Click here to view Charlotte Observer Article on the Mecklenburg Mill

This report was written on July 3, 1986

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Old Mecklenburg Mill is located on N. Davidson St., just opposite its intersection with 37th St., in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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

Robert Stark and Wife, Ava E. Stark
c/o Ava Industries Inc.
401 E. 36th St.
Charlotte, NC 28205

Telephone: (704) 376-2680

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 Book Reference to the property: The most recent deed to this property is recorded in Mecklenburg County Deed Book 4327, page 816. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is: 091-101-04.

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 Mr. Thomas W. Hanchett.

8. Documentation of why and in what ways the property or 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 Old Mecklenburg Mill does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) built in 1903-05, the Old Mecklenburg Mill is one of Charlotte’s best-preserved early textile mills; 2) the Old Mecklenburg Mill is an important historic landmark in North Charlotte, one of Charlotte’s most significant textile mill districts at the turn of the century; and 3) the Old Mecklenburg Mill offers dramatic evidence of the era when textile manufacturing was a leading component of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s economy.

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 Old Mecklenburg Mill 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 improvements on the entire tract, which includes the nearby Old Johnston Mill, is $168,590. The current appraised value of the 7.581 acres of land is $128,790. The total appraised value of the property is $297,380. The property is zoned I2.

Date of Preparation of this Report: July 3, 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  

Thomas W. Hanchett and Dr. William H. Huffman

The Mecklenburg Mill is a two-story brick textile factory located in the North Charlotte mill district on the main line of the Southern Railway. The plant was built 1903-1905, in the midst of Mecklenburg County’s heyday as the number two textile manufacturing county in North Carolina. In 1986 the building is little changed from its 1910s appearance, and is of historic importance as one of Charlotte’s best-preserved early textile mills.

Charlotte: Textile Boom Town
Though all the spinning mills that once hummed around the city are now silent, textile manufacturing represents a major historical force in the growth of Charlotte. Charlotte was first a trading center for the cotton farmers of the southern North Carolina Piedmont region, starting in the 1850s when the earliest railroads reached the city. Following the Civil War, leaders across the South began a drive for a “New South” based on manufacturing rather than farming. “Bring the Mills to the Cotton!” became the battle cry. In 1881 Charlotte’s first mill opened to spin cotton into thread.¹ After that initial factory, Mecklenburg’s industrial growth was nothing short of meteoric. By 1900 Mecklenburg County boasted sixteen mills with a combined total of 94,392 spindles and 1,456 looms, making it North Carolina’s second most important cotton-spinning county, following neighboring Gaston County.²

Mecklenburg remained among the state’s top three textile counties at least into the mid 1920s.³ By that time the textile belt of the Piedmont South — stretching from Virginia through the Carolinas into Georgia — was pulling ahead of New England to become the world’s main cotton-manufacturing region. North Carolina was ranked as the number one cotton-spinning state in America.⁴ Charlotte emerged as a center not only of manufacturing but also for bankers, wholesalers, machinery dealers and others serving the vast textile region. In 1880, before the first mill opened, Charlotte was a modest town of 7,094 people, the fifth-largest urban place in the Carolinas.⁵ By the end of the 1920s it had grown to 82,675 and taken the lead as the largest city in North and South Carolina.⁶

The Mecklenburg Mill: Early Years
The Mecklenburg Mill opened at the height of this textile boom, part of the new North Charlotte mill district located along North Davidson street on the Southern Railway just outside the city. The district was begun in 1903 around the huge Highland Park #3 mill owned by William E. Holt, Jr. of Alamance County, North Carolina, and Charles Worth Johnston of Charlotte.⁷ Highland Park #3 was North Carolina’s largest mill when it opened in 1904.⁸ Eventually North Charlotte held four major mills, workers’ housing and a commercial area, plus several smaller textile-related concerns including the factory of the Grinnell Company, a leading supplier of sprinkler fire-prevention systems to Southern mills.

On March 18, 1903, less than a month after plans for the Highland Park #3 were announced, three North Carolina businessmen chartered the Mecklenburg Cotton Mills Company. Charlotte investors Robert L. Tate and S. B. Alexander, Jr., subscribed to 100 and 50 shares of stock respectively. B. Lawrence Duke of Durham took the remaining 100 shares. Duke was scion of the famous North Carolina tobacco family, the son of millionaire James B. Duke’s half-brother Brodie Duke. In 1903 James B. Duke was just becoming interested in the hydro-electric potential of the Charlotte area, an interest that would lead to the creation of Duke Power, and it may be that the nephew’s textile investment and the uncle’s electrical explorations were in some way connected.

