Date: c. 1905
2708 Olive Chapel Road, Apex
Designated 12/17/2019
The c. 1905 Alsey Thomas Olive House is locally significant for its Queen Anne architecture. The house is historically associated with the Olive family, a multi-generational family of successful farmers and community leaders in western Wake County. The house possesses architectural significance as one of a dwindling number of surviving and intact rural Queen Anne-style houses in western Wake County. While the house’s historic agricultural setting has been compromised by suburban development, it remains on its original site on land that was owned by the Olive family for 171 years, from 1846 to 2017. The dwelling retains excellent overall physical integrity and has experienced very limited changes to the exterior. The interior retains its original floor plan and much of the interior finish materials have survived. Its preserved state informs us about popular tastes, vernacular adaptations, and locally available and prevalent building materials and techniques that upper middle-class families used in early twentieth-century western Wake County.