SURVEY AND RESEARCH REPORT ON

The Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House

Name and location of the property: The property known as the Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House is located at 726 Hempstead Place, Charlotte, North Carolina.

1. Name and address of the present owner of the property: The present owner of the property is:

Elizabeth Lassiter

726 Hempstead Place

Charlotte, NC

3. Representative photographs of the property: This report contains representative photographs of the property.
4. Maps depicting the location of the property: This report contains a map depicting the location of the property.
5. Current deed book and tax parcel information for the property: The tax parcel number of the property is 155-132-11
6. UTM coordinate: 17 516588E 3894103N
7. A brief historical sketch of the property: This report contains a brief historical sketch of the property.
8. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains a brief architectural description of the property.
9. Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets criteria for designation set forth in N. C. G. S. 160A-400.5:
10. Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations:

1)      The Lassiter House is significant as the oldest identified surviving Modernist Style home in Charlotte.

2)      The Lassiter House is one of the earliest examples of the work of A.G. Odell Jr., one of the most important and prolific North Carolina architects of the 20^th century.

3)      The Lassiter House is extremely rare as a fully realized example of Modernist Style residential architecture.

4)      The Lassiter House is important as an early example of the movement after World War Two to apply technology to residential architecture.

1. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling and/or association: The Commission contends that the physical and architectural description which is included in this report demonstrates that the Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House meets this criterion.
2. Ad Valorem tax appraisal: The Commission is aware that designation would allow the owner to apply for an automatic deferral of 50% of the Ad Valorem taxes on all or any portion of the property which becomes a designated “historic landmark.” The current total appraised value of the improvements is $144,600. The current appraised value of the lot is $780,000. The current total value is $924,600.

 

Date of preparation of this report: August 2003

Prepared by: Stewart Gray

The Lassiter House, located on Hempstead Place in the Eastover Neighborhood in Charlotte, is significant as the oldest identified fully realized Modernist Style houses in the city.  It is also one of the few surviving homes designed by architect A. G. Odell, who was among the most prominent North Carolina architects of the 20^th century.  The Modernist Style in residential architecture was never fully embraced in Charlotte, and surviving examples continue to be threatened with demolition.

Historical Overview

The Lassiter House was built in 1951 during the nation’s great post-World War Two building boom.  The building boom was brought on by years of stagnant homebuilding due at first to the Great Depression and then to material and labor shortages during World War II.  After serving in the Navy, Charlotte native Robert Lassiter brought his bride Elizabeth to his hometown where they found a house in south Charlotte.  Elizabeth Lassiter, who was from the State of Washington, remembers that the housing market around Charlotte was extremely tight and that they felt very lucky to have found any house at all.   Elizabeth Lassiter contracted polio soon after her move to Charlotte and wanted a one-story house that would be completely accessible to a wheelchair.  Around 1949 the Lassiters asked A. G. Odell Jr. to design a new home that would suit their needs.[1]

A Cabarrus County native and a member of one of North Carolina’s most prominent textile families, A. G. Odell, Jr. opened an office in Charlotte 1940[2].   Odell graduated from architecture school at Cornell University and then attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, one of the world’s premier arts and architecture schools.  Indeed, Odell was considered the best- trained architect in Charlotte.[3]  In the years following the World War II, Odell quickly established himself as the leading designer of commercial and institutional buildings in Charlotte.  By the mid-1950s, Odell’s work included the Main Branch of the Charlotte Public Library, Charlotte’s first enclosed shopping center, the Charlottetown Mall, and the groundbreaking Wachovia Tower, Charlotte’s first Modernist Style skyscraper.  Odell’s greatest achievement was arguably the design of the original Charlotte Coliseum.

The former Charlotte Coliseum (now known as Independence Arena) and Ovens Auditorium, Charlotte’s first municipal stadium and auditorium, were hailed as “architectural marvels” by architects, public officials, and Charlotteans when they first opened to a crowd of thousands in 1955.  North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges proclaimed the Coliseum “a perfect building,”[4]

Praise was not limited to the local press or state officials.  The Coliseum project secured Odell’s reputation as an architect of national significance.

From the moment that Odell & Associates unveiled the first model, the Coliseum was featured in professional architecture journals and trade publications. The buildings legendary claim to fame is that it was the largest free-span dome in the world at the time it was built…and it received international notice in an article in a Madrid journal. Look published a three-quarter page color photograph of the “world’s biggest dome.” [5]

Odell’s success continued and in 1966 Odell was honored as a recipient of the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.  Awarded by the General Assembly, it is the highest honor the state of North Carolina can bestow.   Other recipients have included: Frank Porter Graham, John Morehead, Reynolds Price, Charlotteans Mary and Harry Dalton, and Modernist Architecture proponent Henry L. Kamphoefner, former Dean of the School of Design at NC State University.

Click here to read a brief biography of Odell from the commemorative program for the 1966 North Carolina Awards ceremony

Projects for Odell’s firm, Odell and Associates, included the Blue Cross Blue Shield Building near Chapel Hill, the Concordia Church, and the 1965 “Charlotte Central Area Plan.”  With the center city plan, Odell embraced the philosophy of the “Radiant City,” espoused by Swiss-born European architect Le Corbusier, where:

Urban cores should be hygienic, antiseptic, and ordered — not cluttered, begrimed, and haphazard. The tradition of mixing functions in a single structure or neighborhood was an anathema to Corbusier. The city of the future would be divided into discreet sections devoted to specific purposes – working, living, leisure – connected to one another by expressways.[6]

While the plan was never fully realized, it was utilized and the present landscape of the center city owes much to Odell’s design.  One important element of plan was the Charlotte Civic Center.  Designed by Odell, this massive and stark building acted as a catalyst for more Modernist or International Style buildings in the center city.

Odell’s fame was largely the result of his commercial and institutional work, but early in his career Odell designed several modernist homes for Charlotte clients including the Kenneth Shupp House, the first Modernist Style home built in Charlotte.  Odell continued to publicize his residential designs through the mid-1950s.   In 1954 as President of the North Carolina Chapter of the AIA, Odell began publishing the Southern Architect, which later became the Journal of North Carolina Architecture.  The primer issue, with the Charlotte Coliseum on the cover, featured five pages of Odell’s work with photographs of three residences.  In 1955 the Southern Architect again featured Odell’s residential work with photographs and a floor plan of the Spencer Bell House in Charlotte.  Odell found that he could provide good value for his homebuilding clients by utilizing the Modernist Style.  In an interview with the Charlotte Observer at the time of his retirement in 1982, Odell said “I was trying to sell contemporary more on the economics than aesthetics…(traditional design homes) didn’t give as much space for the dollar.”[7]

J. Spencer Bell House	Kenneth Shupp House

Although never fully embraced by the home buying public, especially in any fully realized form, Modernist Style homes were the vanguard in post-World War II residential design.  In the California Book of Homes, a plan-book sold in bookstores and newsstands, Editor Leslie R. Griffin wrote in the introduction:

The basic concepts of architectural home designing have undergone revolutionary changes for the better.  The hallowed basic concepts have been pushed, prodded and shaped to keep pace with this great country and its people – who have themselves been involved in a revolution of spirit and mind in the last twenty years.  From the chaos of the past, architectural practice and thought has emerged shoulder to shoulder with the ideals of freedom that have kept our country great…[8]

The newness of the style and its utilization and integration of technology was seen as an answer to the troubled years of the Depression and the tumult of the war.  Victory and prosperity and the resulting consumer culture drove the demand for “new and improved” products, including homes.  Fully-realized Modernist Style homes were not simply an “improved” version of the traditional home form, but in many cases a completely different building type.  Considered a “machine for living,”[9] fully- realized Modernist Style home designs shared few structural components, building materials, or spatial planning with traditional designs.  Griffin goes on to list the tangible effects of the Modernist Style on residential architecture:

1. Today’s planning is functional.  The want of the family are appraised and a step-saving floor plan is laid out: then, after the living functions have been provided for, the shell is put on the house.  Previously, the house was built after a traditional pattern, a “French Provincial”, “Colonial”, or something similar.
2. Exterior design has changed.  Modern lines are simple lines – no gingerbread or other unnecessary ornamentation.

 

3. Modern conveniences have taken over.  The modern kitchen and laundry are so well known to the housewife today that any description would be superfluous.

 

4. The two-story house is out.  In the West, with rare exceptions such as building on a hillside location, owners want living on one floor.

 

5. Open planning is in.  Present habits of informal living, plus the perfection of modern conveniences have made open planning possible.  The formal dining room has been replaced by the large Pullman kitchen.  Hallways and entry-ways are fewer…[10
7. It was in this context of radical change that the Lassiter House was designed.  Odell and Robert Lassiter were friends, and Elizabeth Lassiter recalls that Charlotte was a much smaller town in the late 1940’s and that it was “only natural” that Odell would design their house.  Elizabeth Lassiter was familiar with Modernist Style architecture.  Being from the West Coast, she was an admirer of Portland architect Pietro Belluschi (1899-1994), a leading national spokesman for the Modernist Style and Dean of the M.I.T. School of Architecture[11].,  Belluschi had produced numerous successful home designs and was considered pragmatic when compared with other proponents of the style such as Phillip Johnson.[12]  With Belluschi’s style in mind, Elizabeth Lassiter  and Odell “put our heads together”[13] and developed the plan for the Lassiter Family’s home.

Odell assisted in every phase of planning and construction for the Lassiter House.  He accompanied the Lassiters when they picked out the lot on Hempstead Place, a brand new neighborhood street being developed by prominent developer E. C. Griffith, and Elizabeth Lassiter recalls that Griffith himself wrote the deed.   Odell urged them to choose lot number 726 because its rising topography would allow him to design a private site.

Elizabeth Lassiter wanted to make sure that her new home could accommodate someone with restricted mobility and found the Modernist Style design well suited to her special needs.  Modernist Style homes are generally low, and the one-story Lassiter House is set level with the grade, eliminating all need for steps.  Modernist Style designs utilized modern materials such as steel beams to allow for open floor plans without interruption by interior load-bearing walls.   The Lassiter House’s open floor plan along with wide hallways, and doorways, were designed to accommodate a wheelchair.  Wall-to-wall carpet was chosen because slick floors could be dangerous for someone using crutches.   A pool was planned for the backyard, so that Elizabeth Lassiter could exercise, but problems with getting materials and skilled labor delayed the pool for several years. [14]

Elizabeth Lassiter  had specific non-Modernist plans for her kitchen.  She recalls that Odell suggested an open-plan for the kitchen.   He suggested a kitchen/family room with a place for “Robert to sit there reading the paper in a big chair, smoking a pipe,”[15] while Elizabeth cooked supper.  She was not impressed, and directed Odell to design a small kitchen for a paid cook, with a butler pantry/serving area to further isolate the kitchen from the dining room and the rest of the house.  Even with this traditional kitchen/dinning room layout, Odell was able to utilize modern innovations such as a dinning table on a track that could be completely set in the serving area and pushed through an opening in the dinning room wall.  When the meal was over it would be retracted, dirty plates and all.

Elizabeth Lassiter’s other major disagreement with Odell involved storage space.  The Modernist Style emphasized clean lines, no clutter.  In these concrete-floored “machines for living” there were usually no attics or basements, and the open-floor plan eliminated many of the possible locations for closets.  Odell suggested to the Lassiters that they should not “have a lot of stuff,”[17] and that they did not need storage.  Embracing post-World War II consumerism, Odell suggested that if something was broken or if you did not need it, you could just throw it away.  Elizabeth Lassiter was not convinced and instructed Odell to design generous storage space.