On May 25 of the same year Holt, Johnston and their partner J.S. Spencer sold the Mecklenburg Cotton Mill Company land for a mill and village, to be located north of the Highland Park #3 plant.¹⁰ In August of 1904 the Charlotte Observer wrote:

 

“Within a few more months North Charlotte will be one of the busiest and most populous parts of the city or suburbs. The new plant of the Highland Park Manufacturing is nearly ready … and the new Mecklenburg Mills … will soon be ready to start up.”¹¹

When the Sanborn Company of New York mapped Charlotte in early 1905, it noted that the Mecklenburg Mill facility was scheduled to open in summer.¹² The main section of the mill was a two-story structure with a brick exterior and a timber frame. Carding took place in the basement, spooling, warping and weaving on the first floor, and spinning on the second. A stair-tower slightly higher than the main block projected from the front of the main facade, and a similar elevator tower stood at the rear. A one-and-a-half-story boiler room wing was attached to the north side of the building. South of the building was a separate one-story cotton warehouse of wooden construction. The mill village, composed of one-story wooden single-family cottages, stretched out along what are now East 37th Street and Mercury Street in front of the building. Just north of the village was a mill pond (now drained). The pond supplied water to a tall, freestanding steel water tower in front of the mill, which in turn fed the factory’s Grinnell sprinkler system.

A report by the North Carolina Department of Labor in 1910 summed up the statistics of the facility.¹³ The mill had 12,000 spindles, 300 looms, and 26 cards, ranking it among Charlotte’s mid-sized textile factories. A 450 horsepower steam engine powered the plant. The Mecklenburg consumed a million pounds of raw cotton per year and produced printed cloth sold through J.P. Stevens & Co., Agents, of Boston and New York.

The only addition to the mill building occurred sometime between 1905 and 1911.¹⁴ The owners attached a one-story “cotton room” wing to the south side of the plant. Its timber frame, brick walls, large arched windows, and wooden cornice matched the original structure precisely.

Most textile workers in this era were rural folk who came to the mill villages from Piedmont farms and Blue Ridge hollows. An article in the Southern Textile Bulletin, December 25, 1919, gave a picture of life they found in the Mecklenburg Mill village:

 

“Approximately 175 operatives and helpers are employed by the Mecklenburg Mills Company…. The mill village is most picturesque and beautiful in its natural setting of native trees, with a pretty little lake nearby …. There are 53 neat, attractive cottages in the village [ ,]… equipped with electric lights and water. The management has under consideration the building of a number of new and modern cottages in the pretty grove that overlooks the lake (now Patterson, Herrin, Warp and Card streets)…. Each cottage has a large space for a vegetable garden and many fine vegetables are raised both in summer and winter, also a good quantity of beans, peas, corn, etc are canned in the summer. There is a piggery where the mill community keep their hogs in a segregated spot, and many hundreds of pounds of pork is raised each year. Of course there are some chickens in the village but these are not encouraged for they are always liable to get out and do damage in the gardens. There are quite a number of cows that furnish plenty of milk and butter, and these are kept in a perfectly sanitary stables away from the houses.”

The cheery tone of the article obscures the fact that workers in this mill, as elsewhere in the South, actually spent most of their waking hours in the hot and dusty factory. In the early years of this century, men, women, and children over 10 years old worked 10 to 12 hours each weekday, and six more hours on Saturday.

Later Years: A Struggle for Profitability
There is evidence that not long after its opening, the Mecklenburg Mill began to have financial troubles. Documents indicate that there was frequent turnover among principal stockholders in the late l910s and early 1920s.¹⁵ By 1922 J. D. Norwood was president and W.T. Bush secretary, and the firm’s official office was located in Salisbury, North Carolina.¹⁶ On October 17, 1923 Mecklenburg Mills declared bankruptcy, and in July of 1926 Mercury Mills, a Delaware-based corporation, bought the plant at a foreclosure sale.¹⁷

The factory became known as the Mercury Mill, and continues to be popularly known by that name today despite a string of later owners. Martel Mills, another Delaware outfit, bought the plant in 1929.¹⁸ On the eve of world War II the Johnston Mills Company acquired the factory and added it to their growing “Johnston Group” of mills, headquartered in the 16-story Johnston Building in downtown Charlotte.¹⁹ The Company was controlled by the family of North Charlotte founder Charles Worth Johnston, and among its holdings was massive Highland Park #3 Mill and the 1913 Johnston Mill, located on North Davidson Street just south of the Mecklenburg Mill.

