Duke Mansion (White Oaks)

Zeb Taylor built the original Colonial Revival house at 400 Hermitage Road in 1915, in Charlotte's then-new Myers Park neighborhood. In 1919, industrialist James Buchanan Duke — founder of Duke Energy and the namesake of Duke University — bought the property and had architect Charles Christian Hook triple its size, adding an "H"-shaped wing that brought the house to 45 rooms and 12 bathrooms. Duke used the mansion as his Southern base, and in 1924 he worked from its solarium on the plan for The Duke Endowment, the philanthropic trust that still distributes more than $200 million annually across the Carolinas. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 1978 (reference #78001963).

After Duke's death in 1925, the property passed through several owners: broadcaster C.C. Coddington, then the Cannon textile family, who renamed it White Oaks in 1929. The Cannons later transferred it to Myers Park Presbyterian Church for preservation, and Henry and Clayton Lineberger purchased the mansion in 1957; a fire gutted the third floor in 1966, after which the Linebergers restored the mansion, eventually leaving it to The Duke Endowment when Mr. Lineberger died in 1976.

Rick and Dee Ray purchased and reunified the subdivided property in the late 1980s, and the nonprofit Lynnwood Foundation converted the mansion into a historic inn and event venue by 1998, the use it retains today.