Raleigh's original city plan had designated Burke Square as the site for the governor's residence, but by the time the legislature got around to building, the Raleigh Academy had already claimed the spot. In 1883, Governor Thomas Jordan Jarvis pushed through a bill authorizing construction of the state's third official gubernatorial residence. The architects chosen were Samuel Sloan of Philadelphia and his assistant, Adolphus Gustavus Bauer. Sloan arrived in Raleigh in April 1883 with designs for an elaborate Queen Anne-style structure, and construction began that summer. But Sloan died in 1885, six years before the building was finished, and Bauer assumed full responsibility. He would go on to become one of North Carolina's most important nineteenth-century architects. The bill that authorized the mansion required that building materials come from the state penitentiary when feasible -- and that the governor actually live there. Governor Daniel G. Fowle and his daughter, Helen Whitaker Fowle, became the first occupants when they moved into the still-unfinished building in January 1891.

The mansion's exterior has changed little since the 1890s, but the interior has lived several lives. During Governor Angus W. McLean's administration, a Neoclassical makeover stripped away many of the building's original Victorian features. Stained glass windows came out. Balustrades and overmantel mirrors disappeared. Ornate columns and pilasters were replaced with simpler forms. Woodwork was painted over. It was a wholesale erasure of the house's Queen Anne character in favor of a more restrained aesthetic. Later first ladies left their own marks. Alice Willson Broughton added a service elevator and planted a victory garden on the lawn during World War II. Margaret Rose Sanford established a rose garden on the northwest corner of the grounds in the 1960s. In 1974-75, First Lady Patricia Hollingsworth Holshouser oversaw a major renovation of the plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and electrical systems -- the kind of unglamorous work that keeps a nineteenth-century building habitable in a modern century.

The most remarkable object in the mansion may be the Strauss chandelier, which hangs in the state dining room. Around 1968, First Lady Jeanelle C. Moore installed it after it was donated by Karoline Strauss Horowitz, a Holocaust survivor. The chandelier carries a weight that transcends decoration -- it is a piece of personal survival history suspended above the table where North Carolina's governors entertain guests. Moore herself was instrumental in broadening the mansion's identity beyond a mere residence. Her campaign for public awareness of its historic and cultural significance led to the creation of the Executive Mansion Fine Arts Committee, a statutory body that advises on acquisitions, preservation, and maintenance. In 1970, the mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Moore's work transformed the building from a governor's house into a public trust.

North Carolina's governors have access to a second residence as well: a home at 45 Patton Mountain Road on Town Mountain near Asheville. The Asheville Chamber of Commerce donated it to the state in 1964, hoping that future governors would spend more time in -- and pay more attention to -- the western part of the state. The house was originally built in 1939 by Tom Brimer, then the owner of Good Humor Ice Cream. It is a practical acknowledgment of North Carolina's geographic sprawl and the persistent sense among western residents that Raleigh can feel very far away. Meanwhile, back in Raleigh, the Executive Mansion Fund Inc. was established in 1988 with the help of First Lady Dottie Martin to support ongoing restoration. Its Second Century campaign raised a $2 million endowment, and its membership organization, the Friends of the Executive Mansion, continues to fund preservation through annual contributions.

The North Carolina Executive Mansion has sheltered governors and their families for over 130 years. It has been stripped of its Victorian ornament, fitted with modern systems, adorned with a chandelier salvaged from unimaginable loss, and sustained by the steady work of first ladies who understood that a building of this age requires constant attention. Frank Daniels Aycock, the first baby born in the mansion, arrived during Governor Charles B. Aycock's tenure -- a small, human milestone in the life of a public building. But it is the bricks that stay with you. The men who molded them in the 1880s pressed their names into wet clay, and those names have outlasted the sentences that brought them to the penitentiary. They are still there, underfoot, part of the ground the governor walks on every day.