In the early 1950s the Johnston Company reorganized its North Charlotte operations, selling off the mill houses to workers, and also donating money to build a community center, now known as the Johnston YMCA.²⁰ The company was able to operate profitably until the late 1960s, when it began to shut down plants. Highland Park #3 closed in 1969, and the Mecklenburg Mill stopped operations at about the same time.²¹

The Mecklenburg was used for storage, then stood vacant for several years as it passed through the hands of various investors. Chavis Textile Manufacturing of Gastonia bought it in 1975, and sold it in 1976 to Confederate Textile Machinery Inc., of Greenville, South Carolina.²² In August 1980 Robert and Ava Stark purchased the property.²³ Today Stark runs a spinning operation and a textile machinery repair service in the adjacent Johnston Mill, and he hopes to renovate the Mecklenburg Mill and expand it.

The Mecklenburg Mill has felt the effects of time and low maintenance. Its windows and doors are broken and some of the frames have rotted away. All machinery and equipment is gone, except for the Grinnell Sprinkler System. Yet the basic building is in good shape. Unlike most Charlotte mills, its windows were never bricked in, and it has experienced no additions and very little demolition since 1911. Only the Hoskins Mill, across town off Rozelles Ferry Road, rivals the Mecklenburg as a well-preserved early textile mill in “as-built” condition.

Because of its importance to the development of the North Charlotte area and to the neighborhood’s daily life for over six decades, because it symbolizes the significance of textile manufacturing in the growth of the city, and because of its high degree of preservation, the Mecklenburg Mill merits designation as a Charlotte Historic Property.

 

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NOTES

¹ Dan L. Morrill, “A Survey of Cotton Mills in Charlotte, North Carolina” (Charlotte: Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, I 981). William H. Huffman, “Charlotte Cotton Mills: Survey and Research Report” ( Charlotte: Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1984). For more on the importance of cotton trade and manufacture to the growth of Charlotte see Thomas W. Hanchett, “Charlotte and Its Neighborhoods: The Growth of a New South City, 1850- 1930” ( 1986, unpublished manuscript in the files of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission).

² Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Printing for the State of North Carolina, 1900, pp. 176-81.

³ Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Printing for the State of North Carolina, 1900-1926. Title varies slightly. After 1926 the state stopped publishing detailed data.

⁴ Broadus Mitchell and George Sinclair Mitchell, The Industrial Revolution in the South ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930), p. 29. In 1927 the South had 62% of the mills in the United States, and the value of North Carolina’s product surpassed that of former leader Massachusetts. United States Bureau of the Census, Nineteenth Census: 1970, vol. I, part 35, table 7.

⁵ United States Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census: 1940, “North and South Carolina: Number of Inhabitants,” table A.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Hanchett, “Charlotte and Its Neighborhoods,” Chapter 15.

⁸ Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Printing for the State of North Carolina, 1904, pp. 93-97. Designed by noted Charlotte inventor Stuart Cramer, the Highland Park #3 was also among the region first mills designed specifically for electric operation.

⁹ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Record of Corporations Book I, p. 344.

¹⁰ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 1 79, p. 206.

¹¹ Charlotte Observer, August 4, 1904.

¹² Sanborn Company, “Charlotte, 1905” ( New York: Sanborn Company, 1905).

¹³ Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Department of Labor and Printing of the State of North Carolina, 1910, pp. 172-73, 1923.

¹⁴ Sanborn Company, “Charlotte, 1911” ( New York: Sanborn Company, 1911).

¹⁵ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Record of Corporations Book 2, p. 390; Book 6, p. 458, Book 6, p. 518; Book 7, p. 101.

¹⁶ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Record of Corporations Book 7, p. 101.

¹⁷ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 628, p. 554.

¹⁸ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 748, p. 1; Deed Book 846, p. 336. Martel was reorganized in December of 1933.

¹⁹ Johnston bought the mill November 24, 1941. Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 1065, p. 279.

²⁰ Marjorie B. Young, ed., Textile Leaders of the South (Columbia, SC: James R. Young, 1963), pp. 110-1111, 767. One Hundredth Anniversary: Young Men’s Christian Association of Charlotte and Mecklenburg (Charlotte: Charlotte YMCA, 1974), p. 8. For house sales see for instance Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 1633, pp. 367, 411.

²¹ Charlotte News, March 13, 1975, August 19, 1978, Charlotte Observer, March 14, 1975. Charlotte’s last working spinning mill was the Johnston, which closed in 1975.

²² Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 3813, p. 366; Deed Book 3867, p. 640. 23.

²³ Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Office: Deed Book 4327, p. 816.

 

 

Architectural Description  

Thomas W. Hanchett

Today the Mecklenburg Mill is among Charlotte’s best-preserved early textile factories, despite the fact that it has long been vacant. Except for a one-story south wing added before 1911, and for removal of the top story of the front tower, the brick and timber building remains much as it was built in 1903-05. The site also retains its original cotton warehouse, plus two small frame structures which housed fire-fighting equipment.