While Elizabeth Lassiter was involved in every aspect of the interior design, the Lassiters gave Odell a free hand in designing the exterior of the house. Typically the design of a Modernist Style house concentrated more on the needs of the occupants than on impressing the public.  Whereas traditional home design often incorporated either an imposing or ornate façade, Modernist Style homes often presented their simplest elevation to the street and would sometimes, as is the case with the Lassiter House, lack a “front door.”  This concept of a very private or personal space is reflected in Odell’s landscaping plan for the Lassiter House.  From the road, the most prominent feature of the Lassiter Residence is a large, plain, masonry retaining wall.

Architect-designed homes, and Modernist Style homes in particular often conform to the landscape.  Odell embraced this concept with the Lassiter House.  It was his intention that the house look like it had risen out of the lot.[18]  While “outdoor living” was nothing new in the South with its history of porches, screened porches, and sleeping porches, the Modernist Style architects pushed the very floor plans of their homes into the outdoors with trellis-covered terraces and open patios.  The outdoors was brought into the houses by the extensive use of windows and glass doors, usually to the rear of the house.  In the Lassiter House the living room literally opens onto a covered patio via massive sliding glass wall panels that were designed by Odell.  The blurring of the interior and exterior spaces was reinforced by Odell with exterior wall materials such as brick and redwood siding being featured on interior walls.

Odell’s state-of-the-art design for the Lassiter House proved to be very practical over time.  With an addition in the 1970’s to accommodate guests, the house has served members of the Lassiter Family for over fifty years.

Odell characterized architecture as “90% business and 10% art.”  At the time of his retirement in 1982, Odell and Associates was the largest architectural-engineering firm in the Carolinas, with billings in 1981 of $6.6 million.  At the time of his retirement, Odell and his firm had been credited with designing an astounding 2,000 buildings.  However, it was his early commercial and institutional work from the 1950’s and 60’s in the Modernist and International Styles that was most admired by the public and his peers.  While not typical of the work that made him recognized as one of the most important 20th Century North Carolina architects, the Lassiter House is significant as one of Odell’s early works in the Modernist Style. The Lassiter House holds further significance locally as a rare example of the Modernist Style applied to residential architecture, and as among the oldest recorded surviving Modernist Style homes in Charlotte.[19]

Architectural Descriptionm

The Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House is a low flat-roofed one-story frame house that originally consisted of three sections.  The principal section is relatively square and includes the kitchen, dinning room, and living room.  A distinct entrance and foyer connect the principal section to the bedroom wing, which extends to the west.  The house faces east on a neighborhood lot raised above the street and buttressed at the sidewalk-level by a tall masonry retaining wall, overgrown with ivy.  The house is generally hidden by trees and bushes and by the topography of the site, although it is partially visible when approached from the north.

While most of the neighboring homes have a front walkway, access to the Lassiter House is limited to the driveway, with the principal entrance to the house facing north.  Tall shrubs planted close to the house on the north elevation obscure the flat-roofed garage, which extends from the north elevation.  The bushes part only enough to reveal the entrance.  Opaque glass in two large sidelights and three fixed transoms surround an original louvered wooden screen door.   Behind the louvered door hangs a wide solid-core door with a Contemporary Style doorknob.  A generous eave protects the entrance.  This extended overhang continues around the house; however much of the overhanging eave on the north and east elevations is cut away, leaving a framework that maintains only the outline of the eave.  All exterior walls are covered with vertical redwood siding that runs uninterrupted from the eaves nearly to the grade.

The fenestration in the east elevation is limited to the northeast corner where a large pane of glass is glazed directly into the wall.  Directly beneath the large window are three metal-framed awning window units.  A window-unit air conditioner has replaced one of the lower sash.   This glazed wall illuminates the dinning room.  Abutting the windows to the south is another solid-core door, with a louvered screen door and topped with a transom.

On the south elevation the overhang is solid and forms a porch supported by redwood framing, which has been enclosed with glass.  A major gabled bedroom addition was added in the 1970’s.  The addition begins at the west end of the porch and extends to the beginning of the bedroom wing.  The addition, designed by A.G. Odell Jr. and Associates, is covered by the same vertical redwood siding found on the rest of the house.  While the north gabled wall of the addition is blank, the south wall features two large fixed triangular windows set in the gable.

The bedroom wing features windows oriented to the south and designed to take advantage of direct sunlight.  Three-part windows with short upper and lower fixed sash and a large operable center sash are set in the wall.  A recessed entrance borders a large directly glazed window illuminating the master bedroom.  The west wall of the bedroom wing is blank.

The interior of the Lassiter House has retained a high degree of integrity, with original features such as light and bath fixtures, wall finishes, and interior doors and hardware.  The interior floor plan is generally open, reflecting Modernist Style design and the need for wheelchair accessibility.  A bank of tall windows in the foyer look into a small, enclosed garden formed when the bedroom addition was added.  The living room features large sliding glazed wall panels that allow the room to be opened to a porch that has been turned into a sunroom.  Another original feature of the living room is large brick fireplace with minimal trim and a long simple brick hearth. A wood box integrated with the fireplace was converted into a television cabinet.

The dining room contained one of the most innovative elements of the interior design, a wooden slab table mounted on rollers that could be retracted into the butler’s pantry to be set with dishes or to be cleaned after a meal.  The wall opening for the table has been covered with paneling.  The butler’s pantry and the kitchen contain many original features such as cabinetry, counters, and sinks.  Built-ins include a telephone cabinet/desk and a small breakfast table.

The bedroom wing is comprised of two bedrooms single-loaded off of a long hall lined with storage closets.  The master bedroom contains a small brick fireplace with a tall shallow trapezoid-shaped brick hearth.  The bathrooms are largely original, and feature Carrara glass tile from Italy.

[1] Interview with Elizabeth Lassiter, July 2003.

[2] Lew Powell, “A Designing Man, Looking Back on the Career A.G. Odell Built” Charlotte Observer, August 15, 1982.

[3] Interview with Harold Cooler, AIA, July 2003.  Cooler practiced in Charlotte at the same time as Odell.

[4] Lara Ramsey “Addendum To Survey And Research Report On Ovens Auditorium And The Charlotte Coliseum(Former)” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, 2001.

[5] Dr. Paula Stathakis, “Survey And Research Report On Ovens Auditorium And The Charlotte Coliseum” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, 1990.

[6] “Center City Survey Of Historic Places, Charlotte Civic Center”, Dr. Dan Morrill, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks  Commission, 2003.

7] Lew Powell.

[8] Leslie R. Griffin, Ed., California Book of Homes, Home Publications, Inc., Los Altos, 1954, p.4.

[9] Report on “Post World War Two Survey of Charlotte-Mecklenburg,” Sherry Joines Wyatt & Sarah Woodard for David E. Gall Architects.

[10] Ibid

[11] TechTalk, MIT News Office, Cambridge, Mass March 2, 1994.

[12] Merideth Clausen, Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect, Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1994, p. 9.

[13] Interview with Elizabeth Lassiter.

[14] Ibid.

[15]Ibid.

[16] Drawings featured in “U.S. Steel’s: Kitchen Planning Book”, 1956..

[17] Interview with Elizabeth Lassiter.Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Based on the “Post World War Two Survey of Charlotte-Mecklenburg,” by Sherry Joines Wyatt & Sarah Woodard, it appears that the Lassiter House is the oldest surviving home designed by Odell in Charlotte.  The Bell and Spencer Houses have been destroyed and the Shupp House can not be located.

Click here for photos

THE LAMBETH-GOSSETT HOUSE

 

This report was written on May 4, 1987

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Lambeth-Gossett House is located at 923 Granville Road, Charlotte, North Carolina.

2. Name, address, and telephone number of the present owner of the property:
The owner of the property is:
W. Barnes and Camilla W. Hauptfuhrer
923 Granville Road
Charlotte, NC 28207

Telephone: (704) 372-4217

3. Representative photographs of the property: This report contains representative photographs of the property.

4. A map depicting the location of the property: This report contains a map which depicts the location of the property.

 

 

Click on the map to browse

5. Current Deed Book Reference to the property: The most recent deed to this property is recorded in Mecklenburg County Deed Book 5396, page 564. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is 155-051-08.

6. A brief historical sketch of the property: This report contains a brief historical sketch of the property prepared by Thomas W. Hanchett.

7. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains a brief architectural description of the property prepared by Thomas W. Hanchett.

8. Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets the criteria for designation set forth in N.C.G.S 160A-399.4:

 

a. Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Lambeth-Gossett House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) the Lambeth-Gossett House, erected in 1916, is one of Charlotte’s finest examples of Bungalow-influenced architecture; 2) the Lambeth-Gossett House is one of the older homes in the most imposing section of Myers Park, Charlotte’s elegant streetcar suburb that was developed by the Stephens Company and designed by John Nolen and Earle Sumner Draper; 3) owners of the Lambeth-Gossett House, most especially Charles E. Lambeth, Laura Cannon Lambeth, and Benjamin B. Gossett, have played prominent roles in the civic and business life of Charlotte and its environs.

b. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship materials, feeling, and/or association: The Commission contends that the architectural description included in this report demonstrates that the property known as the Lambeth-Gossett House meets this criterion.

9. Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal: The Commission is aware that designation would allow the owner to apply for an automatic deferral of 50% of the Ad Valorem taxes on all or any portion of the property which becomes “historic property. The current appraised value of the improvement is $309,200. The current appraised value of the .545 acres of land is $90,000. The total appraised value of the property is $399,200. The property is zoned R12.

Date of Preparation of this Report: May 4, 1987

Prepared by: Dr. Dan L. Morrill
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission
1225 S. Caldwell St. Box D
Charlotte, N.C., 28203

Telephone: 704/376-9115

 

 

 

Historical Overview

 

Thomas W. Hanchett

The Lambeth-Gossett house, emoted in 1916 in Charlotte’s posh suburb of Myers Park, has been associated with two distinguished Charlotte families. The first residents were Charles Lambeth, a real estate and insurance man who was later elected Mayor of the city, and his wife Laura Cannon Lambeth, who was a daughter of Cannon Mills founder James William Cannon. In 1921 the Lambeths sold the rambling Bungalow style dwelling to Benjamin B. Gossett. Gossett was a regionally prominent textile leader who controlled a chain of mills stretching across several states, and he resided at Granville Road throughout much of his professional career, until his death in 1951.

Charlotte and Myers Park in the 1910’s and 1920’s The first years of the twentieth century were perhaps Charlotte’s greatest boom period. Population doubled and redoubled as Charlotte become the banking and trading center of the vast new Piedmont textile manufacturing region. As early as 1906 over half the looms and spindles in the South were within a hundred mile radius of Charlotte, and by 1927 Charlotte was the hub for some 770 mills, which led the world in production of cotton thread and yarn.¹ Between 1890 and 1930 Charlotte moved from being the Carolinas fifth-largest city, to a ranking as the number one urban center in North and South Carolina, the position it holds to this day.² Beginning with trolley magnate E.D. Latta’s Dilworth in 1891, the fast-growing city sprouted a ring of streetcar suburbs.³ The grandest was Myers Park, a 1200 acre project begun in 1911 under the leadership of banker and real estate developer George Stephens.⁴ Stephens sent to Boston to hire one of the nation’s best young planners to lay out his suburb. Harvard-trained landscape architect John Nolen was then at the dawn of a career which would eventually number more than four hundred projects coast-to-coast.⁵ In his 1927 book New Towns for Old, Nolen devoted an entire chapter to Myers Park’s creation, calling it a neighborhood “Designed right from the first end influenced only by the best practice in modern town planning.”⁶ Nolen’s design for Myers Park introduced Charlotte to the concept of curving streets, shaped to follow natural topography. He created parks, moved in hundreds of trees to shade the avenues, and even provided landscape advice to early lot buyers. The attention to detail paid off, for Stephens quickly began selling lots to many of the city’s economic leaders, who formerly had clustered close to downtown. First to come were banking and real estate men, including Stephens himself. Next came the engineer-entrepreneurs of James Buchanan Duke’s Southern (now Duke) Power Company, pioneer supplier of hydroelectricity to the textile region. The third major group to arrive in Myers Park were the textile mill owners themselves not usually the mill tenders, who stayed in the small towns near their enterprises, but rather their sons and daughters.

