A FALL STATE OF MIND AT THE VERANDAS
Updated: 50 minutes ago
Fall arrives in Wilmington like a long, slow exhale. The heat softens, the crowds thin, and the city settles into a golden rhythm made for wandering. At the heart of the Historic District, The Verandas offers an especially beautiful way to experience the season—a storied 1853 mansion where four porches, lush gardens and quiet rooms invite guests to linger a little longer. Just two blocks from the Cape Fear River and within walking distance of Wilmington’s restaurants, Riverwalk and historic streets, it is a place where the itinerary can easily give way to an afternoon on the veranda, a sunset from the cupola or a leisurely walk beneath the changing autumn light. Here, fall isn’t simply a season to visit Wilmington—it’s a season to settle into it. We caught up with owners Jamie & Ace Alfalla to learn more.
What makes fall such a wonderful time to experience Wilmington and stay at The Verandas?
Fall is when Wilmington exhales. The humidity breaks, the light goes long and gold in the late afternoon, and the summer crowds thin into something much more relaxed.
This house was built around its porches. Four verandas, a terrace and the gardens — back when a porch was the only air conditioning anyone had. In October, they finally get used for pleasure instead of survival: a hot cup of fresh-brewed coffee or tea on a crisp morning, or a glass of something as the evening cools off. It’s also the season you actually want to walk. We’re two blocks from the Cape Fear River and surrounded by the Historic District, so guests can wander for hours and come back whenever they feel like it. Summer here is lovely. Fall is when Wilmington feels like it belongs to the people who love it.
How would you describe the experience of staying here, and what makes the property so special?
What we want people to feel is that they’re in a home, not a hotel. Warm, welcoming, comfortable — a true home away from home, whether you’re staying with us or just having a peek around. The house makes that easy. It’s an 8,500-square-foot, four-story mansion, built in 1853 for a shipbuilder named Benjamin Beery, who ran his yard across the river on Eagles Island. He put a cupola on the roof so he could watch his own ships come up the Cape Fear. Guests still climb up there for the sunset. By the early nineties, the place was fire-damaged and boarded up. It was stripped to the studs and rebuilt, then hit again by Hurricane Florence in 2018 and restored a second time. Everything you see now is deliberate: the antiques, the formal parlors, the piano, the butler’s pantry that stays stocked, the award-winning gardens. But guests don’t fall in love with square footage. They fall in love with being taken care of. Our team knows who wants a dinner recommendation and who wants to be left alone with a book, usually by the second morning. That’s the part you can’t renovate into a building.
What are some of your favorite ways for guests to experience Wilmington during a fall getaway?
Start on foot and stay on foot as long as you can. Walk the Historic District with no destination in mind — it runs more than 230 blocks, and the residential streets are the best part. Most visitors never see them. Then work your way down to the Riverwalk in the late afternoon, when the light is on the water, and cross over to the Battleship North Carolina if you haven’t. We’re walking distance to everything from white-tablecloth dining to a great casual bite, and I’d tell anyone to eat their way through it slowly rather than cram it into one night. Wilmington’s restaurant scene rewards a second and third dinner. Beyond downtown, Airlie Gardens is at its best in October, and Wrightsville Beach in the fall is a completely different animal than it is in July — cool, quiet and practically yours.
How does a stay here create that relaxed, restorative escape?
By not asking anything of you. There’s no lobby to navigate, no elevator bank, no line at check-in. You arrive, someone welcomes you by name, and the day is yours. The house does the rest. Porches, gardens, quiet common rooms — spaces that make sitting still feel like a choice rather than a failure to be productive. The location helps more than people expect. We’re a short walk from downtown but not in the middle of it, so you can be as social or as solitary as you want on any given evening. Guests tend to show up with a full itinerary and abandon half of it by the second day. I take that as the highest compliment we get.
What do you hope guests take away from their stay?
That Wilmington is a real place, not a stop. A lot of coastal towns are seasonal — they perform for visitors and then go dark. Wilmington doesn’t. There’s a working downtown, a genuine restaurant culture, a film industry, a university, and three centuries of architecture that people actually live and work inside of. As for the house — I hope they take away that it’s here because a series of people refused to let it go. Chuck Pennington bought it in 1995 when it was a ruin and spent nearly thirty years making it what it is. He used to say you don’t really own a place like this; you’re just a caretaker. He stayed inside the house through Florence. It has survived neglect, fire and a hurricane, and it’s still standing and still full. That isn’t a marketing story. That’s just what happened. Mostly, I hope people leave feeling let in on something rather than sold something — already planning what comes next.
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