The Mecklenburg Mill is sited with the Southern Railroad at its rear (west) side and North Davidson Street at its front. The main block of the building is two-stories tall with a low-pitched gable roof. Large segmental-arched window openings divide the side facades into 9 bays and the front and rear facades into 17 bays. The rear facade differs slightly from the front in that it extends downward to provide windows for the basement level. At the edges of the building’s roof, heavy curved brackets support a cornice built up of wooden molding. On the south end of the building, just below the cornice, one may still read the words “Mecklenburg Mills Co.” painted on the wall. Walls are brick, alternating one course of headers with six courses of stretchers. The window arches are composed of three header courses. Each wooden window unit consists of a pair of nine-over-nine-pane double-hung sash windows, each with its own six-pane transom. The wood and glass of the windows and doors throughout the mill is badly deteriorated, but most of the original material remains. The only major exception is in the downstairs front windows, which have differently-shaped panes, and may not be original.

When the structure was built, towers were a popular feature of mill design. They provided a decorative architectural element, and also helped guard against the potential spread of fire by making stairs and elevators separate from the main building. The Mecklenburg Mill has a stair tower at the center of its front facade and a similar elevator tower at the rear. A 1919 photo from the Southern Textile Bulletin shows that the front tower was originally three-stories tall. Today the top story is gone but the rest of the tower survives in good condition. At the top, five courses of brick step outward to a course of limestone. Recessed panels with corbelled dentils at the top frame the windows and the window and door openings have an extra corbelled brick course in the arches. Stone steps lead to the front door. At the rear, the elevator tower has been more severely altered. It too is two-stories tall, and portions of its walls have been replaced with concrete-block and new brick.

At the south side of the main block is the one-story “Cotton Room” wing added sometime between 1905 and 1911. It is six bays long and four bays wide, with one of the end bays being a door. In its gabled roof, cornice, brickwork, and windows the wing matches the original structure exactly, indicating that it was probably the work of the same designer and builder.

At the north side of the main block is an asymmetrical one-story-and-basement wing. This collection of rooms originally held the steam boilers, engines, and belt shafts which powered the factory. Windows here are smaller than in the main structure. Near the northeast corner of the wing, a one-story extension holds the pump which transferred pond water to the water tower. At the north end of the wing is the tall, round, free standing smokestack, constructed of brick.

The interior of the mill is characterized by wide open spaces with no decoration and virtually no partitions. The brick walls around the windows are painted white, a color chosen to reflect the most light and thus give workers the best-lit working conditions. The main block and the one-story Cotton Room wing exemplify fire-resistant “standard mill construction” developed in New England at the behest of fire insurance companies at the end of the nineteenth century. The visitor might be surprised that wood is used for the columns, beams, and floors, but it consists of massive pieces of hardwood that are extremely slow to burn and will not bend in a hot fire as metal will. The first floor of the main block is a good place to see this construction. Three rows of round wooden columns run the length of the space, set on 10′ x 27′ centers, according to fire insurance maps. At the top of each column is a cast iron collar-plate. On the columns and collar-plates rest the huge beams that carry the second floor — solid timbers approximately 1′ x 2′. Resting on the beams is a thick sub-floor, which is covered by thinner floorboards. Running near the ceiling are the pipes and sprinklers of the Grinnell fire prevention system (which is controlled by valves located near the front of the basement).

This same construction is found with minor variations throughout the main block and Cotton Room wing. In the second story of the main block, the columns hold the angled roof beams. The main block originally had a full basement, where thick brick piers were substituted for most of the wooden columns. A brick wall across the basement separated it into a north half and a south half. Recently owner Robert Stark removed the flooring and beams above the south half and filled the basement with earth, taken from an excavation in front of the mill.

The mill’s one-story-and-basement north wing is built a bit differently. Here brick walls divide the space into three units. The most northerly unit originally held the coal-fired boilers of the steam power – plant. Today a wooden first floor extends over only half of the space, forming a balcony. Beyond the balcony is a huge coal-fired furnace of brick and metal, reached by steel catwalks. This is probably not part of the original steam power plant, but rather a later heating system. The next unit — between the boiler room and the main plant — is labeled as a “dynamo room” on early maps. In recent years this space seems to have been used for offices, and portions of wooden office partitions remain. Originally the space may have held two engines: an electric generator which ran the mill’s lighting system; and a second engine which provided power to the looms, cards and spinning frames by means of a system of belts and shafting throughout the mill. Early maps label the high-ceilinged third unit, adjacent to the engine room as a “beltway.” Today a wooden floor separates it into a main level and a basement level. It is possible that this area was once completely open, and held the wide leather belts which connected the steam engine to the metal power shafts on each floor of the main block. Unfortunately, all traces of engines and shafting are gone today.

