Location: 330 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, NC 27603 Capacity: Up to 250 guests (full restaurant); rooms seat 25 to 65 Type: Historic House Restaurant Website: second-empire.com
The house was built in 1879 for Raleigh mayor William H. Dodd, in the Second Empire Victorian style that came out of Napoleon III's France. Col. John W. Hinsdale bought it in 1890, and it stayed in his family for most of a century before falling into disrepair. In 1993 the Reynolds family took an option on the property and restored it, and on September 9, 1997, it reopened as Second Empire Restaurant and Tavern.
What survives from 1879 is the heart pine flooring, the masonry walls, 14-foot ceilings, and the 4 original front doors, now fitted with leaded glass. Since 1997 the house has run as a fine-dining restaurant and its private-event program uses the historic rooms themselves as the setting for a wedding.
The Rooms
The Pine Room, once the house's kitchen, now seats up to 40 and takes its name from the wood paneling that lines it. The Main Dining Room is split into a West and an East side, each holding up to 65 guests, in the main body of the restored house. Downstairs, in the Tavern, the Raleigh Room and the Capitol Room each seat up to 25, and the glassed Atrium at the Harrington Street entrance to the Tavern seats up to 50. A couple planning a wedding can use one room for a rehearsal dinner or a small reception, or take the restaurant in full for a larger one.
The Kitchen
Second Empire has won the AAA Four Diamond Award 3 times and the Distinguished Restaurants of North America award twice, and it held a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for 8 years running, 1999 through 2006. For couples who want something smaller and more particular, the restaurant's Chef's Table seats 2 to 4 guests inside the kitchen itself, for a 5-course menu with 4 courses paired with wine. The same kitchen supplies the private dining rooms and any full-restaurant wedding.
What We Design Here
A house this old sets its own terms. The pine paneling, the heart pine floors and the masonry all run warm, so we work in tones that meet that warmth: ivory, warm gold, deep plum, and soft, saturated color that glows under candlelight and low fixtures. Fourteen-foot ceilings in the main rooms give height for taller arrangements at the entrances and on mantels, while the Pine Room and the rooms downstairs in the Tavern ask for something lower and denser, scaled to a table a guest can talk across. Because a full-restaurant wedding moves a couple's party through several rooms in one evening, cocktails in one, dinner in another, we plan one palette that carries through every room of the evening.
Practical
Second Empire sits on Hillsborough Street in downtown Raleigh, on what the house's own history describes as the old western corridor leading out from the State Capitol. The restaurant keeps a parking lot behind the building on Edenton Street, and street parking downtown is unmetered after 6 p.m.; several paid lots also serve the block. The restaurant serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and is closed Sunday and Monday. The restaurant's events staff plans weddings, rehearsal dinners, and receptions directly.
Hidden Door Floral Studio is a Raleigh wedding florist designing for weddings across Raleigh, the Triangle and North Carolina, and happy to travel beyond. To talk about your wedding at Second Empire, schedule a consultation.
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