The Tryon Years
The Golden Age of Tryon & Tryon’s Country House Era
The Golden Age of Tryon
Between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, Tryon became one of America's most remarkable mountain retreats. Unlike Asheville, with its grand hotels and Vanderbilt estates, Tryon developed quietly. It attracted people who preferred privacy over publicity—writers, artists, musicians, industrialists, diplomats, scholars, physicians, and social leaders who wanted refinement without spectacle. They came for the climate and scenery, some to escape northern winters, and stayed for an atmosphere that encouraged conversation, creativity, and intellectual life. The railroad made the small mountain town accessible from Charleston, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, allowing prominent families to spend entire seasons here. The result was an unusually sophisticated community for a town of only a few thousand residents.
The Country House Ideal
Tryon was never a place of ostentatious mansions lined along the shore, nor was it designed around grand hotels and fashionable promenades. Instead, substantial private homes were tucked into wooded hillsides overlooking the Blue Ridge foothills, designed to unfold gradually—through welcoming entrance halls, libraries lined with books, gracious staircases, intimate sitting rooms, and soaring reception spaces that encouraged gathering. Gardens blended naturally into the surrounding forests, so that each estate felt as though it had emerged from the landscape rather than been imposed upon it. Days revolved around riding, gardening, literature, chamber music, afternoon tea, fox hunting, painting, and entertaining house guests. The pace was slower. Conversation mattered. Architecture mattered. Books mattered.
It was a community where one was as likely to encounter an accomplished novelist, painter, or composer as a banker or industrialist.
A Cultivated Community of Artists
By the early twentieth century, Tryon had developed a national reputation as an artists' colony, attracting painters, authors, and musicians alongside physicians, educators, politicians, and civic leaders who valued intellectual life as much as recreation. Painters established studios here. Authors came seeking quiet. Musicians found inspiration in the landscape. The Lanier Library became one of the intellectual centers of the community, while local clubs and private homes hosted lectures, concerts, literary gatherings, and charitable events. It was an unusually cultivated community for a town of its size, one where hospitality and conversation were considered arts in themselves.
Distinguished Visitors
Over the decades, Tryon welcomed an extraordinary list of visitors and seasonal residents.
Among those associated with Tryon during its most celebrated years were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, First Lady Grace Coolidge, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, James Earl Fraser, Margaret Mitchell, William Gillette, and Nina Simone.
Many were drawn by the same qualities that continue to define the area today: privacy, natural beauty, and an atmosphere conducive to thoughtful work and gracious living.
Dunwyck Hall’s original owners, Herbert Cushman Metcalf and Mae Holmes Metcalf, hosted visitors in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s including F. Scott Fitzgerald, First Lady Grace Coolidge, composer George Gershwin, actor David Niven, and socialite Lady Nancy Astor.
Tryon’s Equestrian Tradition
The Golden Age of Tryon coincided with the rise of one of America's oldest equestrian communities. The Tryon Riding & Hunt Club, founded in 1925, helped establish the area's enduring reputation for horse shows, fox hunting, and sporting life. Visitors often divided their days between riding, social gatherings, and evenings spent in the great rooms and libraries of private homes. Horses became woven into the town's identity, a tradition that continues today through the world-class competitions at the Tryon International Equestrian Center. For guests of Dunwyck Hall, that continuity is especially meaningful: a century after Tryon's first sporting visitors arrived by rail, today's equestrians continue to discover the same landscape and hospitality.
Dunwyck Hall Within This Tradition
English country houses provided inspiration for many American architects during this era, emphasizing permanence, craftsmanship, generous proportions, and rooms intended for gracious living. Completed in 1926, Dunwyck Hall belongs squarely to this remarkable period. Its Great Hall, Library, Dining Room, Snug, and Minstrels' Gallery comprise a carefully composed sequence of reception rooms that embody the ideals that were already becoming rare even when the house was new — rooms designed not merely for beauty, but for conversation, hospitality, and enduring comfort. Nearly a century later, those qualities remain remarkably intact. To stay at Dunwyck Hall is not simply to occupy a historic house—it is to experience one of the surviving expressions of Tryon's Country House Era.
Why This Era Still Matters
Although nearly a century has passed, the qualities that first attracted visitors remain remarkably unchanged.
The Blue Ridge foothills still offer cooler summer evenings. Horse farms continue to define the landscape. Historic homes remain scattered among mature forests. The pace of life still favors long conversations over hurried schedules.
For many guests, staying in a historic house like Dunwyck Hall offers more than luxury accommodations. It offers a chance to experience the atmosphere that once drew America's writers, artists, statesmen, and cultural figures to this small corner of North Carolina.
English Inspiration
Many of these homes drew inspiration from the English countryside, where centuries-old manor houses emphasized craftsmanship, permanence, and comfort over display.
No architect shaped this character more than J. Foster Searles, whose work helped define much of Tryon's architectural identity during the 1920s. His designs interpreted English vernacular farmhouses and cottages through the lens of the Blue Ridge Mountains, incorporating Tudor Revival details, half-timbering, steep roofs, hand craftsmanship, and informal gardens suited to Tryon's wooded setting.
Rather than copying English architecture exactly, these homes adapted its principles to North Carolina—creating buildings that felt both timeless and entirely at home in the mountains.