Flemish-bond chimneys and attic lunettes emphasize its mass.  Distinctive features include the individualized Georgian-Federal interior woodwork and the asymmetrical double-pile plan:  large front rooms flank the front passage; the rear passage, wider to accommodate the stair, is flanked by smaller rear rooms.  The airy lattice porch around all four sides was added in the mid-19th c.  It is now an arts center featuring works by painter Hobson Pittman.