The historic ocean-front cottages of Old Nags Head on North Carolina’s legendary Outer Banks near the cradle of English settlement in America on Roanoke, built between the Civil War and World War II, are suited to the unpredictable and often hostile environment. These architecturally distinctive, unpainted wood-shingled houses raised on pilings, are characterized by gabled roofs, often with long engaged dormers, sash windows with hinged wood batten shutters held open with a stick, and wrap-around porches where seating is provided by lean-out benches. Situated in a row facing the sea on a mile-long strip of dunes and beach, the weathered survivors testify to a time when summer was a sun-struck interlude marked by the slow rhythms of swimming, fishing, boating, beach-combing and spending time together with family and friends. The 50-plus remaining cottages, many owned by the same families for generations, were designated in 1977 as the Nags Head Beach Cottage Row National Register Historic District. Their stories encompass local and family history, (and national history as well), the creation of an indigenous architectural style, and a knowledge and appreciation of the benefits of unstructured leisure.
Samuel J. Twine, an unassuming but proficient craftsman who hailed from Elizabeth City, built many of the cottages constructed from the early 20th-century through the mid-1940s. Architectural historian Catherine Bishir credits Twine with developing a collection of sturdy, functional and handsome cottages, routinely expanding and remodeling many of them and even moving them on rollers when the sea threatened. Twine’s cottages draw upon the one-and-one-half storied elegantly massed and multi-angled bungalow and shingles styles, constructed of a mix of cedar, juniper and cypress woods that weather to shades of silvery grey and brown. Their somewhat formal appearance and absence of paint led former News & Observer editor emeritus Jonathan Daniels to refer to them as “unpainted aristocracy,” a sobriquet which has stuck.
One of the best known is the Toms-Buchanan Cottage, constructed in 1936 for the family of Mattie Toms Buchanan, daughter of Durham’s American Tobacco Company magnate Clinton Toms. Mattie Toms married Durham businessman John Adams Buchanan, an insurance and savings and loan executive, and the house, the largest of the historic cottages, was constructed to accommodate their five children and numerous guests. Though reminiscent of the Twine-built cottages, the Toms-Buchanan Cottage was designed by Durham architect Edgar Carr. An arresting composition of gabled rectangles, shed-roofed appendages and sloped roof porches, the home sits on 99 piers and has flanking double balconies on its street-facing L. The numerous porch railings are trimmed in white, the shutters are green and white striped, the lean-out benches are red. Porch window boxes of red geraniums add a welcoming touch.
The interior of the home is finished in juniper and cypress and is distinctive for its spacious living room spanning the oceanfront elevation and featuring a massive brick fireplace. At one end, a fold-down desk is set with an oak arm chair, a gift of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was entertained by the family when he visited Nags Head on the occasion of the 350th birthday of Virginia Dare, the first white child born in America. Playwright Paul Green’s groundbreaking outdoor drama The Lost Colony had recently opened, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who had seen the play, recommended it to her husband. Bill Flowers, a grandson of Mattie Toms and John Buchanan, recalls that the family was asked to host the president and his entourage at a private luncheon. “My grandparents had a good cook and other family employees who came to Nags Head to help every summer,” says Flowers. “My mother still has the menu the cook prepared. It was typical of summertime on the coast and included crab casserole, ham, summer vegetables, rolls and blueberry cobbler with hard sauce.” A guest book set out on the long dining room table is opened to the page that Roosevelt signed.
Flowers, who grew up in Richmond, Va. and his Raleigh cousin Randy Coupland have spent virtually every summer of their lives in Nags Head. They remember days of fishing on the beach, crabbing in the sound, and evenings listening to their grandfather tell the children ghost stories. “There was always an indulgent father around who would stand under the house and make ghost noises,” says Flowers. When they were older, Flowers and Coupland frequented the Casino, a nightspot close by in the sandy dunes. “We could walk to it and there was beach music and dancing on the upper floor where we could meet the daughters of our neighbors. Downstairs there were pool tables and a bowling alley,” Flowers remembers.
Built by a Mr. Warren from Edenton, the Toms-Buchanan Cottage has endured seasonal storms and two major moves. The first move was after the 1962 Ash Wednesday Storm, about which Outer Banks historian David Stick has written eloquently; and the second in 1999 as a preservation effort to anticipate the encroaching ocean. “The first move was done after the storm blew away a portion of the dining room wall,” says Flowers. “Neighbors found windows with the curtains still clinging to them. They recognized the curtains as ours and brought the salvage back to us.” Flowers notes that the roof of the Toms-Buchanan Cottage has always held, perhaps because of the home’s heavy construction. The studs run from the first floor to the second floor ceiling and the roof joists are tied to that structure. The second move in 1999 was performed by the Matico family of Virginia Beach, part of the team that moved the Hatteras Lighthouse. “They built a joist structure and strapped the sills to it with 3/4-inch straps,” Flowers noted. “They began on December 21 and finished December 23, in time to be home for Christmas.”
