HOME IN CAPESIDE: Inside the iconic Dawson’s Creek house
- Kate Barber
- 19 hours ago
- 9 min read
"The only homes we really have are the ones we make for ourselves." —Dawson’s Creek, S3E8
Off Wrightsville Ave, down a private drive, at the lip of Hewlett’s Creek, sits a house by a dock where Dawson Leery once lived. The house is for sale for the first time ever, and the realtor invited encore to take a private tour. So on a Saturday afternoon, Shannon and I pull up behind a house I’ve never set foot in—but a house I grew up inside of all the same.
We walk around to the back porch that faces the water, where the realtor, Jill, is waiting for us. I trail behind Shannon, lingering on the side of the house underneath a window where a ladder rested for years. I can see her: Joey climbing rung by rung to the rooftop, slipping inside the open window. Across the yard, next door, Grams is watching, hands on hips, shaking her head. “That Potter girl has been climbing in and out of that window for years.”
As we climb the steps to the porch, tears brim. I’ve been uniquely invited into this place that’s lived on my television, in my heart, for years—but I’m stepping into this breach between past and present, reality and fiction, without my Dawson. Without my Cody.
We open the screen door, and as it creaks, the tears leave my eyes.
The porch looks like 1998 untouched: wicker chairs and table arranged just like you see them on the Leery porch. The scenes play out before me: Gale muffling sobs in that armchair because Mitch knows about her affair with Back-to-You-Bob. Jen telling Joey, “I’m going to make it really hard for you to hate me.” Dawson, opening that same screen door, moonlight spilling out onto the creek, Joey and Pacey before him, mouth open and aghast as he clocks the betrayal: this whole time?
Jill greets us, laughs at my “Dawson’s Creek” t-shirt. (I had to.) She tells us that the farmhouse was built around 1880 from shipwreck lumber, that a single horse moved the lumber over log rollers to where the house is now. The same family has owned the house for 140 years across six generations. It’s never been open to the public in any way until now. It hit the market for $3.25 million, to be sold as-is.
Dawson’s yard sprawls across 1.7 acres, under 100-year-old oak trees, rich grass, the raised patio featured in so many episodes taking center stage. From here, I can see the tree house Dawson and his dad built, just off to the right of the dock. And there, in the center of it all, is the dock I’ve spent a million nights on inside a television: hovering over glassy water that glitters under a sun, the blue sky making the water color look like a painting. It’s so private that you wouldn’t know anywhere else in this world existed: you can’t even see Grams and Jen’s house next door for the thick trees grown in between.
As Jill leads us inside, I expect a staircase extending towards the door. The stairs where Joey is sitting when she looks at Gale and says, “I know Mrs. Leery. I know.” The stairs Dawson runs up when he and Andie get trashed on his birthday and come home to a botched surprise party. Instead, there’s a big white bookcase with one small bookstack. Dawson, Joey, Jen, and Pacey stare back from a white cover.
“Smells just like my memaw’s house,” Shannon says.
“The family wasn’t interested in many modern updates,” Jill tells us, “so it's truly a piece of the past in the present.”
Even though most interior shots were done on a sound stage, you can feel the residue of cinematic magic lingering like a mist, pieces of them, an energy that makes me pause for a deep breath. The story of the girl down the creek and the boy she loved with all her heart.
If you think Dawson’s Creek is a love story between Dawson and Joey, you’d be wrong.
It’s about not knowing how to view your life any other way but through the lens of a narrative. It’s about being so connected to a childhood friend that they rewrite who you are. It’s about how it feels when someone grows up with you, knows you better than anybody else ever did, ever could. The friend who challenges you, pushes you, never lets you be mediocre, who believes in you. Who inspires you.
But you’re coming in at the end of the story. To really understand what being inside Dawson Leery’s house felt like, what it meant, you have to go back to the beginning. To the pilot. To our pilot. To a boy and a girl who didn’t live down the creek, but across the mountain, whose stories would be more intertwined than they ever could have known at 16 years old.
*
Cody and I met working at a grocery store in the southwestern-most corner of Virginia. On our first day, we were walking down an aisle together when “I Don’t Wanna Wait” by Paula Cole played over the sound system. Mindlessly, we both sang along, then snapped our heads to look at each other, asked: “You love Dawson’s?”
For years, we’ve hidden inside Capeside together. His childhood bedroom, my childhood bedroom, my college dorm room, then apartment after apartment, we curled up and got lost inside a television set. We called each other Dawson and Joey, always, but we knew something it took them six seasons to understand: we were made of pieces of each other, but that didn’t mean we were destined for romance. It only meant we would always be together.
When we were 22, both spinning from heartbreaks, we decided we had to see Capeside. The real Capeside. It was nearly midnight when we pulled into downtown Wilmington. Water Street had long emptied out; the river was dark, quiet, asleep. We stood on those cobblestones, and he slipped his hand in mine and said: They were right here. It happened right here.
I’d spent years searching for a place that felt like mine. I kept coming up empty. Inside a set long vanished into time, he told me, You will live here one day. I think maybe you belong in Capeside.
