Tryon Palace

Kitchen Garden

The Kitchen Garden, located behind the Kitchen Office, offers a display variety of produce almost year-round. This garden also features the only known garden plant referenced in historical documents – noted growing at the Palace in 1775, “under a fine bed of cabbage was found a barrel of gunpowder”.

Latham Garden

This formal garden of clipped hedges, flowers and paths combines to form the patterns that define a “parterre” garden.

Statues of the four seasons survey the seasonal displays of spring bulbs and violas, summer annuals and fall chrysanthemums. This garden especially highlights the “Colonial Revival” concept used in Morley Williams’ designs with emphasis on show and color, not historical accuracy of plant materials.

Boardwalk

Lawsons Landing

Coming soon

Tryon Palace Museum Store

The Tryon Palace Museum Stores offer a special shopping experience, showcasing broad assortments of highly curated, unique, and mission-specific gifts. From books to jewelry, to children’s products, to home accessories and gourmet food, there is something for everyone. When you shop at either location your purchases directly support the mission at Tryon Palace.

Bate Commons

Bate Commons, just outside Mattock Hall overlooking the Trent River offers a stunning view of the North Carolina History Center’s natural wetland gardens and the Trent River.

Pepsi Portal to History

At the Pepsi Portal to History, you will travel in time through a time machine back to 1835 and a small river village in North Carolina’s Central Coastal Region to discover a different way of life and new skills.

Regional History Museum

Explore the history of North Carolina’s Central Coastal Region through artifacts, graphics, audios, videos, and touch-screen interactives. Follow the “River of Light” to explore five centuries of the region’s history and learn more about the key forces that shaped its development.

Gateway Gallery

Cannon Gateway

Here you can prepare for your journey to the past. Before stepping into the historic area, get a sense of New Bern and Tryon Palace’s place in history through several orientation exhibits, including artifacts discovered during archaeological digs at the historic site.

Craft and Garden Shop

Sweets and treats are waiting for you at the Tryon Palace Craft and Garden Shop. Located on the Palace grounds (directly behind the Stable Office), this unique little shop has something for visitors of all ages.

Selling souvenirs, historical folk toys, snacks,local pottery and garden items, the Craft and Garden Shop invites you to take a break during your visit for a little retail therapy.And make sure your kids make it over to the candy corner, where they can get their sugar fix by the handful.

NC History Ticket Desk

Guion Gallery/Orientation Theater

The Guion Gallery honors the original collection of decorative arts, and boasts pieces purchased by and donated to Tryon Palace.

Cullman Performance Hall

Drama, music, movies, lectures, and a variety of interactive programs come to life in Cullman Performance Hall, a grand, yet intimate 200-seat auditorium inside the North Carolina History Center. Featuring high-quality acoustics, excellent sight lines, and quality viewing, Cullman Performance Hall is used for ongoing education programs and special events for Tryon Palace, and is available for special use to the greater North Carolina community. Be sure to visit our calendar for information on all scheduled events.

Duffy Exhibition Gallery

Explore the endless riches of North Carolina’s history through changing exhibitions. On any given day, the Duffy Gallery may highlight different aspects of North Carolina’s history and Tryon Palace’s rich collection of artifacts, display various artworks, or feature a popular traveling exhibition.

Etteinne Mitchell Garden

The Mitchell Garden features a diverse mix of plants that are native to the river edges of coastal North Carolina and vital to the area’s ecosystem.

Hay House

The Robert Hay House has been restored to the appearance it had 1830 – 1850. Research conducted by archaeologists, architectural and other historians was used as the basis for a four-year restoration project of the home in the mid-1990s. Careful attention was given to accurately preserve nearly all the original plaster, and detailed woodwork. The interior and exterior paint colors were matched to an analysis of the original color palette of paints used by the Hay family. With an 1843 family inventory list of furnishings, some Hay family pieces, and local descriptions of homes of the period, the house was re-furnished with reproductions made by skilled 20th-21st century woodworkers using traditional hand tools and methods.

Jones House & Costume Shop

During the Civil War, the house was used as a jail, the most infamous prisoner being Emeline Pigott, a Confederate spy who entertained Union soldiers for information and carried secret messages in her skirt between New Bern and local sea ports. In 1963, the Jones House was purchased by the Tryon Palace Commission and turned into a reception space and guest house.

Waystation Ticket Desk

This George Street service station was built in the early 1930s with an attached double-bay garage and operated as a Shell Station for many years.   The Waystation remained the center of Tryon Palace visitor orientation until the 2010 opening of the North Carolina History Center, and is still used today by visitors to Tryon Palace, for ticketing and site information.

Daves House

The Daves House was originally located on the 200-block of George Street, which sprang up after Tryon Palace burned in 1798 and the site was divided into lots and sold.

The Daves House served as the first visitor welcome center for Tryon Palace, and later, as the gift shop.  It now serves as the green room for brides and their bridal parties getting married at Tryon Palace.

George W. Dixon House

Delve into the ups and downs of George W. Dixon, a local tailor, merchant, and politician. Built for Dixon in the early 1830s, this house stands on a lot that was part of the original Tryon Palace grounds, which had been divided into building lots and sold by the state after the Palace burned in 1798. The Dixon lot represented a choice corner location and has never been moved.

Governor's Palace

The centerpiece of our historic site was also the grandest public building in all the colonies. Royal Governor William Tryon and his family brought architect John Hawks from London to design and build the Georgian-style structure. Completed in 1770, Tryon Palace served as the first permanent capitol of North Carolina and home to the Tryon family.

Stable Office

The Stable Office is the only remaining part of the original Palace complex. Both wings survived the 1798 fire that destroyed the main building of the Palace, but the Kitchen Office was demolished sometime in the early 19th century.

Kitchen Office

Disosway House

The Disosway House is named for John and Lyda Disosway, the original builders of the two-story Victorian home. US Congressman Charles Laban Abernathy purchased the home from the Disosways in 1914, and it remained in the Abernathy family until 1983.

Commission House

Also known as the Lehman-Duffy House, the current structure, incorporated an earlier dwelling presumably built by the Daves family sometime between 1791 and 1867.

The Commission House and its beautiful backyard garden are now used as a rental venue for cocktail parties, intimate dinners and small weddings, as well as a Tryon Palace event and program reception space. Sometimes you can catch the Fife and Drum corps practicing on its inviting front porch.

John W. Stanly House

The Stanly House was built in the early 1780s for John Wright Stanly, a prominent New Bern citizen. John Hawks, the architect who designed Tryon Palace, may have designed the Stanly House as well. Built of hand-hewn longleaf pine, the Stanly House remains one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the South, and is the home where George Washington slept during his stay in New Bern.

Kellenberger Garden

Located just outside the Council Chamber window, the Kellenberger Garden contains examples of many plants that might have appeared in original Palace gardens, some of which would have been brought in on ships that docked on New Bern’s busy waterfront.

New Bern Academy

Rich with American history, the New Bern Academy, is located four blocks from Tryon Palace in the heart of New Bern’s historic residential district. Originally built in 1809 as a school for both boys and girls, the New Bern Academy served as a hospital during the American Civil War as well a recruitment station for the 35th USCT. From 1899 – 1972 it was in use in the New Bern graded school system.

Today, the New Bern Academy building’s original classrooms are home to four permanent exhibits focused on the Civil War, New Bern Architecture, and the history of the building itself.