The Library now houses much of Professor Thomas G. Harbison's collection, which in his time, when he founded the Highlands Academy in 1886, was being extolled as "the best school library in Western North Carolina." The Bennett grand piano was the first piano brought to Highlands by T. Baxter White in 1876. And the pictures on the walls are unique collages of Highlands scenes, beautifully crafted from mosses, lichens, bark, ferns, and the wood pulp of hornets' nests by John Jay Smith in 1929.
The Prince House fronts east onto the street. It is two bays wide in an L plan, forming a right (north) projecting gable front and a left (south) wing with a shed-roof porch. An original rear single-pile ell extends west from the south wing, which was lengthened in 1935 to include a rear stairway to a hipped-roof second story that was added over the ell. The front-gabled north wing is double pile. The side-gabled south wing is single pile. The house sits on locust piers and a dry-laid stone foundation. The exterior of the house has minimal ornament. The walls are clad with plain poplar weatherboards, and the central interior capped chimney is built of stone with a stucco finish. A second interior chimney in the ell is constructed of brick. The two-over-two lite double-hung wood sash windows, the majority of which are paired, have plain board surrounds and wood drip caps with mostly pegged corners, mortise and tenon joints, and slender exterior muntins. The multi-gabled roof is covered by pressed metal shingles and the central chimney is stuccoed.
This exterior description is arranged in a counter-clockwise review of the walls of the house. The east elevation contains a left (south) wing and a right (north) projecting gable front. The gable features on each story a pair of double sash windows. Over the shed porch in the wing is a single square sash containing two vertical lites. The porch floorboards are yellow pine accessed by wide dressed-granite steps. The porch roof, supported by square posts attached to an unornamented balustrade, shelters two front entrances: a main entry into the wing and a side entry into the gable. The south front door contains two-over-two lites with slender muntins above two raised horizontal panels and a cast-iron oval knob, escutcheon, and mortised lock. The north porch door, which provides a separate entrance to a front bedroom, features two-over-two lites above two square-edge vertical panels and a white porcelain doorknob. The entrance surrounds of both porch doors are composed of four-and-one-half-inch plain casings. The doors are protected by wood-framed screen doors reinforced with flush wooden corner bracing. The south screen door is hung on cast-iron spring hinges.
The north elevation of the front block is two bays wide. Each bay of the first story contains a double sash window. Similarly spaced on the second level were two windows original to 1877, which were boarded over with weatherboard in-fill in 1935, leaving only the surrounds. The west (rear) elevation of this gabled section is similar to the east (front) fa ade, featuring a pair of two-over-two windows. The north elevation of the rear ell is set back from the north elevation of the front-gabled bay and features a two-over-two window with narrow muntins on the second story above a pair of small four-over-one vertical sash double hung paired windows, dating from 1935. A two-over-two window with narrow muntins is located at the west end of the wall.
The west elevation of the two-story rear ell is a blind wall with no windows. The south elevation of the house is composed of two sections: the ell to the west and the side-gabled wing to the east. The west end of the ell features on the first story a single square sash containing two vertical lites. East of it is a two-over-two window, above which is a pair of two-over-two double-hung sashes. Access to the ell is through a recessed side entrance. The original door, similar to an original four-panel door stored in the cellar, contains four cove-edge vertical panels, a glass knob, and a mortised lock. It is protected by a screen door of the same square-edge style as the one at the north end of the front porch. Above this side porch is a two-over-two window. In the south elevation of the front block are two-over-two windows in pairs on each level. A small vertical-four-over-one lite double hung sash window, dating from 1935, is located to the west of the paired windows in the first and second levels and roughly centered between the two stories. This window lights the interior stair landing.
The floor plan of the house is typical late-nineteenth-century. The front block is a double pile plan, the parlor extending the full depth of the left (south) portion and a front bedroom and back dining room filling the right (north) portion. The kitchen is in the rear single-pile ell behind the parlor. On the second story a bedroom extends the full length of the main block's left portion, with two bedrooms on the right. Situated above the kitchen in the ell are a bath and back bedroom. The attic space remains unfinished, and beneath the parlor is a potato cellar.
The interior woodwork of the house is a mixture of native woods: oak, chestnut, poplar, maple, and white and yellow pine. Found throughout are four-panel chestnut doors with pine surrounds and mortised with wooden pegs, showing moldings and door surrounds of chestnut and oak trim with white porcelain or glass knobs. The walls are made either of wood lath, brown and gray paper sheathing, and flower pattern wallpaper or chestnut or poplar beadboard. The floors throughout are mostly hardwood, tongue-and-groove oak and maple, but also yellow pine. The windows, complete with their sills, are made of pine. Most of the windows are two-over-two double-hung wood sash with braided cotton cord, pulley, and weight still intact.
On entry into the house, the walls and ceiling of the parlor are covered with two-and-a-fourth-inch tongue-and-groove clear chestnut beadboard. The floor is laid with two-and-a-fourth-inch tongue-and-groove oak boards and is edged with eight-inch tall baseboard molding with a top bead. In the interior (north) wall on each side of the fireplace are doorways to a bedroom on the right and dining room on the left. Against the rear (west) wall of the parlor, a flight of stairs ascends to the upper story. Beneath these stairs is another stairway descending to the potato cellar. It is accessed at the northwest corner of the room through a doorway into a short hall. The cellar door is mortised, bears a white porcelain knob, and features four flat pine panels with square-edge stiles and rails. On the interior wall of the parlor a chestnut mantelpiece encloses a fireplace surround and hearth of dressed granite.