Inside the front stair tower is the single stair which serves the main block. It is of wood with a solid tongue-and-groove balustrade. A wooden lattice-work door seals off the topmost landing. Inside the rear elevator tower, the wooden elevator gates may still be seen behind slicing sheet-metal fire doors. The Charlotte-manufactured elevator cage is intact, complete with a cast-metal control panel carrying the raised letters “PARK ELEVATOR CHARLOTTE N.C.” The elevator motor is gone.

The mill site contains notable structures in addition to the main building. Behind the mill is a small railroad trestle where coal cars unloaded. South of the mill is the original cotton warehouse. It is a one-story board-and-batten structure with sliding doors. A red brick firewall, extending above the roof, divides the building into two unequal bays. In front of the cotton warehouse and in front of the mill are a pair of tiny “German” sided wooden buildings, each about the size and shape of a outhouse. These date from the mill’s earliest years (one is shown in the 1919 Southern Textile Bulletin photograph) and still perform their original function — holding spools of firehose connected by underground pipes to the Grinnell system. Across North Davidson Street, beyond the mill site proper, the old Mecklenburg Mill water tower and many of the workers’ cottages can still be seen.

This report was written on December 2, 1981

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building is located at 233-237 S. Brevard St. in Charlotte, NC.

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

The Mecklenburg Investment Co.
233 S. Brevard St.
Charlotte, NC 28202

Telephone: Not listed

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 o the property.

 

 

 

5. Current Deed Book Reference to the Property: The most recent deed to this property is listed in Mecklenburg County Deed Book 454 at page 21. The current tax parcel number of the property is 125-024-06.

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

7. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains a brief architectural description of the property by Jack O. Boyte, A.I.A.

8. Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets the criteria set forth in N.C.G.S. 18OA-399.4:

 

a. Significance in terms of its history, architecture and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) the building, erected in 1921-22, was the first office building in Charlotte built exclusively by and for black professionals; 2) the Mecklenburg Investment Company had some of the most prominent black citizens of Charlotte among its officers, including such notable local persons as A. E. Spears, C. R. Blake, and Thad L. Tate; 3) the building is one of the very few remnants of old Second Ward or Brooklyn, a major turn-of-the-century black neighborhood, which survives; and 4) the intricate exterior brickwork and the original interior features demonstrate that the structure possesses architectural significance.

b. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling and/or association: The Commission judges that the architectural included in this report demonstrates that the property known as the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building meets this criterion.

9. Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal: The Commission is aware that designation would allow the owner to apply annually 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 Ad Valorem tax appraisal of the entire .083 acre tract is $25,200. The Ad Valorem tax appraisal on the improvements is $16,650. The total Ad Valorem tax appraisal is $41,850. The most recent annual Ad Valorem tax bill on the property was $764.59. The building contains 10,164 base square feet.

Date of preparation of this report: December 2, 1981

Prepared by: Dr. Dan L. Morrill, Director
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission
3500 Shamrock Dr.
Charlotte, NC 28215

Telephone: (704) 332-2726

 

 

Historical Overview  

Dr. William H. Huffman

In May, 1922, construction began on a building which was unique in the city of Charlotte. The MIC Building was the first structure planned and executed by some of the black leaders of the community to accommodate black businesses, professional offices, civic and fraternal organizations. It was built as an anchor for the business and social activities of the former Brooklyn community of Second Ward by the Mecklenburg Investment Company, an investment group organized for that purpose and from which the building received its name.

The MIC was incorporated on May 6, 1921, with Mr. C. R. Blake, Sr., as president; Mr. A. E. Spears, vice-president; Thad L. Tate, treasurer; and Dr. A. J. Williams, a dentist, secretary.⁴ The Board of Directors was composed of the above officers and eight other business and professional leaders of the black community. In addition to dentists, doctors, lawyers, other professionals and businessmen, the shareholders also included a number of members of the Johnson C. Smith University faculty. Some of the notable figures involved in organizing the MIC included the following two leaders of the community:

 

Thad L. Tate (1865-1951), who owned and operated the Uptown Barber Shop for many years and was quite active in the business and civic affairs of the city, which included many efforts to improve the quality of life in the black community. Through his initiatives and connections with white business and political leaders, among them Gov. Cameron Morrison, Thad Tate helped establish the Brevard Street branch of the Public Library and a local branch of the YMCA for blacks, and was instrumental in founding the Morrison Training School for black youths in Hoffman, NC, where a building is named in his honor.⁶