The House’s First Years, 1916-1921

In Myers Park’s initial decade, the most desirable building sites clustered close to the greensward of J.S. Myers Park. The park was the former front yard of the farmhouse of John Springs Myers. Myers had planted trees, shrubs and flowers around the homeplace for years before finally deeding his huge cotton farm to son-in-law, George Stephens. Under the old trees, facing the new streets of Hermitage Road, Ardsley Road, Harvard Place, and Granville Road, now rose the homes of such men as Southern Power executives E.C. Marshall, Norman Cocke, Z.Y. Taylor, and J.B. Duke; financial and real estate leaders George Stephens, John Bass Brown, and H.M. Wade; furniture manufacturer H.M. Wade; and department store man David Ovens. The lot that holds 923 Granville Road was part of this elite enclave. It was located one house away from J.S. Myers Park on a quiet, winding sidestreet shown as “Avenue F” on Nolen’s early drawings. Before long the street was given the name “Granville Road”, in honor of the British Earl Granville, one of the owners of the Carolina colony in its earliest decades.⁷ The Granville Road parcel, known officially as Lot 3 of Block 7 of Myers Park, was sold by the Stephens Company in 1912 to a Edwin Howard. Real estate man T.C. Guthrie acquired it in 1913, then transferred the still-vacant parcel to A.D. Glascock on April 10, 1916.⁸

A.D. Glascock was one of several entrepreneurs who played an active role in early house construction in Myers Park. His practice was to buy a building lot, erect a house, then sell it to an owner-occupant. Glascock built a number of the neighborhood’s most substantial early residences in this manner, including dwellings that stand at 221 Hermitage Road and 1626 Queens Road. At 923 Granville Road, Glascock took out a permit to begin water service on May 5, 1916.⁹ This action typically signaled the beginning of construction for a building. Barely six weeks later, likely with construction just underway, A.D. Glascock sold the property to Laura Cannon Lambeth: June 21, 1916. ¹⁰

Laura Cannon Lambeth ( -1952) was daughter of James William Cannon (1852-1921 ), one of the most influential men in the rise of the Carolina textile industry. In 1887, he built his first mill in the Cabarrus County village of Concord. Prior to Cannon, most Piedmont mills had produced yarn or semi-finished “greige goods.” James Cannon was able to produce finished goods; his lines of bed linens and towels made Cannon a nationally-known brand name. By the 1910’s, he controlled a chain of enterprises, most of them centered in the company-owned town of Kannapolis, thirty miles northeast of Charlotte. Some of his ten sons and daughters made their homes near the family business, but several, including Martin L. Cannon and Laura Cannon Lambeth, took up residence in Charlotte’s Myers Park. Laura came to Charlotte to marry young Charles E. Lambeth (1894?- 1948). Lambeth was born in Fayetteville, NC, about 1894 and came to Charlotte after schooling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1916 he was working for brother, Walter Lambeth, who ran the insurance department of Charlotte’s American Trust Company (predecessor to today’s mammoth NCNB, the South’s largest banking corporation).¹³ It was no surprise that Charles and Laura Lambeth looked to Myers Park for their first home. Developer George Stephens was also a founder and officer of American Trust and thus Lambeth’s boss!

The Granville Road house was quite a residence for a pair of newlyweds in their early twenties more than five thousand square feet on two floors. But the Lambeths lived for only a short time in the spacious new house. In 1918, the United States entered World War I, Charles Lambeth quit the insurance department at the bank and joined the U.S. Navy.¹⁴ He volunteered for training in the new air corps, a daring move in that pioneering era of cloth-winged aircraft. He went to a special Navy flight school at Harvard University, then was stationed at Rockaway Beach, Long Island, where his wife joined him. When the Lambeths left Charlotte, they are said to have rented their house to the James B. Duke family. Durham-born Duke had amassed a fortune in the cigarette business and ranked among the world’s richest men. Toward the end of the 1910’s he got the idea of owning a Southern home to supplement his mansions in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. Duke had a new wife and a new young daughter, whom he wanted to introduce to the Southern lifestyle he fondly remembered from his youth. Besides, he needed a residence where he could oversee his burgeoning hydroelectric investments. In March of 1919, Duke purchased the recently-constructed house of employee Z.Y. Taylor, which overlooked picturesque Edgehill Greenway in Myers Park.¹⁵

He hired architect C.C. Hook to remodel end expand the dwelling into a forty-five room mansion (500 Hermitage Reed, listed in the National Register of Historic Places). The story is told that Mrs. Duke and daughter Doris took up residence for most of a year at 923 Granville Road, in order to oversee the renovation of the mansion. ¹⁶ When the Lambeths returned to Charlotte, Charles went into the automobile business, opening an agency to sell Dodge cars and trucks. Perhaps in order to raise capital for this venture, the couple sold the rambling house on Granville Road in 1921 and moved into a more modest Myers Park dwelling at 6 Hermitage Court.¹⁷ The auto business seems to have been short-lived, for Charles Lambeth was soon back in insurance, at the helm of his own successful firm, the Charles E. Lambeth Insurance Agency. About 1927 the couple commissioned nationally-prominent Philadelphia architect Charles Barton Keen to design a grand new house at 435 Hermitage Road.¹⁸ This eclectic Revivalist design, right on J.S. Myers Park, remains a Charlotte landmark. After leaving Granville Road, Charles Lambeth emerged as a major Charlotte leader. He served as Mayor of Charlotte 1931-1933, City Councilman and Mayor Pro-Tem 1947-1948, and member of the School Board for several years.¹⁹ “Charlie Lambeth hiss one of Charlotte s leading citizens,” said Mayor Herbert Baxter when Lambeth died in 1948.²⁰ “Mr. Lambeth had long been recognized as one of the most public-spirited men in Charlotte, and he made important contributions to the progressive development of the community,” noted the Charlotte Observer. “Possessor of en exceptionally attractive personality, he was held in high esteem not only in Charlotte but in other communities.²¹

Home of Benjamin and Katherine Gossett, 1921-1961

On December 6, 1921, Benjamin B. Gossett (1884-1951) purchased 923 Granville Road from the Lambeths.²² The Gossett family name is today less well-known then the Cannons, but the Gossett clan wielded considerable power in the Carolina textile economy of the first half of the twentieth century. Benjamin’s father, James Pleasant Gossett (1860-1939), was a successful merchant in Williamston, South Carolina, when he took over the presidency of the town’s ailing cotton mill in 1901. J.P. Gossett built the one mill into a chain of for factories, and became an important figure in a variety of trade associations, serving as President of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association in 1927.²³ Benjamin B. Gossett entered the family textile business in 1907 after education at Clemson University and the U.S. Naval Academy.²⁴ With his father and brother he worked to add more plants to the Gossett chain, and by the late 1910’s the funnily owned the Williamston, Brogan, Calhoun, Riverside and Toxaway mills in South Carolina. In 1921 the Gossetts purchased control of the Chadwick-Hoskins mill group in Charlotte. Organized in 1908 as one of the region’s pioneer chains, it included the city’s Chadwick, Hoskins, Alpha, and Louise mills, plus the Dover Mill in nearby Pineville. Benjamin Gossett became president of the new acquisition, and took up residence in Myers Park. B. B. Gossett lived at 923 Granville Road for the remainder of his long and busy career. He was president not only of the Chadwick-Hoskins group, but also of the Cohanett Mills in Fingerville, South Carolina, and the Martinsville Cotton Mill in Martinsville, Virginia. He continued to serve as vice president and/or treasurer of several of the family’s South Carolina mills, including the Williamston, Toxeway, and Brogon plants. In 1939, upon his father’s death, Benjamin B. Gossett took over leadership of the entire Gossett chain. He sold the enterprise in 1946 to Textron, Inc., for an estimated $13 million dollars. During the 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s, as he helped guide the growing Gossett holdings from his downtown offices in Charlotte’s Johnston Building, Benjamin B. Gossett also undertook a broad range of related professional activities. He served on the boards of directors of several other textile concerns, plus a number of banks, railroads, and insurance companies, among them the Seaboard Railway, the Piedmont & Northern Railway, the Central Railroad of Georgia, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, and the Turner, Halsey company of New York. B.B. Gossett followed in his father’s footsteps as an active member of regional and national trade associations.

He helped found the Cotton-Textile Institute and served as president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association 1932- 1933. Though he seems never to have held elective office, Gossett filled important supportive positions in state and federal government which gave him a measure of influence over the entire textile manufacturing economy. From 1927 to 1930 he was chair of the commerce and industry division of North Carolina’s Board of Conservation and Development. Under the National Recovery Act during the Great Depression, he was “a member of the code authority of the cotton textile industry.”²⁵ During World War II, Gossett served as industry member for the regional organization of the National War Labor board Chairman of the industrial salvage division of the War Production board for North Carolina.²⁶ During his years in the Myers Park house Benjamin Gossett and his wife Katherine Clayton Gossett (1886?-1965) raised three children. James P. Gossett II became a judge in Idaho. Katherine Gossett married Charlottean S. Frank Jones, a textile executive. Phillip C. Gossett built a chain of motion picture theaters in the South.²⁷ Benjamin Gossett was also active in the educational and cultural affairs of his region, endowing the Gossett Lecture Series at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and working for the “reactivation of the Stonewall chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Charlotte.”²⁸ When Benjamin Gossett died of a heart attack at his office in 1951 at the age of 67, widow Katherine inherited the Granville Road house. She continued to live there until moving to smaller quarters nearby on Hempsteed Place near the end of her life. She died in 1965.²⁹

The Tull, Warren, and Hauptfuhrer Families, 1961-1987

On September 19, 1961, Catharine Gossett sold her long-time residence to Charles W. Tull and his wife Phyllis.³⁰ Mr. Tull operated the Tull Development company, which built and leased small office buildings throughout Charlotte. The couple had four children, and made good use of the big house. In September of 1967, the Tulls moved to a newer section of southeast Charlotte. C. Carl Warren, Jr., physician at nearby Presbyterian Hospital, bought the dwelling.³¹ He and wife Josephine lived there for almost twenty years. In December of 1986 the Warren family sold to W. Barnes Haupfuhrer and his wife. Barnes Hauptfuhrer is an investment banker with Kidder-Peabody. Wife Camilla Robinson Hauptfuhrer is a grandniece of Benjamin B. Gossett.³² They are having the house remodeled as residence for themselves and their young child.

 

---

NOTES:

¹ Thomas W. Hanchett, “Charlotte Suburban Development in the Textile and Trade Center of the Carolinas, in Catherine Bishir and Lawrence Earley, eds., Early Twentieth Century Suburbs in North Carolina (Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, l 985), p.70. Thomas W. Hanchett, “Charlotte and Its Neighborhoods The Growth of a New South City,1850-1930,- 1986,” chapter 1 (unpublished manuscript in the files of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission).

² United States Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census: 1940, volume 1, pp.772, 976. These pages conveniently recap population figures for major Carolina cities, beginning with 1790.

