Qualla: Montfort Hall

Montfort Hall: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davidstrevel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sherman's troops burned plantation houses across the South in the spring of 1865, but they let Montfort Hall stand. The Italianate mansion at the western edge of Raleigh had been finished only seven years earlier, designed by an English architect with classical ambitions and a taste for rotundas. When the war ended, it was one of the few mansions in the state capital still on its feet. It has been many things since: family home, rooming house, supreme court justice's residence, Baptist church annex, and, since 2021, a boutique inn called Heights House. The rotunda is still there. So are the four Corinthian columns and the stained-glass skylight that once let sun into a Victorian drawing room.

Read more: Montfort Hall on Qualla

Image: Davidstrevel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Montfort Hall: An English Architect in 1850s Raleigh

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. William Percival arrived in Raleigh in 1857 from Richmond, Virginia to work on the First Baptist Church, completed in 1859. He stayed three years and drew plans for eleven different sites across North Carolina. His commissions included additions to the North Carolina State Capito...

Read more: Montfort Hall on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Montfort Hall: From Plantation to Subdivision

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davidstrevel, CC BY-SA 4.0. William Montfort Boylan died in 1899. His wife Mary Kinsey Boylan and their son William inherited the house. Mary hoped her son would keep it. He did not. In 1907 he sold the property to the Greater Raleigh Land Company, which subdivided the original estate into the Boylan Height...

Read more: Montfort Hall on Qualla

Image: Davidstrevel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Montfort Hall: Justice Brown, the Coburns, and a Church

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willthacheerleader18, CC0. In 1918, North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice George H. Brown sold the house to Rufus T. Coburn. The Coburn family lived in Montfort Hall for the next thirty-five years. Geraldine Coburn Cox, the justice's daughter, later remembered the 1920s house as largely intact fro...

Read more: Montfort Hall on Qualla

Image: Willthacheerleader18 | CC0

Montfort Hall: Heights House

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cole1221, CC BY 4.0. In June 2018, Jeff and Sarah Shepherd bought Montfort Hall, with financial support from Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova, the founders of Imangi Studios. The multi-year renovation that followed stabilized the structure, upgraded utilities, and carefully preserved the signatu...

Read more: Montfort Hall on Qualla

Image: Cole1221 | CC BY 4.0