Llaurellyn: Bingham family home

“Form should follow Function” is a proposition often preached but rarely practiced. This 1925 residence by Chicago architect Lincoln Norcott Hall explores design of aeries in the North Carolina mountains. Despite a rather odd exterior with windows apparently haphazard, Llaurellyn was meticulously planned outward from its practical room layout to consider panoramic views, solar orientation of the day and the seasons, ridge-top topography, and preservation of old trees. The client was Samuel Bingham, Chicago manufacturer and Cornell-educated mechanical engineer, who hired Hall not long after his graduation from Cornell’s architecture school. Due to health problems, Bingham had decided to move his young family to Western North Carolina and chose Tryon because of its equestrian activity.

His wife Rose Seymour, from Massachusetts, designed the elaborate naturalistic landscape involving extensive stonework, with five different paths going down the mountain, enabling different views, to well designed stables. Many laurel, dogwood and azalea already on the property were re-sited. For years Rose employed two gardeners. The family often ate meals outdoors, in all seasons. On a terrace off the sunroom, in summer a larger awning replaced the winter awning. Though the Binghams could have afforded to build in stone or brick or stucco, house and stable were informal weatherboard, painted grey with green trim. The stableman’s uniform and the lettering on the station wagon were the identical green.

Rose and Samuel Bingham loved Wales, and so to play Welsh they transmogrified the North Carolina mountain “laurel” into “Llaurellyn.” For their daughter’s play, they built a miniature log cabin with its own spectacular view over Pacolet Valley to mountains beyond.

2009 photos by Brenda Gray

Living room fireplace in the Arts & Crafts style. A skilled Tryon artisan carved the lintel, depicting mountain laurel, from a single piece of timber.

3 Bingham generations mounted at 1954 Tryon Horse Show,
Family Class award presented by Helen Raoul of Asheville

Samuel A. Bingham senior in March, 1956 authored an open letter published in Tryon Daily Bulletin to the United States Equestrian Team, expressing the local equestrian community’s sentiments
“ . . . to the entire Olympic group, officials, instructors, candidates and helpers alike. We are very grateful to you for having come here. You brought something new and interesting into our quiet life. You have shown us horsemanship and training methods such as few of us have ever seen. I am sure that I speak for all of Tryon when I say you will leave here as well loved friends, whom we will remember, always. Thank you, thank you, and do come back soon.”