Dr. J. T. Williams (1859-1924), an original investor and member of the board, was a prominent and respected educator, physician, businessman and public servant. In 1882, at the age of 23, Dr. Williams was the Assistant Principal of the Charlotte Graded School, from which he resigned to study medicine. Six years later, in 1886, he became one of the first three black physicians licensed to practice medicine in North Carolina, and built a prosperous surgical practice and drug company. His public service included serving on the Board of Health of Mecklenburg County, and being twice elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1888 and 1890. In 1898, President McKinley appointed him consul to Sierra Leone, a post he held until 1907. In 1921, Dr. Williams built an elegant 3-story house in the same block as the MIC building which was designed by Charlotte architect Louis Asbury.⁸ J. T. Williams Junior High School is named in honor of Dr. Williams.

The Mecklenburg Investment Company purchased the lot for the building in July, 1921, from Nancy Kerr Brown Young and her husband, Dolph M. Young.⁹ Mrs. Young had inherited the property from her father, Peter Marshall Brown (1859-1913), a prominent nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Charlotte businessman and a major owner of downtown real estate in the city. He was the son of Col. John L. Brown of Charlotte, and was president of the Traders Land Company.

On April 29, 1922, the contractor, W. W. Smith, obtained a building permit from the city for the construction of the building.¹² William W. Smith (1873-1924) was an experienced designer and builder who specialized in brick structures. He was a member of the nearby Grace A.M.E. Zion church located in the same block, which he had also built in 1900-1902. Thad Tate, Dr. J. T. Williams and a number of MIC shareholders were also members of the Grace Church. Since the building permit indicated that there was no architect, W. W. Smith probably designed the structure himself, which was estimated to cost $28,000.00. The three-story building was planned to accommodate six stores on the first floor, sixteen offices on the second, and four offices and an assembly room on the third.

In late 1922, the MIC building was completed, and a number of black doctors, dentists (including Dr. A. J. Williams, the first MIC secretary), lawyers, other professionals and businesses, who were scattered in various parts of the city, often in unsuitable quarters, moved into the building. For some forty years the building served as a center for social, business, and professional activities for Charlotte’s black citizens. Yancey’s Drug Store operated in a corner shop, followed by a popular restaurant, the Savoy Inn, and a number of Charlotte’s black Masonic lodges began in the meeting room on the shirt floor. Social clubs there often heard the music of Jimmy Gunn’s dance band (J. H. Gunn was also a school principal after whom J. H. Gunn school is named). According to MIC’s president, who is a grandson of Thad Tate, the building was a financial success to the extent that the mortgage was retired in less than ten years, and thus was not a problem when the Great Depression struck.

In the 1960s, the character of downtown Charlotte changed, which affected the prosperity of the building. As Brooklyn and other downtown neighborhoods decayed, many blacks moved to West Charlotte. During that time streetcar service from the newer areas to downtown was discontinued, urban renewal destroyed Second Ward as a residential neighborhood, and integration facilitated many blacks moving to newer offices throughout the city, and thus tenancy in the MIC Building dropped considerably.¹⁷ As a part of an increasingly revitalized downtown, however, a renovated MIC Building could still play a vital role in the business life of Charlotte, and at the same time a unique part of the city’s history could thereby be preserved as a cultural link with its past, which helps identify the city’s distinct character.

 

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Notes

¹ Charlotte Observer, May 2, 1922, p. 4.

² Interview with Aurelia Tate Henderson, Charlotte, NC, 15 May 1981.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Secretary of State’s Office, Raleigh, NC.

⁵ Interview with Mr. Ray Booton, President, MIC, 26 May 1981.

⁶ Charlotte Observer, March 30, 1951, p. 22A and March 31, 1951, p. 12A; interview with Mrs. Henderson cited above.

⁷ Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1924, p. 10.

⁸ Building Permit, City of Charlotte, 14 June 1921.

⁹ Deed Book 454, p. 21, 2 July 1921. Part of the compensation was shares in the MIC; Interview with Dolph Young, Charlotte, N.C. 15 September 1981.

¹⁰ Beer’s Map of Charlotte, 1887, Will Book Q. p. 323, probated 7 May 1913; Deed Book 345, p. 8, 8 Feb. 1915; Interview with Mr. Young, cited above.

¹¹ Mecklenburg County Certificate of Death, Book 2, p. 934.

¹² Building Permit, City of Charlotte, 29 April 1922.

¹³ William H. Huffman, “A Brief History of the Grace A.M.E. Zion Church”, April, 1980.

¹⁴ See note 12.

¹⁵ Charlotte News, July 25, 1980: “On Our Street” by John Vaughan.

¹⁶ Interview with Ray Booton, cited in note 5.

¹⁷ See note 15.

