Resort Homes: The Stone & Shake Architecture of the Wade Hampton House
This stone and shake mountain house in North Carolina serves as a family retreat for golf, hiking, and entertaining during these months. The house’s high elevation provides cool breezes and long vistas of distant rocky peaks.
The skin of the house is composed of large sheets of tree bark that have been steamed into flat sheets. The texture and color of this bark complements the rugged indigenous mountain rock, adding more texture to the façade. The porch columns and railings of the home’s porch are made from locust trees. The bark has been preserved to further enhance the rustic look as does the house’s cedar shake roof.
Stepping out of the house to the rear deck and porch one is immediately struck by the beauty of the mountain views. The covered porch is built of locust logs and is the focus of evening dinners by the stone fireplace.
Hewn logs are woven into a decorative lattice detail that runs from top of column to top of column. Sitting on this porch at night, one can hear the sound of tree frogs calling their mates while the hoots and calls of owls fill the air.