Community News

Preservation Celebration features two historic homes, St. John in the Wilderness

Many Pines is one of three stops on the Flat Rock Preservation Celebration, a guided tour of historic properties. [CONTRIBUTED]

By Lightning Reports, Published: July 15, 2026

Preservation North Carolina is hosting an event this month that will give tour-goers an up-close look at historic Flat Rock as it was in the late 1820s, when wealthy Charlestonians made it a colony for escape from Low Country summer heat.

Flat Rock Preservation Celebration will offer tours of Beaumont, St. John in the Wilderness and Many Pines from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22. The tour includes:

• Beaumont, where preservation is under way after a fire damaged part of the home. Built in 1839, the house has a fascinating history. The dining room was the scene of a Civil War tragedy when its owner was fatally shot in front of his family. In 1910, Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect of the Biltmore house, designed the monumental over-build that resulted in the 8,000-square-foot home that stands today. The 4¾-acre lot includes an octagonal ice house, landscaped grounds, pool, pool house and tennis court.
• St. John in the Wilderness, the oldest parish in the Diocese of Western North Carolina, was founded in 1827 when Charles Baring of England built a private chapel on his summer estate. After the original wooden structure burned, a brick church was built in 1833 and officially deeded to the Diocese of North Carolina in 1836, forming an Episcopal parish primarily made up of affluent Charleston summer residents. To accommodate a rapidly growing congregation, the church was rebuilt and doubled in size in 1852, resulting in the historic structure that stands today.
• Many Pines, one of the most intact of the antebellum Flat Rock estates, was built in 1847 for Charlestonian merchant James Reid Pringle and his wife, Sarah Ladson, by Henry “Squire” Farmer, a well-known builder of many early buildings in Flat Rock and Hendersonville. The original Greek Revival and Gothic two-and-a-half-story house showcases a blend of fretwork, latticework and pointed and rounded arches. A pine-lined driveway leads to the home perched on a meadowed hill. A dozen outbuildings have been carefully retained, including a kitchen building, lattice vegetable house, barn, stone dairy and slave and servant quarters. Augustine T. Smythe acquired the property in 1908 and named it Many Pines. It is owned today by his great-granddaughter, preservationist and architectural historian Langdon Edmunds Oppermann and her husband, Joe Oppermann, noted preservation architect.

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Tickets are $25 and available at presnc.org. Langdon and Joe Oppermann will host a mix-and-mingle with light refreshments at Many Pines.