G.W. Wall House & Museum

The Town of Wallburg purchased the historic George W. Wall home at the corner of Motsinger Road and NC Highway 109 in December of 2016.

Some history of the house as filed with the North Carolina Department of History in 1983 when it was registered:

The George W. Wall House, built in 1896, is one of the finest and least altered examples of Queen Anne Revival architecture in Davidson County. This vernacular reflection of a nationally popular style in the small crossroads community of Wallburg is typical of the impact of the late nineteenth century industrial boom throughout piedmont North Carolina. George W. Wall’s family lumber business, founded in the late 1880s, provided the financial prosperity and sources for standardized and custom woodwork for the construction of a family residence.

The builder and owner, George W. Wall, erected this expansive two-story frame Queen Anne Revival style house in 1896 on Main Street in Wallburg, where he and his brothers had founded a lumber company in the late 1880s. The bracketted wrap-around porch with floor length windows with stained glass accents and the cross-gables with decorative sawnwork which enliven the front three elevations give the Wall House a splendor unmatched by typical late nineteenth century Davidson residences.George W. Wall’s family lumber business, founded in the late 1880s, provided the financial prosperity and sources for standardized and custom woodwork for the construction of a family residence. The staircase and mantels of vernacular Eastlake design are said to have been designed by George’s wife Hattie and constructed by his brother Turner S. Wall.

The main block of the house is three bays wide and two bays deep, set on a low brick foundation and covered by a deck-on-hip roof. A two-story, two-bay deep wing with a gable roof projects from the rear elevation. The walls are finished with plain weatherboard, the roof with composition shingles. Two interior chimneys supply corner fireplaces to each of the four rooms flanking the center hall, but the stacks have been removed above the roof level. The interior chimney between the two rooms on each floor of the rear wing is still intact. The house has undergone only three significant alterations since its construction. In 1908 a bathroom was added behind the kitchen.

In 1916 a larger dining room was added behind the original dining room, with an entrance from the side porch, and the back porch was enclosed. In 1973 the east side porch which sheltered the rear wing was replaced by an enclosed sunroom. The main entrance, in the center bay of the front (north) elevation, is a double paneled door with Eastlake trim. The upper half of each, leaf is glazed, with colored glass borders. All of the windows are two-over-two sash with plain surrounds and wooden louvered shutters. The upper sash of the windows flanking the main entrance, and the window above the main entrance, have stained glass in decorative geometric patterns characteristic of the Queen Anne style. The side and rear entrances are single paneled doors with glazed upper halves. The wide boxed eaves have a dentil cornice. In the center of the front and side elevations is a large cross-gable covered with diagonal flush sheathing in decorative patterns. In the center of each gable is a segmentally arched single pane window with an Eastlake pediment. Bargeboards with scalloping and finials outline the apex of each gable. The rear wing has a pedimented gable end covered with plain weatherboard.

A one-story porch extends the full length of the front elevation and wraps around the west side elevation to the rear wing. Turned posts with fan-shaped brackets and a spindle frieze support the hip roof. A railing of slender turned balusters encloses the porch. The porch eaves are identical to the main roof eave treatment.
The interior follows a center-hall two-room deep plan on both floors, with a kitchen and dining room on the first floor of the rear wing and two bedrooms on its second floor. The two front rooms of the first floor served as parlors; the west rear room was a second dining room and the east rear room was the master  bedroom. The most ornately finished room in the house is the entrance hall, which is completely sheathed with wood in a variety of intricate designs. Above the vertically sheathed wainscot and chair rail, the walls and ceilings are covered with diagonal sheathing. The focus of this space is the massive ornate stair railing of vernacular Eastlake design. The thick, chamfered newel has chevron, bead, rondel and finial ornament of applied wood. The stair railing consists of an open-string with a border engraved with a vine design and curvilinear brackets. Beaded balusters support a heavy molded rail. Between each baluster, a turned spindle occupies the lower half of the space, while a sawnwork panel below the rail silhouettes, in negative, a stylized flower blossom. The stair opening in the hall ceiling is richly decorated with two shallow arches, finished with vertical sheathing, with a heavy finial at the corner above the stair newel. These arches form a canopy effect over the staircase. The stair railing of the upper hall is similar to the lower railing, and a dripcourse of arched Gothic design is applied to the arches as a lower termination of the upper railing.

All other rooms in the house are finished with plaster walls and ceilings and high molded baseboards. Symmetrically molded architraves with rondel corner blocks surround the windows and doors. All doors have five flat panels, with cast-iron rim locks and porcelain knobs. All of the mantels throughout the house are original, and most continue the Eastlake whimsy of the staircase, particularly the one in the west parlor. Paired bracketted colonnettes, with connecting spindles, frame a cornice with engraved floral decoration and a frieze with alternating applied spindles and rondels. The mirrored overmantel has a correspondingly ornate frame. In contrast to the parlor mantel, the dining room mantel is Neo-Classical in style, with Doric colonnettes flanking the fireplace opening and the overmantel mirror. Its chaste, standardized design indicates that it was probably ordered as a unit from a millwork factory, while the parlor mantel and the other more vernacular mantels and the staircase were probably assembled from disparate pieces of woodwork by the builders on the site.

On the second floor, all of the bedrooms contain subdued versions of the first floor mante~s with the exception of the west front bedroom. Here is a vernacular design of equal originality to the west parlor mantel. Flanking pilasters, functioning as what-not shelves, frame a cornice with engraved floral ornament and a frieze with large sunburst designs. In the front east bedroom, an enclosed stair leads to the unfinished attic. A third stair, also enclosed, leads from the kitchen to the upstairs back bedroom, probably used originally for kitchen help. Most of the ceiling light fixtures in the house were installed in 1908 when a Delco generator at the lumber mill began to supply electricity to the house.

The large barn behind the house burned in 1936, but the smokehouse, woodshed, and chicken house, of indeterminate late nineteenth or early twentieth century date, survive. These are gabled frame buildings which were moved to the rear of the property and connected to one another at the gable ends, forming a single storage building.

George and Hattie raised eleven children in the house, and lived there until their deaths, which occurred in 1943, only six weeks apart. In 1938 they had deeded the house to their daughter Clara and her husband Clay Vann Teague, who were living with them. The Teagues continued to reside in the house until their deaths.