³ For a map of Charlotte’s streetcar suburbs see Hanchett, “Charlotte. Suburban Development,”. p.71. For background on the streetcar suburb phenomenon read Sam Bass Werner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Suburban Growth in Boston.1870- 1900 (Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University and the M.I.T. Press, 1962).

⁴ For additional background on Myers Park, see Mary Norton Kratt and Thomas W. Hanchett, Legacy: The Myers Park Story ( Charlotte: The Myers Park Foundation, 1986).

⁵ John L. Hancock, “John Nolen and the American City Planning Movement: A History of Cultural Change and Community Response,1900-1940 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1964), pp.1 -20. See also John L. Hancock, John Nolen: Bibliographical Record of Achievement (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, Program in Urban and Regional Studies, 1976).

⁶ John Nolen, New Towns For Old: Achievements in Civic Improvement for Some American Small Towns and Neighborhoods ( Boston: Marshall Jones, 1927), p. 1 00. A copy of this book is in the collection of the Carolina Room of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

⁷ Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, 3rd edition (Chapel Hill, North Carolina University of North Carolina Press, 1973), p. 156.

⁸ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: map book 230, p.128; deed book 289, p. 606; deed book 302, p.592; deed book 349, p.456.

⁹ Charlotte Mecklenburg Utility Department: water permit 6596.

¹⁰ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: deed book 358, p.612.

¹¹ W.M. McLaurine, James William Cannon (1852-1921): His Plants, His People, His Philosophy ( New York: The Newcomen Society in North Carolina, 1951). For Laura’s obituary, see the Concord Tribune July 1,1952. She and Lambeth divorced in 1933, and both later remarried.

¹² Charlotte Observer, September 13, 1948. Lambeth’s passing was important enough to warrant an article at the top of page one of the newspaper.

¹³ City directory collection in the Carolina Room of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

¹⁴ Unattributed newspaper clipping dated June 25,1918, in Lambeth’s vertical file in the Carolina Room of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. See also Charlotte Observer, September 13,1948.

¹⁵ Dan L. Morrill, “White Oaks, the J.B. Duke Mansion: Survey and Research Report, unpublished report prepared for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1977.

¹⁶ Phyllis Tull, past owner, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 27, 1987. Camilla Hauptfuher, present owner and grandniece of past owner B.B. Gossett, interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, February 20, 1987. Camilla Hauptfuhrer heard the story from previous owner Carl Warren.

¹⁷ City directory collection.

¹⁸ Hanchett and Kratt, Legacy: the Myers Park Story, pp.182-84.

¹⁹ LeGette Blythe and Charles Brockmann, Hornets’ Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte: McNally of Charlotte, l961), pp.450, 452. Charlotte Observer, September 13, 1948.

²⁰ Charlotte Observer, September 13,1948.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: deed book 454, page 176.

²³ Marjorie W. Young, ed. Textile Leaders of the South (Columbia, South Carolina: R.L. Bryon Company, 1963), pp.76-77,751.

²⁴ Unless otherwise noted, biographical information on B.C. Gossett in this historical sketch is down from: ibid.; Charlotte Observer, November 14, 1951; and Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, volume I (Chicago: Larkin, Roosevelt & Larkin, Ltd., 1947), p.564.

²⁵ Charlotte Observer, November 14,1951. Gossett was such on important figure that his obituary and a large photo were featured now the top of the front page of the paper.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ S. Frank Jones, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 30,1987.

²⁸ Charlotte Observer, November 14,1951.

²⁹ For death certificates see the Mecklenburg County Bond of Health vital statistics files for November 13,1951 (#1482) and January 25,1965 (#177). For Mrs.Gossett’s obituary see the Charlotte Observer, January 26, 1965.

³⁰ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: deed book 223g, p. 194. Phyllis Tull, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 27, 1987.

³¹ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office. deed book 2893, p.584. Warren added a sliver of land along one side of the lot in 1975. See deed book 3796, p.916.

³² Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Wed book 5396, p.564. Camille Hauptfuhrer, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 30,1986.

 

 

Architectural Description

 

Thomas W. Hanchett

Built in 1916, the Lambeth-Gossett house is one of Charlotte’s finest examples of Bungalow-influenced architecture. It is located on a quiet, curving sidestreet near the heart of Myers Park, Charlotte’s, premier “streetcar suburb.” The rambling two-story exterior, with bracketed gables, wood-shingle siding, and stone chimneys, is in very good original condition. The interior appears to have been remodeled in the Colonial Revival style sometime in the mid-20th century, but it retains a handsome progression of spaces, and a richly panelled library.¹

The Exterior

The outside of the Lambeth-Gossett house has the woodsy look of a hunting lodge. This was characteristic of the Bungalow style inspired by the rustic trail-side shelters of British India, and brought to America at the end of the 1890’s.² During the 1900’s and 1910’s many thousands of houses across the United States were decorated in “hand-hewn” chic — asymmetrical massing, exposed rafters in the eaves, wood shingles, prominent porches, chunky window and door woodwork, and hearty chimneys built up of rounded boulders. When Myers Park opened in 1911, this rough-and-ready style was adopted by many of the suburb’s wealthiest new residents. Its imagery was perfect for a neighborhood whose developers advertised, “Out of the dust, out of the heat — a country home on a city street.”³ In massing, the Lambeth-Gossett house is strongly asymmetrical. It consists of a two-story main block enlivened by numerous gabled bays and porches, and a pair of two-story rear wings. One wing, which held service spaces and a sleeping porch, juts off at a picturesque angle. The other wing, which holds the library and a bedroom, is said to have been added by the Gossett family when they bought the house in 1921.⁴ It extends straight back from the main block. The main block is a welter of slate-covered gable roofs. A large asymmetrical gable dominates the front facade. Its wide eaves are decorated with rafter-like brackets, and a carved pendant hangs down from the peak. On the south side of this main gable, there is a secondary gable, a tall chimney of angular stones, and also gabled sunporch.

To the north of the main gable, there extends a roof ridge terminating in a jerkin-head side gable. A massive front chimney promises a cheery hearth within. Walls of the main block are finished in dark brown wood-shingles. Windows come in a variety of rectangular shapes and sizes, double-hung and hinged sashes. Most have small square or rectangular multiple panes. Here and there bracketed window hoods and flower boxes project. In front of the chimney runs the broad main porch, covering half of the first-story facade. It consists of a flat-roofed pergola-like section with scalloped rafter ends and massive Doric columns, and a smaller entry bay whose gabled roof is carried on stone arches. The rear of the house is finished in much the same manner as the facades visible from the street. All walls are wood-shingled. The 1921 library/bedroom wing is skill fully blended with the 1916 house. The wing has a slate-sheathed hip roof with exposed rafters in the eaves, and an exterior stone chimney at the rear. The wing’s second story windows are four-over-four-pane double-hung sash units, but the downstairs openings have hinged sash with tiny diamond-shaped panes, giving an Elizabethan architectural flavor. The service/sleeping porch wing also has a hip roof and a stone chimney. A shed-roofed one-story projection extends from the end of this wing. Between the two wings, a bit of the main block of the house is visible. Its second story features a bank of windows, decorated with flower boxes. The first story is a row of doors, opening from the grand hall inside onto a rear terrace.

This terrace, with a Neoclassical balustrade of carved stone, is being rebuilt by the present owners The Lambeth-Gossett House, like most Myers Park houses, is sited on a fairly compact lot — slightly more than half an acre. Trees and shrubs are arranged naturalistically, in keeping with the dwelling’s rustic character. The driveway runs along the north side of the residence, from the street back to the detached garage. The garage is located at the back corner of the lot, but nonetheless almost touches the house. The architecture of the outbuilding echoes that of the main dwelling. It is one-and-a-half stories tall with a jerkin-head roof, and wood-shingle siding. Eave trim end window treatment are borrowed from the residence. Downstairs the garage has space for two cars. Above, reached by a delightfully winding rear stairway with tongue-and-groove walls, is a former servant’s quarter, now greatly remodeled. An interesting feature of the garage area is actually part of the adjoining John Bass Brown House. The Brown garage, a brick Colonial style structure, sits right next to the Lambeth-Gossett driveway. William Peeps, architect of the John Bass Brown House circa 1924, thoughtfully finished the back of the brick garage in wood-shingle siding, stained dark brown to match the Lambeth-Gossett decor.

The Interior

In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, the Bungalow style passed out of favor in America. Rediscovered “historical” styles became the vogue, propelled in part by the widely publicized restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. By the middle of the century in Myers Park, as elsewhere across the nation, stylish housewives who could afford the expense hired workmen to rip out robust Bungalow, Tudor and Craftsman style interior detailing and substitute the delicate molding and mantels of the Colonial Revival. Among the Myers Park houses known to have been treated in the manner are the E.C. Marshall House, 500 Hermitage Road, and the Earle Sumner Draper House, 1621 Queens Road. The Lambeth-Gossett house evidently met the same fate.⁵ There is no evidence that any walls were moved or eliminated, but most of the interior trim was apparently replaced, except for the handsomely panelled library, a number of doors, and possibly one bedroom mantel. Today most of the mantels and woodwork are in the Colonial style with elegant molding. The renovation was skillfully and tastefully done, leaving few clues for even the practiced eye. The strongest hint is in the dining room at the front of the first story.

The exterior here has a prominent exterior stone chimney, but its promise of a fireplace inside is not kept. The dining room almost certainly did have a fireplace originally, but there is now no trace of it. Another strong hint is found in the south front bedroom, where a small window visible on the exterior is nowhere to be seen inside. A less obvious clue is embodied in the interior doors throughout the house. They are four-panel units which lack any decorative molding around the panels, an omission which characterizes the rough-hewn aesthetic of the Bungalow, and contrasts with the dainty Colonial Revival embellishment seen in nearby mantels and other trim. One enters the Lambeth-Gossett House through a massive Bungalow- style doorway framed with sidelights and a high arched transom. Immediately inside is a foyer/hallway with a heavy modillion cornice. To the right through an archway is the living room, and beyond it the sunporch and the library To the left through another archway is the dining room, and beyond it the kitchen and pantry areas. Straight ahead through a pair of massive pocket doors ( still operable) is the grand stairhall, with its French doors opening onto the rear terrace. The focus of the living room is an Adamesque mantel. It features fluted pilasters, Grecian dentils, carved swag, molding, and a carved oval center panel depicting a bowl of flowers. Inside the mantel is a fireplace surround of white marble with bold black figuring.

Flanking the mantel are the French doors to the sunporch, which has a quarry-tile floor and abundant windows. At the back of the living room is the door to the library (a small bathroom with mostly new fixtures is tucked between the living room and the library). The library is among the finest of its kind in Charlotte. It is panelled floor to ceiling in warm-toned wood, and a modillion cornice runs around the ceiling. Diamond-pane windows filter the afternoon sunlight. A fireplace with a wood-panel led breast and a heavy Doric-columned mantel provides the room’s focus. The room’s detailing includes a black-grained marble fireplace surround, built-in bookcases, and electric sconces of hammered brass. The dining room is plainly though handsomely finished, with no fireplace. Until the 1960’s, it had French doors which opened onto the front porch, but these were replaced with windows in a remodeling directed by owner Phyllis Tull. Behind the dining room, through a small swinging door, is the kitchen-pantry area. This area has been greatly remodeled over the years, retaining only its exterior walls and a servants’ stair to the second floor. All kitchen cabinets and a number of walls were removed at Phyllis Tull’s direction in 1961 to create a large “country-kitchen.”⁶

Today owner Camilla Hauptfuhrer is removing virtually all of the surviving interior partitions, and plans to add a new exterior window. Two early windows remaining have interesting hardware — interior cranks operate exterior-louvered shutters. The grand stairwell is literally and figuratively the heart of the Lambeth-Gossett House. It is a delightful two-story open space which rivals the living room in floor area. At its first floor rear is the bank of glass doors opening onto the back yard. At its first floor right winds the wide stair, which now has slender turned balusters which may not be original. The stair rises to a balcony-like landing, and then to the second floor. Around three sides of the second floor level is a balcony, onto which all the upstairs rooms open. The result is a masterful piece of architectural design, which visually connects upstairs and downstairs, interior and garden, and which provides an elegant promenade for partygoers or casual guests. There are four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a spacious sleeping porch upstairs. Throughout there are wide baseboards and simple cornices. The north front bedroom boasts an elegant mantel with slender paired columns, and a safe hidden behind wood paneling. The south front bedroom contains the “hidden window” apparently covered during mid-century remodeling. The rear bedroom above the library appears to retain its original 1921 mantel, ornamented with chunky pilasters rather than dainty columns.