 

 

Architectural Description  

Jack O. Boyte

In Charlotte’s teeming Second Ward in the years following the first World War, a group of leading black citizens banded together to build the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building. On a South Brevard Street location close by a neighborhood branch of the Carnegie Free Library and the early home of the AME Zion Publishing House, the group sponsored a structure unique in Charlotte’s history. Facing uptown at the corner of East Third Street, the building escaped demolition during Charlotte’s relentless urban renewal of the 60s and 70s. There it remains — an extraordinary example of early architecture built by and for the city’s black community.

The three story rectangular brick structure has shops along the Brevard and Third Street sidewalks. Walks which even today are still edged with granite curb stones put down when the first paved streets were installed downtown. The sturdy building is 42 feet wide and 98 feet deep. The three bay front facade along Brevard is a carefully composed pattern of ornamental buff brick in varying shades and textures. Red brick soldiers and headers offer stark contrast in patterned inserts here and there. Here a center door with an arched transom opens to a tile floored foyer from which a wide stair leads to upper floors. On Third Street there is an elongated facade with eight equally spaced wood sash windows on the upper floors. The brick and stone veneer on this wall is a less elaborate combination of ornamentation.

The building’s architecture cannot be categorized in the usual sense. Its fenestration follows no rigid academic guide, though the composition was obviously influenced by the widely popular commercial style of the 20s. So the intriguing blend of cliches, borrowed from other designs, creates a structure of rare charm and significance. The nearby AME Zion Publishing Company building, demolished in recent times to make way for a clean modern structure, was remarkably like the M. I. C. building. The similarities occur primarily in the unique and imaginative patterns worked into the main facade of stone and brick veneer, as well as the comfortable walk-up three story plan. There is no record of a professional designer or architect having been employed on the structures, but it is known that both were built by William W. Smith, a successful and busy black brick mason who lived nearby on South Caldwell Street. It is most likely that Smith designed and built both structures — certainly an appealing, while conjectural, notion. As noted above, the front and side street facades where special elaborations occur have rudimentary suggestion of elements which are consistent with more formal classical compositions of the time. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end in the Sullivan tradition.

Ground floor veneer has horizontal recessed bands which reflect traditional rustication. At the second and third levels are rows of windows separated by horizontal projecting bands of brick headers and cast stone. Spandrel panels of patterned flashed headers with lighter colored plinths give emphasis to the window stacks. On the front each corner is punctuated vertically with repeated triple course quoin stacks. Completing the tripartite theme of the fenestration is an elaborate cornice. Laid just above the third floor cast stone window lintels is a series of closely spaced corbeled brick brackets. Over this is a broad brick band divided to match the window bay spaces embellished with diamond patterned brick headers. Finally, the crowning cornice consists of another band of brick brackets supporting three stretcher courses — each slightly corbeled as they rise to form a high parapet.

In the usual mode of the first quarter of this century, the building has load bearing exterior brick walls and interior floor and ceiling systems of wood. Joist spans were determined generally by the location of corridor walls, yet at times are strangely inconsistent. There appears to be no predetermined floor framing pattern. This is a further suggestion of a provincial origin for the design.

Interior finishes are unadorned. Woodwork is simple with few molded shapes. Walls are all plaster on wood lath. Floors are narrow tongue and groove pine strips. At the head of the entrance stair a center corridor runs the length of the second floor. Along each side are evenly spaced two paneled doors which open to side offices. The floor above is an open meeting hall still used for lodge meetings. It remains unaltered since first erected. The rear and left sides, which were expected to be concealed from view, are colorful facades of common red brick laid in American bond of one headed course for each four or five stretcher courses. Window openings have skillfully laid arched brick lintels of double headers. Sills are projecting stretcher courses supported by a single header course.

There is little questions that this is an important building in Charlotte’s preserved architectural inventory. It is the sole remaining commercial structure near the Square, whose origins abide in black history. Furthermore, the likelihood that its designer and builder was a skilled black craftsman, W.W. Smith, lends it added significance. The center of town is enriched by its presence.