The walls and ceiling of the north bedroom are yellow pine beadboard. The floor features the same oak boards and baseboard of the parlor.
The dining room walls are covered with lath, brown and gray sheathing paper, and flower pattern wallpaper. These layers can be seen where the Historical Society framed an opening, rather than repair it, to illustrate the original structure. The ceiling is beadboard. A second opening in the southwest corner of the room allows direct unobstructed access to the kitchen through the short hall. Whether this doorway ever contained a door is not known, since it shows no signs of hinge cuts and the adjacent entrance into the hall and kitchen are cased openings only.
The kitchen ceiling is made of poplar beadboard. Similarly, the walls are sheathed with beaded poplar boards over one-inch hemlock and clear-chestnut planking. The flooring features pine boards over hemlock sub flooring. The cook stove on the west wall is vented into a brick chimney, which stands between the back wall of the kitchen and the back stairs. A historic porcelain-over-cast-iron kitchen sink, without a base cabinet, is attached to the north wall under the pair of vertical-four-over-one windows.
The enclosed back stairs of the house were constructed in 1935.2 Accessing the second story, they comprise two runs of oak risers and treads. In the northwest corner of the kitchen a pantry exists under the stairs.
The second floor follows the floor plan of the first, except that the three front bedrooms are accessed from a small central hall at the top of the front stairs. The walls of these bedrooms are covered with lath, sheathing paper, and flower pattern wallpaper; the ceilings, with lath and white paper; and the floors, with narrow, tongue-and-groove oak boards. The front two (north and south) bedrooms were heated originally with wood-burning stoves that vented through metal thimbles, which still exist, into the central chimney. The doors have flat panels and square-edge stiles and rails. The west bedroom door, as well as the doors to the bathroom and the bedroom closets, all incorporate cove-edged stiles and rails.
The only bathroom in the house is located on the second floor of the rear ell at the top of the front stairs. It adjoins the back bedroom. Both rooms are accessed by a narrow hallway. In the northwest corner of the back bedroom stands a historic Columbus wood-saver stove, vented through metal thimbles into the stuccoed brick chimney. Like the three front second-story bedrooms, the walls and ceiling of the back bedroom are wood lath and brown sheathing paper, but the floor is laid with narrow, tongue-and-groove maple boards. The door is like that of the two front bedrooms and the cellar door. The bathroom floor is covered with two-and-a-fourth-inch pine boards. The walls are beaded poplar, aligned vertically. The porcelain-over-cast-iron wall-hung sink is surmounted by recessed shelves. The sink and cast-iron pedestal tub with round rim and the sink in the kitchen are the few remaining historic furnishings in the house.
The attic space, which is accessed through a trap door in the ceiling of the second-story hall, is unfinished. Also unfinished is the cellar beneath the parlor, which is accessed by modern stair treads made of pressure-treated pine. The original rough-cut two-by-eight-inch joists and wide subflooring in the cellar are made of hemlock. The exposed wiring that threads through the floor joists, similar to wiring strung throughout the attic, is knob and tube, installed in 1935. The cellar was accessed from the outside through a wooden coal chute in the south elevation and a square opening, now boarded over, to the crawl space beneath the rear ell.
The original house serves as the main core of the present building, which retains its historic massing, weatherboard siding, gable roof, and two-over-two double-hung, centered and/or paired pattern of fenestration. The only change in the topography of the land surrounding the house affected the south elevation. The area was filled to a higher grade when the historic Hudson Library building was moved to the southwest corner of the original lot to become the Highlands Historical Museum and Archives. A flight of wooden stairs was removed, since it was no longer needed to enter the kitchen through the engaged porch. Wells were created to maintain access to the cellar through the coal chute and to the crawlspace beneath the rear ell, since both were now below grade. As required by code, a minimal seven-space parking area was paved between the house and the driveway entrance from the road.
When the Highlands Historical Society acquired the Prince House in 2000, it was in considerable disrepair and neglect. The roof leaked, wallpaper was pealing, the parlor floor showed stains below an oil heater, the electrical lines were antiquated, most of the furnishings had been removed, and the house was in dire need of painting. Between 2001 and 2006, while mindful of the need to preserve the building's historic integrity, the Society performed several critical renovations. On the exterior, the weatherboard siding of the house was replaced where rotten and then primed, caulked, and painted. The dry stack stone underpinning, which had existed originally beneath the rear ell but recently been removed, was re-installed for insulation and support.
Historically the multi-gabled roof of the house bore pine and oak shingles, which had been replaced in the 1960s by single-tab asphalt shingles.3 However, by the year 2002 the roof and both chimneys were leaking severely into the front north and south bedrooms. To successfully stop the leaks, pressed 28-guage galvanized metal shingles with a natural finish were substituted for asphalt. The stuccoed stone of the centrally located chimney was replaced with a wood/steel frame of the same proportions and re-stuccoed so that the new frame was concealed in the same way that the original stone had been covered. Today only the metal roof looks different from its wooden and asphalt predecessors.