This room also has a big closet with a built-in chest of drawers and a light that goes on automatically when the door opens. Few of the original bathroom fixtures survive, though the south bathroom still has its high-tiled wainscoting and an extra-long tub. The north bathroom has been completely gutted by the Hauptfuhrer’s work crew, revealing a pencilled notation “J.H. Erwin, June 27, 1917” left on the wooden framing by an early workman. Next to the bathroom is the sleeping porch. These rooms were popular in the 1910’s, when sleeping with plenty of fresh air was though to be healthful especially in the prevention of tuberculosis. The Lambeth-Gossett sleeping porch resembles a moderate sized bedroom completely lined with windows. Opening off the second floor balcony is the stair to the attic. Inside the attic door is an ancient fuse box. At the top of the stair are several rooms with walls and ceilings sheathed in tongue-and-groove woodwork. The attic over the main block of the house is completely finished in this manner, though the spaces over the rear wings are left unfinished. One room has a skylight, which appears to be original. Another is a walk-in cedar closet, built to store out-of-season clothes and draperies.

 

---

NOTES

¹ It has not been possible to determine the house’s architect. No pre-1954 building permits for 923 Granville Road survive in the files of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Building Standards Office. Extant permits date from 1954 (installation of a gas range), 1961 (remodeling of the kitchen and minor repairs to the rest of the house), 1970 (electrical upgrading), and 1975 (electrical upgrading).

² Clay Lancaster, “The American Bungalow, in Dell Upton end John Michael Vlach, eds., Common Places. Readings in American Vernacular Architecture (Athens, Georgia University of Georgia Press, 1986).

³ Thomas W. Hanchett, “Charlotte: Suburban Development in the Textile and Trade Center of the Carolinas,” in Catherine Bishir and Lawrence Earley, ads, Early Twentieth Century Suburbs in North Carolina (Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1985), p. 74.

⁴ S. Frank Jones, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 30, 1987.

⁵ The Draper and Marshall renovations were done in the 1940s and 1950s. However, Charlotteon S. Frank Jones, who married Gossett daughter Katherine in 1931, remembers no major renovations to 923 Granville Road during his long association with the family. It is possible that Laura Cannon Lambeth was responsible for the Colonial woodwork. She may have directed a redesign of the Bungalow’s interior while it was under construction in 1916. There is no question that she was a partisan of delicate Colonial architecture by 1927, for her Charles Barton Keen-designed residence at 435 Hermitage Road is strongly influenced by that style.

⁶ Building permits, and Phyllis Toll, telephone interview with Thomas W. Hanchett, March 27, 1987. Hanchett: Lambeth-Gossett House, April 2, 1987.

Survey and Research Report

Bishop John C. Kilgo House

 

 

2100 The Plaza

Charlotte, North Carolina

28205

 

 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission

2008

 

Click here to view the SHPO Letter

 

1. Name and location of the property.  The property known as the Bishop John C. Kilgo House is located 2100 The Plaza, in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

 

2. Name, address, and telephone number of the present owner of the properties.

The owners of the property are:

 

Donald R. and Kiley F. Rawlins

2100 The Plaza

Charlotte, North Carolina 28205

Telephone:  (704) 996-0188

 

3. Representative photographs of the property.  This report contains representative photographs of the property.

Photo Gallery

 

4. Maps depicting the location of the property.  This report contains maps which depict the location of the property.

 

 

5. Current deed book references to the properties. The most recent reference to Tax Parcel Number 095-03-505 is recorded in Mecklenburg County Deed Book 22913 at page 915.

 

6. A brief architectural description of the property.  This report contains brief architectural description of the property prepared by Richard L. Mattson and Frances P. Alexander.

 

7. A brief historical sketch of the property.  This report contains a brief historical sketch of the property prepared by Richard L. Mattson and Frances P. Alexander.

 

8. Documentation of why and in what ways the properties meet criteria for designation set forth in N.C.G.S. 160A-400.5.

 

1. Special significance in terms of history, architecture, and cultural importance.  The Commission judges that the property known as the Bishop John C. Kilgo House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.  The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations:  1)  the Kilgo House, erected in 1914, stands among the first and finest residences in the Chatham Estates suburb (now known as Plaza-Midwood) in Charlotte; 2) the house is associated with Bishop Kilgo, the original owner, a distinguished Methodist minister and bishop, and president of Trinity College, later Duke University; and 3) the designer of the house was Louis H. Asbury, one of Charlotte’s foremost architects in the early twentieth century

 

1. integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling, and association.  The Commission contends that the architectural description by Richard L. Mattson and Frances P. Alexander included in this report demonstrates that the Bishop John C. Kilgo House meets this criterion.

 

9. Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal. The Commission is aware that designation would allow the owner to apply for an automatic deferral of 50% of the Ad Valorem taxes on all or any portion of the properties which become designated historic landmarks.  The current appraised value of the improvements to Tax Parcel Number 095-03-505 is—–.  The current appraised value of the land associated with Tax Parcel 095-03-505 is—–.  The total appraised value of Tax Parcel 095-03-505 is ——-.  The property is zoned —–.

 

Date of Preparation of this Report.: 10 January 2008

 

Prepared by:  Richard L. Mattson, Ph.D. and  Frances P. Alexander, M.A.

 

Mattson, Alexander and Associates

2228 Winter Street

Charlotte, North Carolina  28205

Telephone:  (704) 376-0985

Telephone:  (704) 358-9841

Statement of Significance

 

Constructed on The Plaza in 1915, the Bishop John C. Kilgo House stands among the first and finest residences in the Chatham Estates suburb (now known as Plaza-Midwood) in Charlotte.  In its setting along the landscaped boulevard, and sophisticated architecture, the Bishop Kilgo House exemplifies the houses erected for this subdivision’s earliest, elite residents. The house remains well-preserved—a handsome blend of Colonial Revival and Craftsman-style elements.  Bishop Kilgo, the original owner, was a distinguished Methodist minister and president of Trinity College, later Duke University.  The Kilgo House is primarily associated with his years as a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.   The designer of the house was Louis H. Asbury, one of Charlotte’s foremost architects in the early twentieth century.

 

Physical Description

 

The Bishop John C. Kilgo House is situated in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  The house faces west towards The Plaza, a landscaped, residential boulevard that runs through the heart of the neighborhood.  In addition to the house, there is modern one-story garage in the backyard.  The corner lot has modern landscaping and a new iron fence on the south side.  A gable-front garage and side-gable servant’s quarters that originally stood behind the house are no longer extant.  The expansive VanLandingham Estate, consisting of the 1914, Craftsman-style VanLandingham residence, and its landscaped grounds, stands south of the Kilgo House, across Belvedere Avenue.

 

In its form and elements of style, the Kilgo House combines Colonial Revival and Craftsman themes.  The balanced, hip-roofed, main block and the columned and bracketed entry porch, which originally included a roof balustrade, are popular Colonial Revival features.  The interior also expresses a classical formality, with classical mantels and a reception area and rear stairhall flanked by the principal rooms.  However, the house also reveals the Craftsman style in its conscious, straightforward simplicity and horizontality, with a low hip roof and deep, open eaves with exposed rafters.  The Tuscan columns on the front porch share this space with sturdy brick piers.

 

The two-story, frame, weatherboarded dwelling rests on a brick foundation, and has a cubic main block with a low hip roof pierced by tall, brick chimney stacks.  Hip-roofed, attic dormers with exposed rafters mark the front and side elevations.  The principal dormer in the front elevation has a rectangular vent flanked by casement windows.  The smaller, side dormers have rectangular vents.  A two-story, hip-roofed wing on the south elevation contains the original sleeping porch (now used for an office/sitting room) on the upper level, and sunroom and engaged porch on the lower level.  The original, hip-roofed sections of the house remain substantially intact. Unless otherwise noted, there are symmetrically arranged, eight-over-one windows on the second story and one-over-one windows on the first.  A bank of six-over-one windows allows natural light and cool breezes into the sleeping porch.  All the windows have simple, molded surrounds.  The roofs have deep eaves with exposed rafters.  The later, 1950s rear, gable-roofed addition has six-over-one windows on the second story.  Its roof has deep eaves and exposed rafters echo those on the main body of the house.

 

The balanced, three-bay façade (west elevation) has a center-bay entry porch with an original concrete floor, brick steps, and a frieze with heavy brackets, supported by both Tuscan columns and corbelled brick piers.  Probably in the 1950s, the porch’s original roof deck and balustrade were replaced by the present hip roof.   The original second-floor doorway that opened onto the roof deck has been converted to a window, which is flanked by original casement windows.  In recent years, the concrete porch floor has also been extended to create a deck across the façade, and now joins with the engaged porch on the south side of the house.  The original, wood porch railing on the south side remains, and connects to a new, matching railing along the front decks flanking the entry porch.  The front entrance has a glazed, oak door enframed by leaded-glass, paneled sidelights and three-part transom, and fluted pilasters capped by a simple entablature.

 

On the south elevation, French doors in the parlor open onto an engaged, hip-roofed side porch with Tuscan columns.  This subsidiary hip roof wraps around the southeast corner of the house to shield the sunroom windows.  The north elevation has a modern wooden deck and doorway, which opens into the rear kitchen wing.

 

The rear of the house includes an original full-height, hip-roofed wing.  When constructed, this wing included a one-story kitchen ell with an engaged corner porch.  During the 1950s, a gable-roofed, second-story was added above the kitchen and the small porch enclosed.  The original hip-roofed rear porch remains on the south side of this wing, as does the rear stairway, which ascends to an engaged second-story landing.  The 1950s addition contains an exterior brick chimney on the gable end and a hip-roofed side porch with square, wooden posts and railing.  A modern deck with a matching railing is attached to the south side of the rear porch.

 

The well-preserved interior retains the original plan and much of the original finish.   There are hardwood floors, plaster walls and ceilings, and unpainted oak woodwork, including two-panel doors, throughout.  Expect for the parlor, the original mantels are intact.  They display restrained, classically-inspired, post-and-lintel designs, with pilasters and paneled or plain friezes.  The doors and windows have simple, molded surrounds.  Baseboards and crown molding mark the principal rooms and halls.  The front door opens into the broad, front reception hall, where large, paneled, pocket doors lead into the parlor (south) and the living room (north).  Heavy crown moldings distinguish both the hall and the parlor.  The parlor includes French doors leading onto the side (south) porch, and a replacement brick mantel.  The rear stairhall features an open-string stairway with simple, square balusters and newels, and a striking, curvilinear opening on the second floor.  The rear kitchen has been modernized in recent years, though the original paneled door to the butler’s pantry (now the laundry/pantry) remains.  The bathrooms on the both first and second floors have been recently modernized, though the paneled doors appear to be original.

