Korner's Folly, Victorian house in Kernersville, North Carolina, US.
Korner's Folly is a three-and-a-half-story brick house built in the 1880s in Kernersville, North Carolina, with 22 rooms that each differ in ceiling height and decorative style. The house has 15 fireplaces and retains much of its original furniture and decoration.
Jule Gilmer Körner, an entrepreneur who made his fortune through a national advertising campaign for chewing tobacco, built the house between 1880 and 1882. It was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now operated as a museum.
The third floor holds a small private theater that Körner built for performances open to his neighbors in Kernersville. The space still feels personal, as if it were designed for a living room audience rather than a public crowd.
The house is open to visitors from Tuesday through Saturday and can be explored without a fixed guide, which lets you move through the rooms at your own pace. Parking is available on-site, so arriving by car is the most straightforward option.
Despite the name, the house was no mistake: Körner himself gave it the label 'Folly' as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the extravagant style he had deliberately chosen. The word 'folly' was used in the 19th century to describe architectural whims built more for imagination than for reason.
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