So the familiar routine of opening up the Toms-Buchanan Cottage in April with a mothers’ house-cleaning party, and closing it in October when the best weather of the season is over, continues with reassuring regularity for the extended family who have summered there for 70 years.
Nags Head Style on Figure Eight Island
Though he never saw Figure Eight Island down the coast near Wilmington, or even knew it existed, Nags Head master-builder Samuel Twine would feel quite at home in the ocean-front house designed on the exclusive resort by Chapel Hill architect Dale Dixon. Dixon’s lifelong friend Steve Coggins and wife Louise Weeks Coggins commissioned the architect to design their new beach house after the original one on the site had been destroyed by Hurricane Fran. “If I were to name this house, I’d call it Twine’s Tribute,” says Steve. “Both Louise and I grew up visiting Old Nags Head cottages in the summertime, and we loved the feel of them and what they represented to us.” Dixon took the Cogginses’ wish list of open space and lots of light in a traditional Nags Head cottage and transposed it into a contemporary home with many familiar architectural elements. The home offers a trio of dormers across the east and west elevations, hip-roofed wraparound porches, an enclosed lower level accented by cross-tied supports reminiscent of the openwork pilings beneath the old cottages, and a simple gracious appeal.
Though set on pilings which delve deep, the lower level of the Coggins House is usable space with a garage, powder room and a recreation space that also functions as an at-home office for the professional couple. Floored in antique brick—which Louise points out is easy maintenance for sandy feet—the lower level opens to an outdoor covered area housing a Ping-Pong table, rope hammocks and storage for beach toys. The main level is a spacious great room/living area that accommodates dining, an island kitchen, a game table and a sitting area. The cathedral ceiling rises above an array of windows and frames an open staircase and beam-supported catwalk.
It is Steve’s love and knowledge of antique wood, as well as Dixon’s clean-limbed design that make the great room a spectacular space. “I wanted to use all reclaimed antique wood which would have been here during Virginia Dare’s time,” says Steve. “We have the traditional woods of the Outer Banks—pine, spruce, cypress, cedar and Douglas fir.” The woods are used to good advantage, blending beautifully together while distinguishing one part of the great room from the others. Antique pine is used on the floors and in the extensive furniture cabinetry making the kitchen workable, yet elegant. Douglas fir beams are joined shipwright fashion beneath the catwalk, and a table of perfectly matched curly maple invites dining or just admiring.
The main level contains two bedrooms and a cedar-sheathed sleeping porch that opens to two exterior stairways sheltered by porches. The sleeping porch is a favorite haunt of Louise’s many nieces and nephews and the couple’s 14 godchildren, as well as children and dogs of friends. “We have beds for 20 people, plus pull-out mattresses,” says Louise. The upper level bedrooms are divided by the catwalk, whose lines blend into halls that bisect the house laterally, an organizing principle that creates amazing views. “I think looking out the great-room windows from the catwalk is a bit like being on a ship,” says Steve. Each end of the hall features bedrooms and enclosed bay areas dubbed the Sunrise Bay and the Sunset Bay. Built-in banquettes provide comfortable seating from which to enjoy views of the Inland Waterway, the sound and the ocean.
Louise’s dcor is playful and makes use of furniture from both their families, as well as some pieces from the early years of their married life. “Steve laughingly refers to our early Nash and Edgecombe attic pieces,” says Louise, “and I kept the 1973 geometric gold-brown spreads and bedroom suit we started with in a guest room. The guest room contains my grandmother’s vanity table mixed with other antique pieces.” The master bedroom is a cozy aerie lined with narrow-board heart pine and made to feel like the attic cubbies the couple remembered from their summertime stays in the Old Nags Head cottages. High windows give a view to the night sky and a sense of security and comfort.
In addition to the open, light-filled house Steve and Louise described to architect and friend Dale Dixon, the couple wanted a home that would accommodate large and small groups and be a personal retreat. As their work with Dixon progressed, they realized that their Figure Eight residence could be more than a laid-back beach house that they commute to on weekends and in the summer from their home in Raleigh. It could be their principal residence and a perfect entertainment venue for family, friends and colleagues who work with them in several non-profit groups for social causes. Thus, five years after the destruction of their first Figure Eight house and the day after the fateful events of September 11, 2001, the couple decided they would move into their new-old island home upon its completion. “We wanted to simplify our lives and devote more of our financial and emotional resources to things that were more meaningful,” says Louise. Deeply committed to social and humane causes, particularly the plight of enslaved and abused women and children, the Cogginses are now able to spend more time traveling and speaking on behalf of these issues. They each commute into Wilmington where Louise is a practicing psychotherapist and Steve is a civil litigator with the firm of Rountree, Losee and Baldwin; yet they still maintain their personal and professional ties to the Triangle. Steve often comes to Raleigh to work on legal matters and visit family, and Louise is currently serving as Chair of the Board of the School of Social Work at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The Toms-Buchanan Cottage, a 1936 classic beach cottage, and the Coggins Figure Eight home provide more than architectural style and ocean-side living. They show the way to set aside personal time for themselves, family and friends and find pleasure in nature while living in a complex and busy world.