 

Upstairs, the four bedrooms are arranged around the center stairhall.  The southeast bedroom has the dwelling’s only painted mantel, and includes French doors leading onto the sleeping porch.  The major change on the second floor occurred during the 1950s, when the northeast bedroom (now the master bedroom) was expanded above the kitchen wing.

 

Louis H. Asbury, Architect

The Bishop Kilgo House was designed by Louis Humbert Asbury (1877-1975), one of the state’s first professionally trained architects and one of the region’s foremost building designers of the early twentieth century.  Built in 1914, the house dates from the height of Asbury’s practice in Charlotte, and clearly illustrates his role as one of the city’s premier architects earning commissions from a wealthy clientele.   While Asbury designed a host of fine houses in the Colonial Revival style, the Kilgo House is the only know example that blends both Colonial and Craftsman elements.  As Charlotte boomed as textile manufacturing center, Asbury was one of a coterie of architects that gained prominence designing buildings that were hallmarks of the prosperity.  Among the other architects widely recognized for their important work in and around Charlotte are:  Charles Christian Hook, William Peeps, Oliver Wheeler, James McMichael, and Martin Boyer (Asbury Papers 1906-1975; Bishir and Southern 2003:  504; Hanchett 1998:  159-160, 192-193, 305, 317; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Landmarks Commission, Files).

 

A Charlotte native, Louis H. Asbury graduated Trinity College (later Duke University) in Durham, North Carolina, in 1900.  He subsequently enrolled in a specialized, two-year architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1903.  He opened his firm in Charlotte in 1908, and became the first North Carolina member of the American Institute of Architects (Asbury Papers 1906-1975; Morrill 1978).

 

During the ensuing decades, Asbury earned hundreds of commissions in Charlotte and the surrounding counties.  His body of work encompassed a full range of buildings types—houses, commercial structures, hotels, banks, churches, and civic institutions—executed primarily in popular Colonial Revival and Gothic Revival themes.  During the early twentieth century, his principal clients were well-to-do homebuyers in the finest neighborhoods of Charlotte.  But Asbury also drew up plans for the city’s big churches and prominent retail stores and banks, as well as for local and state government.   His achievements in Charlotte included stately Georgian Revival and Colonial Revival dwellings in prestigious Myers Park., such as the 1913 Charles P. Moody House (Local Landmark 1981), a red-brick Georgian on Providence Road.  In downtown Charlotte, he designed the 1926 Mecklenburg County Courthouse (Local Landmark 1983; National Register 2001), which is a grand, stone, Beaux Arts edifice with a towering Corinthian portico (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Files; Bishir and Southern 2003:  504, 511, 523; Asbury Papers 1906-1975).

 

Asbury’s commercial work in the center city included the 1929, Neoclassical, Mayfair Manor (renamed Dunhill Hotel) (Local Landmark 1989); and the 1930 Montaldo’s, a prestigious women’s clothing store that features a French Renaissance façade.  In 1926, Asbury teamed with Lockwood, Greene Engineers of Boston to design the First National Bank (Local Landmark pending), a twenty-story, classically detailed skyscraper on South Tryon Street.  However, his personal preference was the Gothic Revival, and Asbury’s local churches, including the 1915 Hawthorne Lane Methodist (Local Landmark 1983); the 1918 Old Mount Carmel Baptist (Local Landmark 1983); the 1920 Advent Christian Church (Local Landmark 1987); and the 1928 Myers Park Methodist, were all fashioned in the Gothic mode (Bishir and Southern 2003:  507-508, 509, 514-515; Asbury Papers 1906-1975).

 

Outside Charlotte, Asbury’s prominent projects included the 1907, Colonial Revival, Stonewall Jackson Training School complex (National Register 1984) near Concord, North Carolina; several of Concord’s finest Colonial Revival houses, including the 1912 J. Archibald Cannon House; the 1923, Gothic Revival, Lutheran Chapel Church in Gastonia; and the 1928 Bethel Bear Creek Church, an unusually large, Gothic Revival edifice in rural Stanly County (Bishir 1990:  Bishir and Southern 2003:  285, 493, 496-497; Asbury Papers).

 

Following several speculative real estate investments that failed during the Depression, Asbury declared bankruptcy in 1935.  He closed his Charlotte practice and briefly found employment as an architect for the Federal Housing Authority in Asheville and Greensboro, North Carolina.  In 1937, Asbury reopened his office, which by 1939, included his architect son, Louis Asbury Jr.  Asbury retired in 1956, after nearly a half century of architectural work in North Carolina, designing many of Charlotte’s landmark buildings of the early twentieth century (Asbury Papers; Bishir and Southern 2003:  504; Morrill 1978).

 

 

Historical Background

 

This spacious, two-story residence on The Plaza was completed in 1915 for Bishop John Carlisle Kilgo (1861-1922).  It was designed by the noteworthy Charlotte architect Louis H. Asbury.  The house was one of the first dwellings constructed in the newly platted Chatham Estates suburb near the Charlotte Country Club northeast of downtown Charlotte.  Consisting of approximately twenty blocks, this small suburb later became part of the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood, created in 1973 from ten separate subdivisions in this area. Chatham Estates was established by Paul Chatham, an Elkin, North Carolina, textile manufacturer who moved to Charlotte in 1907.  In 1910, Chatham joined forces with members of the newly formed country club to develop Chatham Estates as an upscale suburb.  The developers commissioned Charlotte-based landscape designer, Leigh Colyer, to lay out Chatham Estates incorporating a blend of straight and curvilinear avenues oriented to a grand, landscaped boulevard—The Plaza (Hanchett 1984:  “Plaza-Midwood”; Hanchett 1998:  164-165).

 

Benefiting from the adjacent country club and a well-drained, elevated site, the development began auspiciously, attracting a small group of well-off homebuyers.  Each built a large residence on a broad parcel facing The Plaza.  Bishop Kilgo purchased his lot across Belvedere Avenue from the VanLandingham Estate, which was finished 1914.  Ralph VanLandingham was a successful cotton broker, and his wife, Suzie, a civic leader.  The grand, Craftsman-style VanLandingham residence was designed by important local architects, Charles Christian Hook and Willard G. Rogers.  Leigh Colyer designed the estate’s lush gardens.  Nearby, in 1914, Union National Bank president H. M. Victor built a sizable dwelling (now gone) in the Colonial Revival style.  In 1915, cotton and grain merchant R. M. Miller, Jr., relocated his 1891 Queen Anne residence from the center city to 1600 The Plaza, where it was purchased by stockbroker John L. Scott.  A year later, businessman Joseph D. Woodside constructed a large, Colonial Revival house at 1801 The Plaza (Hanchett 1984:  “Plaza-Midwood”; Morrill and Boyte 1977, updated 1997; Bishir and Southern 2003:  522-523).

 

However, the appeal of Chatham Estates to elites was short-lived, spoiled mainly by its inconvenient location.  Although linked to downtown Charlotte by Central Avenue, in the era of streetcar travel, Chatham Estates was a time-consuming trolley ride from the center city, made even longer by the interference of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad line.  This busy rail line ran at grade across Central Avenue, causing frequent delays.  Moreover, the battery-powered trolley service to Chatham Estates was owned and operated separately from the main, electric trolley line run by Southern Public Utilities Company, requiring passengers to transfer between the two lines.  This created even more disruptions to the downtown commute.  Thus the city’s early northeast suburbs did not fully take shape until the era of the automobile in the 1920s, when well-to-do Charlotteans erected large Colonial Revival houses beside the country club, and middle-class homeowners favored bungalows and other Craftsman-style houses on smaller, subdivided lots along The Plaza and adjacent streets in Chatham Estates (Hanchett 1984:  “Plaza-Midwood”).

 

Bishop John C. Kilgo

Bishop John Carlisle Kilgo (1861-1922) was clearly one of the elites of Chatham Estates.  A noted Methodist Episcopal minister and educator, he began his professional career in South Carolina, his native state.  The son of a Methodist preacher, Kilgo was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and attended nearby Gaffney Seminary and Wofford College, in Spartanburg.  After a period as a Methodist minister in the South Carolina Conference, he taught philosophy and served as an administrator at Wofford College until 1894.  It during this time at Wofford that Kilgo developed his progressive views on academic freedom and coeducation that shape would the next phase of his professional life (Powell 1988:  359-361; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Files).

 

Between 1894 and 1910, Kilgo served with distinction as president of Trinity College (later Duke University) in Durham, North Carolina.   During his tenure, Kilgo helped transform Trinity from a small, modestly funded college into one of the best known and most richly endowed institutions in the South.  The size of the student body doubled, the number of faculty tripled, and new buildings distinguished the growing campus.   He initiated the construction of the first women’s dormitory at Trinity, which led to the creation of a coordinate college for women, and actively encouraged freedom of speech among faculty and guests.  Upon President Kilgo’s invitation, African American leader Booker T. Washington gave his first speech at a white college in the South (Powell 1988:  360).

 

In 1910, Kilgo was appointed a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and in 1915, he and his wife, Fannie Turner, and their five children departed Durham for their new home in Charlotte.  Bishop Kilgo selected Charlotte because it offered a more convenient location within the Methodist conference.  Moreover, Kilgo served on the board of the Southern Railway, which required regular trips to New York City, the company’s headquarters.  Charlotte’s location on the Southern Railway main line facilitated such journeys.  As a Methodist bishop, Kilgo gained a reputation for gifted oratorical skills, and was recognized as one of the great preachers of his day.  Kilgo was a member of the church’s Education Commission, and was instrumental in the founding of Atlanta’s Emory College, for which he served as a trustee and lecturer.  Kilgo United Methodist Church, located east of the Kilgo House on Belvedere Avenue in Plaza-Midwood, was founded in 1943 and named in his honor (Powell 1988:  360; Charlotte Observer 11 August 1922).

 

Bishop Kilgo died at age sixty-one on August 11, 1922.  His widow, Fannie, remained in the house until her death on February 22, 1948.  Heirs sold the house in 1951 to Frank and Genevieve Causley.  The residence exchanged hands numerous times between the 1950s and 2007, serving as a boarding house for several decades into the 1980s, and as cooperative housing in the late 1990s.  In 2007, Donald R. and Kiley F. Rawlins purchased the house and are the current residents (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Files).

 

 

Architectural Context

 

Blending Colonial Revival and Craftsman features, the Bishop Kilgo House stands among the finest and earliest residences constructed in the original Chatham Estates subdivision on the east side of Charlotte.  Between 1914 and 1916, this suburb attracted a coterie of wealthy residents who owned large houses on The Plaza, the neighborhood’s grand boulevard.  Four of these houses remain, The VanLandingham House (National Register 1983), the Joseph D. Woodside House, Victoria (National Register 1973), and the Kilgo House.  Victoria is the current name of the turreted, Queen Anne house at 1600 The Plaza.  It was constructed in 1891 on North Tryon Street in downtown Charlotte.   The original owner, merchant R. M. Miller, Jr., relocated the house to Chatham Estates in 1915, where it was purchased by John L. Scott, a stockbroker.  Now surrounded by 1920s bungalows, reflecting the full-scale development of The Plaza after World War I, Victoria survives as one of the city’s fullest expressions of the Queen Anne style (Hanchett 1984:  “Plaza-Midwood”; Bishir and Southern 2003:  523).

