Description:
Hayes Plantation, also known as Hayes Farm, is a historic plantation near Edenton, North Carolina that belonged to Samuel Johnston (1733–1816), who served as Governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789. Johnston become one of the state's first two United States Senators, serving from 1789 until 1793, and served later as a judge until retiring in 1803. The main house, considered by architectural scholars to be "one of the South's most accomplished examples of a five-part palladian villa," was designed by English-born architect, William Nichols, Sr., famous for his early Neoclassical-style buildings in the American South and for designing statehouses for three Southern states. Construction of the house began in 1814, but was not completed until 1817. The central block of the house is connected to its dependencies by curved hyphens. A broad belvedere crowns the roof of the central block. The plantation house is privately owned, but was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 7, 1973 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 26, 1974.