Cody was the first person I called when I got into the MFA program at UNCW. He was the first to visit. When I felt like I couldn’t write another word, I haunted the lawn in front of Alderman Hall, the front yard of Capeside High. When I needed to tune out the world, I sat inside Hell’s Kitchen, pretended time and reality didn’t exist and any minute, Eddie would come by to fill my glass, Audrey would sit down, steal a fry, and say “Hey, bunny.” When I felt sure no one would ever publish a damn word I wrote, I walked along the Cape Fear, conjured the ghosts of Dawson and Pacey competing in sailing contests, Joey and Jack watching fireworks across the river. I watched them file out of Michael’s On the Waterfront in prom attire, waited for Jen and Abby to emerge from Edge of Urge and Island Passage, stood outside the Black Cat Shoppe and pretended it was CD Alley. And somehow, even though Cody was 400 miles away, he was always right there, written all over every brick on Water Street, every tide in the river, and every sunset behind the bridge.
It's been 13 years since we first came to Capeside. All that’s changed is we know now we were always more Jack and Jen. Sometimes we’re Michelle Williams and Busy Phillips. Sometimes we’re Kathryn and Cody. But we’re always Dawson and Joey.
In the first season, Dawson and Joey sit by the fountain at Airlie Gardens, overanalyzing their friendship. Joey says, “It’s called social evolution, Dawson. What’s strong enough flourishes, and what doesn’t, we look at behind glass cases in science museums.”
“And you and I?” Dawson asks. “Are we museum bound?”
As Joey saunters off into the darkness, she whispers to the night: “No doubt about it. Straight to the Smithsonian.”
This is the promise Cody and I have made to each other a hundred thousand times over the twenty years we’ve been best friends: the Smithsonian? Never happening.
Unlike Dawson and Joey, our friendship has always been uncomplicated, straightforward, smooth as the water on the Cape Fear. We’ve never worried we’d drift apart, never speculated should our friendship be anything else. We’ve loved every version of each other that there’s ever been. He is as part of me as Dawson is of Joey.
*
As we move through the house, I think how every moment from that grocery store led me to where I am now: Dawson’s led me to Cody, Cody led me to Wilmington, Wilmington took me in and loved me back, and then it led me right to Dawson’s doorstep.
To the right as you walk in the door is a living room with boards on the walls that look reminiscent of ship lumber. The furniture, the books, everything, looks trapped in time. Through the hallway, there’s a small reading nook by what would be the front door, though the family uses the back door as the primary entrance and exit. The kitchen spills back towards the front of the house into a grand dining room, a huge table in the center, and walls decorated with coastal paintings.
The stairs are the center of the first floor, and they curve around in a hook leading up to the bedrooms. At the base of the staircase is a large framed “Dawson’s Creek” poster—you know the one. A pensive James van der Beek watches over his childhood home with the same troubled expression he’s worn for always.
“This isn’t just walls and windows to us. It’s a chapter of Wilmington’s story.” —the family of Dawson Leery’s home
Upstairs are four bedrooms and three bathrooms, each bedroom with its own color scheme, feel, and décor. I imagine what it might be like to sleep in one of these rooms, and I pray someone will buy the house and list it as a weekend rental. (Potter’s (Air)B&B, anyone?)
The family who has cherished Dawson’s home for generations shares that “while it’s hard to say goodbye, we’re hopeful the next owner will love it as much as we have.”
In the back corner of the upstairs, finally, is Dawson’s room. There are no Spielberg posters lining the walls, no boat-shaped bookshelf, no old television playing VHS tapes. I imagine them all piled in there anyway, arguing over the ending of some movie Dawson and Joey loved that no one else sees the point of. The bedroom window facing the water is lined with plants and succulents. The one where Joey’s ladder would’ve been has a chest underneath it.
“It’s a home that bridges past and present in a way few places can,” Jill says, and she’s right. It does.
Shannon and I explore the dock, sing Paula Cole by the water, and she convinces me not to attempt climbing in the tiny rowboat tied up on the water. This piece of history, of Wilmington culture, this piece of all of us, is tucked away in its own world. You could live back here and never know the rest of Wilmington existed. You slip into Capeside and never come up for air. It’s a kind of beauty that’s haunting, quiet, unsubtle, and simple all at once.
In the car, I ask Shannon, “Do you think the realtor thought I was a crazy megafan?”
“You are a crazy megafan,” Shannon says, laughing and shifting the car into gear. “That’s why I asked you to write this. Anybody can write about going into a house. I want this to be about what it means for someone who grew up obsessed with this show to be able to see inside this house.”
When I call Cody that evening, guilt twists in me as I say, “You should’ve been there with me.”
“Oh, bunny,” he says. “I was. I’m always with you.”
Thanks to Jill Sabourin with Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage for this exclusive story opportunity. The house sold in May 2026 for $2.73 million, with the new owners committed to preserving the history of the home.
*
Note: This article was written in January 2026. James van der Beek passed away on February 11, 2026, after a battle with cancer. To James, we offer this tribute: You taught us to dream. To never outgrow our Peter Pan syndrome. To believe in ourselves when the world was telling us we'd never make it. You taught us eternal optimism, forgiveness, and hope. You taught us how to let go our our first loves but never our best friends. You never let us give up. You taught us to use big words, write big stories, look always to the sky above the river. You taught us that the answer to everything is in the movies (or, for us, an episode of Dawson's Creek). You grew up with us. Or rather, we grew up with you. You'll never know the impact you had on two teenagers growing up in southwest Virginia who felt lost as hell. You'll never know just how much hope and love you gave us when you gave us Dawson Leery. We wouldn't be the friends we are if you hadn't been Dawson Leery—and if we hadn't become us 20 years ago, we wouldn't be who we are now. The tread of us are made of the rivers in Capeside.
We love you to Capeside and back again.
Forever,
Dawson and Joey