 

The other three remaining houses were constructed on site, and represent national architectural trends of the 1910s.  The 1914 VanLandingham House is exemplary of the Craftsman style, the 1916 Woodside House illustrates the Colonial Revival, while the 1914 Bishop Kilgo residence displays both Colonial Revival and Craftsman elements.  By the 1910s, in burgeoning streetcar suburbs across the country, upper- and middle-class residents often favored Colonial Revival and Craftsman designs.  In Charlotte, homeowners commissioned architects and builders to erect houses reflecting these styles in the growing, fashionable neighborhoods that fringed the center city.  By the 1910s, Dilworth, Myers Park, Elizabeth, and Chatham Estates contained fine examples that remain substantially intact.  In the early twentieth century, the Colonial Revival’s comfortable patriotic associations and familiar classical themes appealed to homebuyers.  The rise of the Colonial also coincided with the housing reform movement of the Progressive Era.  Reformers, while promoting domestic welfare, encouraged simpler, more efficient dwellings that stood in contrast to preceding, ornate, picturesque styles.  The early Colonial Revival was inspired by a variety of architectural influences associated with the American colonial period, and later eras, including Federal elements.  The style was freely interpreted, and variations appeared in widely circulating magazines and books.  An especially popular version constructed in Charlotte and nationwide was a neatly composed, white-frame model with a straightforward, boxy form capped by a hip roof with dormers.  The façade was symmetrical and often featured a broad front porch with columns and pedimented entry bay.  Classical sidelights and transoms enframed the center entrance.  Ornamentation on this basic model varied according to the owner’s taste and budget.  By World War I, more historically correct, red-brick or frame, Georgian and Federal models gained widespread popularity.  In Charlotte, blocks of grand Georgian Revival houses distinguished the city’s finest neighborhoods between the 1920s and early 1950s, notably Myers Park and Eastover (Bishir 1990:  488-497, 516-518; Bishir and Southern 2003:  74, 518-522).

 

The Craftsman style emerged nationally in the early twentieth century, and culminated in the proliferation of bungalows in the late 1910s and especially the 1920s.  As with the Colonial Revival, Craftsman houses were often essentially simple, foursquare shapes, although jutting wings, bays, and gables could evoke an informality that was also emblematic of the style.  The Craftsman was distinguished by its use of natural-like materials (e.g., wood shingles, fieldstone, rough-faced brick), and the free and frank expression of structure.  It featured such elements as low-slung roofs with deep eaves that emphasized horizontality and a close relationship with the landscape, exposed rafters or decorative knee braces, large porches with sturdy, square or tapers posts, and abundant fenestration.  Interiors were marked by space-saving, open plans and built-in cabinetry (Bishir 1990:  498- 507; Bishir and Southern 2003:  73-74).

 

While Charlotte boasts houses that exemplify these styles, architects and builders frequently combined elements of both, as well as features from the other popular revival modes.  The availability of mass-produced millwork and the free exchange of design ideas in builders’ guides and magazines encouraged such mixing of motifs.  Thus, for example, in the Elizabeth suburb just south of Chatham Estates, upscale Clement Avenue boasts rambling frame residences that combine Craftsman-inspired wall shingles, granite block stonework, and wide eaves with exposed braces and rafters, with Colonial Revival porch posts and roof balustrades (Bishir and Southern 2003:  521-522).

 

Located just south of the Bishop Kilgo House, the grand, two-story, frame, VanLandingham House at 2010 The Plaza is an outstanding example of the Craftsman style.  Wealthy cotton broker, Ralph VanLandingham, commissioned noted local architects Charles Christian Hook and Willard G. Rogers to design the house. It remains intact, and epitomizes Craftsman architecture in its informal, wood-shingled exterior, rough stonework, and low, horizontal hip roof with wide eaves and exposed rafters.  Situated west across The Plaza, the hip-roofed Joseph D. Woodside House (1600 The Plaza) neatly represents the restrained, two-story, white-frame, cubic, Colonial Revival houses of the period.  The wraparound porch terminates in a porte-cochere on the south side.

 

The well-preserved Bishop Kilgo House exhibits key elements of both styles.  The balanced façade, center entry porch with brackets and Tuscan columns, and the formal interior plan with classical mantels are all Colonial Revival traits.  However, the dwelling’s deep eaves with exposed rafters, heavy brick porch piers, and banks of windows along the projecting sunroom and sleeping porch bays are Craftsman-style features.  The Kilgo House thus clearly illustrates the blending of such popular design elements, as accomplished by Louis H. Asbury, one Charlotte’s important architects of the early twentieth century.

References

 

Asbury, Louis H., Papers.  1906-1975. University of North Carolina, Charlotte (UNCC)

Manuscript Collection 145.  UNCC, Murray Atkins Library, Charlotte, N.C.

 

Bishir, Catherine W.  North Carolina Architecture.  Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University of North

Carolina Press, 1990.

 

—–, and Michael T. Southern.  A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina.

Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission. Files.  Charlotte, N.C.

 

Charlotte Observer.  11 August 1922.

 

Hanchett, Thomas W.  “Charlotte and Its Neighborhoods:  The Growth of a New South City,

1850-1930.”  Charlotte, N.C., 1984.  (Typewritten.)

 

——.  “Charlotte:  Suburban Development in the Textile and Trade Center of the Carolinas.”  In

Early    Twentieth-Century Suburbs in North Carolina.  eds., Catherine W. Bishir and Lawrence S. Early.   Raleigh, N.C.:  Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural    Resources, 1985, 68-76.

 

—–.  Sorting Out the New South City:  Charlotte and Its Neighborhood.       Chapel Hill, N.C.:

University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

 

Mecklenburg County. Mecklenburg County Courthouse, Register of Deeds.

 

Miller’s Official Charlotte, North Carolina City Directory.  Asheville, N.C.:  E. H. Miller, 1929.

 

Morrill, Dan L., and Jack O. Boyte. “The VanLandingham Estate.  Survey and

Research Report.”   1977, updated 1997.  On file at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Charlotte, N.C.,

 

Morrill, Dan L.  Interview with Louis H. Asbury, Jr.  24 August 1978.  Referenced in “Advent

Christian Church (Charlotte).  Survey and Research Report.” 1987.  On file at the            Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Charlotte, N.C.,

 

Powell, William S.  ed.  Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.  Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University

of North Carolina Press, 1988.

 

Sanborn Map Company.  Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  1929, 1951.

JONES-GARIBALDI HOUSE

This report was written on February 5, 1986

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Jones-Garibaldi House is located at 228 East Park Avenue, Charlotte, North Carolina.

2. Name, address, and telephone number of the present owner of the property: The owner of the property is:

D. Charles and Associates, Inc.
1712 Cleveland Ave.
Charlotte, NC 20203

Telephone: (704) 332-4658

3. Representative photographs of the property: This report contains representative photographs of the property.

4. A map depicting the location of the property: This report contains a map which depicts the location of the property.

5. Current Deed Rook Reference to the property: The records of the Mecklenburg County Tax Office do not yet contain a current deed reference to the property. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is: 123-073-09.

6. A brief historical sketch of the property: This report contains a brief historical sketch of the property prepared by Dr. William H. Huffman.

7. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains a brief architectural description of the property prepared by Frances M. Gay.

8. Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets the criteria for designation set forth in N.C.G.S. 160A-399.4:

 

a. Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Jones-Garibaldi House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations
1) the Jones-Garibaldi House (1894) is one of’ the oldest homes on East Park Avenue, the most prestigious residential district in the oldest portion of Dilworth, Charlotte’s first streetcar suburb,
2) C. Furber Jones (1866-1903), the initial owner, was a prominent business executive in New South Charlotte,
3) Joseph Garibaldi (1864-1939), the second owner, was a leading merchant and civic leader in New South Charlotte,
4) the house is one of the finer local examples of the Neo-Classical Revival style and was most probably designed by Charles Christian Hook, an architect of local and regional importance, and
5) the house is on a corner lot at the very edge of the residential section of Dilworth and, therefore, occupies a place of substantial importance in terms of the townscape of the neighborhood.

b. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling, and/or association: The Commission contends that the architectural description included in this report demonstrates that the property known as the Jones-Garibaldi House meets this criterion.

9. Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal: The Commission is aware that designation would allow the owner to apply for an automatic deferral of 50% of the Ad Valorem taxes on all or any portion of the property which becomes “historic property.” The current appraised value of the house is $37,240. The current appraised value of the land is $27,290. The total appraised value of the property is $64,580. The Property is zoned 06.

Date of Preparation of this Report: February 5, 1986

Prepared by: Dr. Dan L. Morrill
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission
1225 S. Caldwell St.
Charlotte, NC, 28203

Telephone: (704) 376-9115

 

 

Historical Overview

Dr. William H. Huffman

The setting and style of the Garibaldi house, located at 221 E. Park Avenue in the Dilworth section of Charlotte, reflect the early affluence of a New South city in the beginning years of a four-decade commercial boom that lasted from the late 1800’s to the end of the 1920’s. Built by insurance entrepreneur C. Furber Jones (1866-1903) in 1894, it was purchased by jeweler and local political leader Joseph Garibaldi ( 1864 -1939 ) ten years later. At the time of its contraction, it was one of the earliest homes in the city’s first streetcar suburb. Although the architect is presently unknown, the house was probably designed by Charlotte architect C. C. Hook, whose work includes some of the city’s most important architectural heritage.

Both Jones and Garibaldi were in many ways typical representatives (the one providing a service, the other a merchant) of the success that resulted from the combination of their own enterprising spirit and their good fortune at living in a boom town. Charlotte became the hub, through its good rail network, of the rapidly expanding New South industrialization of the Piedmont Carolinas, which lasted, almost without interruption, from the late 1880’s to the end of the 1920’s. Industrialization was based primarily on the construction of cotton mills and cotton oil processing plants throughout the Piedmont region, which stretches from Virginia into Georgia, and Charlotte served the region as the banking, trading, service and distribution center. Thus it grew, during this period, from one of a number of small towns its size in the state to be the largest city in the Carolinas by 1930 (1880 population: 7,094; by 1930: 82,675, a 1065% increase).¹

C. Furber Jones, the original owner of the house, was a South Carolina native who was educated at the old Charlotte Military Institute and graduated from the Citadel in Charleston, SC, following which he took business training at the Poughkeepsie Business College in New York. In 1894, he organized the Piedmont Fire insurance Company in Charlotte, and it was under his management that the Piedmont Fire Insurance Building was erected near the center of town in 1898. It was the city’s first office building, and was a clear indication of the prosperity of a rapidly growing city.² The same year he organized the Piedmont company, 1894, Jones contracted with E. D. Latta’s 4 C’s company to build a new house for his family in Dilworth.³ Three years before, in 1891, he had been married to Ida Clarkson, who was a sister of Heriot Clarkson, a prominent Charlotte attorney who became a state supreme court justice and a major landowner and developer in the Charlotte area.⁴

To design many of the early houses in Dilworth, the 4 C’s hired a skilled young architect, Charles Christian Hook (1869-1938).⁵ The son of German immigrants, Hook was born in Wheeling, W. VA, and educated at Washington University in St. Louis. He came to Charlotte in 1890, where he started out as a teacher of mechanical drawing in the old South school in the city. In 1893, he began his forty-five-year architectural career by designing houses in Dilworth for the 4 C’s, and eventually produced plans for some of the most important architectural landmarks in the city and the state of North Carolina. At various times Hook was in partnership with others in the city: Frank Sawyer,1902- 1907; Willard Rogers,1912- 1916; and with his son, W. W. Hook,1924-1938. Some of his important designs in Charlotte are the old Charlotte City Hall , the Charlotte Women’s Club, the J. B. Duke mansion, the Belk Department Store facade of 1927, and the William Henry Belk mansion. Outside the city, they include the west wing of the state capital in Raleigh, the Richmond County courthouse, Phillips Hall in Chapel Hill, the Science Hall at Davidson College, and the State Hospital in Morganton, NC.⁶ Although there is no direct evidence that C. C. Hook designed the Jones-Garibaldi house, the indirect evidence is persuasive: we know from contemporary newspaper stories that he had a number of commissions to do houses in Dilworth in 1894 and was a very popular architect; the appearance of the house is that of an early Hook design; there is no evidence that has come to light to contradict this conclusion.⁷

