Life for the Palace After the Royal Governors
After Governor Martin’s quick departure, the palace was passed to the State in May 1775. The Assembly continued to meet there and some elected governors lived there, although none for very long. Sometime during the Revolutionary War it was decided by the Assembly that the capital should be moved from New Bern. The last Assembly meeting was in 1794 and the capital moved to its new home in Raleigh. The palace then ceased to have any official function (The Tryon Palace Commission, 1956). The rooms were rented out to the Masonic Lodge, Lodgers and even a private school (The Tryon Palace Commission, 1956). After that, with no permanent occupants the Palace began to quickly ruin (Haywood, 1958). The main building burned on the night of February 27, 1798. Only the walls remained, but they too would be torn down in a few months (The Tryon Palace Commission, 1956). The East Wing remained, but disappeared from the site sometime after that and the West Wing eventually became an apartment house and so changed its appearance that is was unrecognizable as an eighteenth century structure (The Tryon Palace Commission, 1956).