Chinqua Penn Plantation, human settlement in North Carolina, United States of America
Chinqua Penn Plantation is a historic estate near Reidsville, North Carolina, built in 1923 as the private home of the Penn family. The brick manor house sits at the center of a property that includes formal gardens, outbuildings, and a series of paths connecting different parts of the grounds.
Thomas Jefferson Penn and his wife Margaret built the estate in the 1920s, drawing on wealth from a tobacco company founded by his father. After Thomas Jefferson died in 1949, Margaret gave the property to the University of North Carolina in 1959.
The estate's name combines the nicknames of the Penn couple, Chinqua for Margaret and Penn for her husband. Visitors walking the grounds can notice buildings that draw from Chinese, English, French, and Italian styles, all gathered in one place by a family with wide-ranging tastes.
The grounds are easy to walk through, with paths leading past the gardens and around the various buildings. Comfortable shoes are a good idea, as the surfaces change between paved areas and softer garden ground.
A pagoda tower on the grounds holds statues inspired by pieces seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dating back to the 13th century. The property also had a clock tower with two separate timekeeping systems that each chimed every quarter hour.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 60,000 contributors worldwide.