It appears that the Joneses probably moved into the house in December, 1894, where they raised their three children, Christopher, Clarkson and Caroline. Furber Jones’ mother also resided with the family. Unfortunately, tragedy struck in 1903, when Furber Jones died suddenly of pneumonia after a two-week illness. Among the prominent pallbearers were E. D. Latta and Walter Brem, another insurance man who built a house in Dilworth (1902, also designed by Hook).⁸ In May, 1904, jeweler Joseph Garibaldi bought the house from Mrs. Jones, and it remained in the Garibaldi family until 1971.⁹

Joseph (Joe) Garibaldi’s career was the classic fulfillment of the American dream. The son of Italian immigrants who left in the aftermath of the 1848 European revolutions, he was born in Mecklenburg County during the Civil War, in which his father served as a Confederate soldier. His grandfather was one of the early settlers of Belmont, NC to the west of Charlotte, which was once known as Garibaldi Station, and he was also a descendant of Giuseppi Garibaldi, the Italian patriot. After attending local schools, including that of Captain Barrier, at the age of twelve he was made an apprentice in the service of French jeweler P. Lasne, whose store was located on West Trade Street opposite the First Presbyterian Church. When he completed his apprenticeship four years later, he returned to school to finish his education, following which he worked for several different jewelry firms in Rock Hill, SC and Charlotte. After eight years of working for Farrier Jewelers in the location now occupied by the Garibaldi and Bruns Building just off the Square on Tryon Street, Joe Garibaldi and a co-worker, William L. Bruns ( 1872-1937) decided to open their own jewelry Store in 1896. During the day, both young men sold merchandise; but after the shop closed for the day, Garibaldi repaired watches and Bruns did all the engraving and jewelry repair so they could have the pieces ready for the next day.¹⁰

Their diligence and good timing in opening a business in the early years of a time of sustained, booming growth insured success. By 1903, the firm took in a friend, Harry Dixon ( 1872-1914), and thus it became Garibaldi, Bruns and Dixon until the latter’s untimely death in 1914, when it reverted to the previous name of Garibaldi and Bruns.¹¹ By 1904, Joe Garibaldi was sufficiently well established to marry and start a family. In May of that year, he bought the Jones house, and the following July he married Edna Dunklin of Charlotte.¹² Over the succeeding years, the jewelry firm did well, the Garibaldis raised four children, and Joe Garibaldi became a respected civic and political figure.

In 1907, as a leader of a progressive coalition of younger businessmen who wanted to see the city’s new growth and prosperity reflected in municipal services (their slogan was, “We want paved streets”), he was elected to the Board of Aldermen. Two years later, he was elected to the city’s newly formed Executive Board, and served in that post as Commissioner of Health; subsequently he also served as the city’s mayor pro term. After retiring from the jewelry business in 1934, twice he was elected to the state legislature, in 1934 and 1936. In addition to his political posts, Joe Garibaldi was on the board of directors of the Charlotte National Bank, St. Peter’s Hospital, and the Salvation Army, and belonged to several other civic and fraternal organizations. ¹³ His legacy was summarized in a local editorial:

 

His name has long and honorably been associated with the building of Charlotte. In business he achieved his success by the same marks of enthusiasm which dominated every act and attitude of his life. In both church and state, he was a factor of influence, widely esteemed, charitable of heart, magnetic of personality and wrong in the basic integrities. ¹⁴

The affluence which came as a result of the New South industrialization was soon reflected in changes in both the size and character of Charlotte. In 1890, entrepreneur Edward Dilworth Latta (1851-1925), a Princeton-educated South Carolina native, formed a land development company, the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (known locally as the 4 C’s), and purchased a 422-acre tract adjacent to the southeast edge of town. In order to entice potential homebuyers out to the city’s first suburb, named Dilworth, the 4 C’s: installed a new electric trolley system which ran from Independence Square, in the center of town, into and around the new development; created an attractive park (Latta Park) at the heart of the suburb, which included a pond for boating, an outdoor pavilion which hosted traveling shows, and strolling pathways; and included a broad range of houses, with the fine houses located on the main boulevards, and more modest middle-class dwellings located on the side streets. ¹⁵

Thus the Jones-Garibaldi house achieves importance because: it is representative of the city’s early suburban growth which was made possible by Charlotte’s favorable position in the Piedmont’s New South industrialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; its architectural style characteristically reflects the time, the place, and the probable early work of a noted architect, Charles Christen Hook; it has a strong associative history with two figures who embody well the spirit and activity of a town experiencing rapid economic and demographic expansion.

 

---

NOTES

¹ Thomas W. Hanchett, “Charlotte Neighborhood Survey,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1983-81; William H. Huffman, “Charlotte, North Carolina: From Cotton to Commerce, 1850-1930,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1982; LeGette Blythe and Charles R. Brockman, Hornets’ Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte: Public Library of Charlotte, 1961), p. 449.

² The Charlotte Observer, December 16, 1903, p. 1; Ibid., February 28, 1950. p. 3D.

^3.Mecklenburg County Deed Book 105, p.142,1 December 1894.

⁴ The Charlotte Observer. December 16, 1903, p.1.

⁵ Morrill, cited above.

⁶ The Charlotte Observer. September 18, 1938, p.1; information on file with author.

⁷ The Charlotte Observer. September 8, 1894, p.4; ibid., September 15, 1894, p.4.

⁸ Mecklenburg County Deed Book 105, p.142, 1 December 1894; The Charlotte Observer. December 16, 1903,p 1.

⁹ Mecklenburg County Deed Book 188, p. 490, 19 May 1904; ibid., 3326, p. 381, 20 August 1971.

¹⁰ The Charlotte Observer. December 29, 1939, p. 1; ibid., February 13,1916, n. p.; letter from Garibaldi and Bruns, dated 24 July 1964, in vertical file at public library.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Ibid.; Mecklenburg County Deed Book 188, p.490, 19 May 1904.

¹³ See note 10.

¹⁴The Charlotte Observer. December 20, 1939, p.6A.

¹⁵ Dan L. Morrill, “Edward Dilworth Latta and the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (1890-1925): Builders of a New South City”, The North Carolina Historical Review, 62 (July, 1985), 293-316.

 

---

Selected Bibliography

Blythe, LeGette, and Charles R. Brockman, Hornets’ Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte: Public Library of Charlotte, 1961)

The Charlotte Observer

Hanchett, Thomas W., “Charlotte Neighborhood Survey,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1983-84.

Huffman, William H., “Charlotte, North Carolina: from Cotton to Commerce, 1850-1930,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1982.

Morrill, Dan L., “Edward Dilworth Latta and the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (1890-1925): Builders of a New South City,” The North Carolina Historical Review. 62 (July, 1985), 293-316.

 

Architectural Description

Dr. Dan L. Morrill

The Jones-Garibaldi House, erected in 1894 and located on a corner lot at 228 East Park Avenue, is one of the oldest extant houses in Dilworth, the streetcar suburb that Edward Dilworth Latta’s Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company, locally known as the Four C’s, opened on May 20, 1891. The overall massing and architectural form of the house, especially its transition toward Colonial Revivalism, suggest that it was designed by Charles Christian Hook (1869-1938), the first architect who resided in Charlotte throughout his career. Hook, who definitely fashioned two other Colonial Revival mansions on East Park Avenue in Dilworth — the Gautier-Gilchrist House (1897) and the Villalonga-Alexander House (1901) — had a seminal impact upon the history of architecture in Charlotte. Attesting to this fact is an article which appeared in the Charlotte Daily Observer in September, 1894. Commenting upon Hook’s intentions regarding design, the newspaper stated that he planned to erect a: “genuine, ‘ye olden time’ house…after the style of the typical Southern home, with four large columns, two full stories high, surmounted by a classical pediment. Mr. Hook… will make the plans after the true classical style of architecture, which at one time predominated in the South and is being revived. The most striking feature of the house will be its simplicity of design and convenience of arrangement. The so-called ‘filigree’ ornamentation will not be a consideration, and only the true design will be carried out and thus give Charlotte another new style….”

Although the structure which this newspaper article describes (the J. Frank Wilkes House on East Morehead Street) no longer exists, Hook’s design for that edifice inaugurated a gradual abandonment in Charlotte of the elaborate ornamentation of such Victorian styles as Queen Anne, which, interestingly, Hook continued to use on occasion. The Mallonee-Jones House (1895) at 400 East Kingston Avenue and the Robert J. Walker House (1901) at 329 East Park Avenue, for example, are Queen Anne style residences in Dilworth that Hook designed. But the Jones-Garibaldi House exhibits the Colonial Revival features which were to become the dominant motifs employed by Hook during his distinguished career as an architect.

The most distinctive quality of the Jones-Garibaldi House, and the one which definitively separates it from Victorian styles, is its symmetrical massing. The house is a wooden clapboard, two and one-half story, slate hip-roofed, three-bay wide, two-bay deep main block with a west side two-story splayed bay-window, a projection on the east side resembling a porte-cochere, and a two-story ell on the left rear. Especially important in emphasizing the overall harmony or balance of the exterior of the house is an imposing wraparound porch, which, happily, remains intact. Twenty-three wooden columns are grouped in twos and threes. Most approximating the Roman Doric Order, a design noted for its simplicity, the columns support an entablature which exhibits such traditional classical elements as triglyphs, with vernacular diamond-shaped decorations in the metopes at the corners of the porch. The wraparound porch has a balustrade with attenuated spindles and heavy, unadorned newels. Further underscoring the Colonial Revivalism of the Jones-Garibaldi House are pilasters at the corners of the main block, modillions along the front and side cornices, and a centered shed dormer on the front, also with modillions.

The centered front entrance is reached by cement steps, probably not original, which rise to the wraparound porch. Again; the entrance, which is slightly out of line with the second story center window, is Colonial Revival in design. Pilasters, sidelights, and two entrance lamps of recent origin, flank a frame door with a single beveled-edged light. A transom light and dentiled cornice are overhead. Outside steps to the basement are reached through trap doors which are just beyond the left rear of the wraparound porch. The rear porch and sunroom of the house have been enclosed, and the rear entrance to the porch has been eliminated. A handicapped access ramp on the west side of the house leads to a side entrance.

The interior of the house is also Colonial Revival in style, making it much less ornate than one would find in a Victorian dwelling. A reception foyer leads into a large living room, from which a stairway with quarter-landings rises to the second floor. The principal first floor rooms, which radiate off a center hallway, have substantial base, crown and chair rail moldings; and the two large rooms to the right of the entrance foyer have fireplaces, mantels, and pocket doors, all of which exhibit the essential restraint which is characteristic of Colonial Revivalism. An especially striking interior feature is a massive yellow brick mantel with a segmental-arched fireplace in the men’s parlor or den. The original flooring material also survives, but the ceilings have been covered with a stucco-like substance. Unfortunately, a butler’s pantry and kitchen were sacrificed during a recent renovation of the house. The second floor plan is similar to that of the first floor. Again, rooms radiate from a center hallway. A stairway at the end of the hallway leads to the first floor. Colonial Revival features, including three mantels, remain on the second floor.

No outbuildings survive. There is a large ginkgo tree in the sideyard on the right. An original or early sidewalk and steps lead from the eastern side of the house to the rear of the dwelling. The front sidewalk is of more recent origin.