 

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Mecklenburg County Courthouse is located at 700 East Trade Street in Charlotte, N.C.
2. Name and address of the present owner of the property:

The present owner of the property is:

Mecklenburg County

400 East 4^th Street

Charlotte, NC

1. Representative photographs of the property: This report contains representative photographs of the property.
2. A map depicting the location of the property: This report contains a map depicting the location of the property.
3. Current deed book reference to the property: The most recent deed book reference to this property is found in Mecklenburg County Deed Book 610, p. 62, 70, and 76 and Mecklenburg County Deed Book 605 at pages 321 and 356. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is 125-03-201.
4. A brief historical sketch of the property: This report contains a brief historical sketch of the property prepared by Emily D. Ramsey
5. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains a brief architectural description of the property prepared by Emily D. Ramsey.
6. Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets the criteria for designation as set forth in N.C.G.S 160A-400.5:
7. Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission judges that the Mecklenburg County Courthouse possesses special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations:

• 1) The Mecklenburg County Courthouse is a representation of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s economic growth, and the development of Charlotte as a regional textile hub and the largest city in North Carolina.
• 2) The Mecklenburg County Courthouse, erected in 1928 after a fierce battle between the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, is a tangible reminder of the separation between the urban community in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s surrounding rural farming communities during the early twentieth century.
• 3) The Mecklenburg County Courthouse was designed by noted Charlotte architect Louis H. Asbury.
• 4) The Neoclassical design of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, a popular choice for public buildings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, served as a fitting symbol of government authority, civic pride and cultural progress in center city Charlotte.
• 5) The Mecklenburg County Courthouse, along with its neighbor, C. C. Hook’s City Hall building, is among the last of center city Charlotte’s historic public buildings and retains almost all of its original exterior design features.

8. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling, and/or association: The Committee judges that the architectural description prepared by Emily D. Ramsey indicates that the Mecklenburg County Courthouse 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 a designated “historic landmark.”       The current estimated value of the building is $6,241,150.       The total estimated value of the 7.072 acres (which also houses two other government buildings, including the recently completed new courthouse and jail) is 9,241,690.

 

Date of Preparation of this Report:

May 22, 2001

Prepared By:

Emily D. Ramsey

745 Georgia Trail

Lincolnton, NC

 

Statement of Significance

The Mecklenburg County Courthouse

700 East Trade Street

Charlotte, NC

 Summary

         The Mecklenburg County Courthouse, erected in 1928, is a structure that possesses local historic significance as a reflection of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s tremendous economic and physical growth during the New South era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries while serving as a tangible reminder of the physical and ideological separations that existed between the urban community in Charlotte and the rural farming communities that surrounded the city.       By the 1920s, Charlotte had emerged as the center of a large and profitable textile region that stretched over a large portion of the South, while building “a diversified economic base” that included “banking, power generation and wholesaling.”1       The corresponding boom in population that followed gave Charlotte the edge over other Carolina cities, and in 1910 Charlotte overtook Wilmington to become the largest city in North Carolina.       By the early 1920s, Charlotte citizens began a campaign for a new courthouse and city hall to meet the growing demands of city and county government and to reflect Charlotte’s new status.

Although the city of Charlotte was developing economically, commercially and culturally into one of the most important urban centers in the Carolinas, the rest of Mecklenburg County remained largely rural, dotted by small farming communities that resisted the changes occurring in Charlotte – changes that heralded the county’s shift from an agrarian economy to a manufacturing and commercial economy. The controversy over a proposed new courthouse and city hall complex in the 1920s, which ultimately resulted in the construction of C.C. Hook’s City Hall Building and a separate Mecklenburg County Courthouse, brought the tensions between Charlotte’s urban population and the county’s rural communities to the surface in heated public debate, and highlighted the ideological and practical divisions that separated Charlotteans from area farmers.

Architecturally, the Mecklenburg County Courthouse is significant as a well-preserved example of the Neoclassical style of architecture, a popular choice for public buildings in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century. The building was designed by regionally important architect Louis H. Asbury, whose works include the H. M. McAden House and the Myers Park United Methodist Church in Myers Park, the Rudolph Scott House in Dilworth, and the William L. Bruns House in Elizabeth, among many others.       Asbury’s design of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, with its imposing rows of Corinthian columns and pilasters supporting a massive classical entablature, was a fitting illustration of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s recent progress and a powerful symbol of governmental authority. The courthouse, along with its neighboring public edifice, C. C. Hook’s City Hall building, remains an integral part of Charlotte’s center city built environment and one of the few public buildings remaining from the city’s 1920s building boom.

 Historical Background Statement 

The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century proved to be a time of tremendous growth and development for Charlotte-Mecklenburg.       Charlotte, a rising star among New South cities, had become, by the early 1920s, the center of a large textile region that stretched from Georgia through South Carolina and west through Tennessee. Unlike many textile centers, however, Charlotte had also fostered a diverse economic foundation that included banking, wholesaling, and power generation as well as textile manufacturing.       The city was attracting new businesses and residents at such as rapid rate that, by 1910, it had surpassed Wilmington in population to become the largest city in North Carolina.       This distinction served to highlight Charlotte’s progress during the New South era. Charlotteans responded to the economic success of the 1910s and 1920s by beginning a building boom that would last until the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s.       “Large portions of Charlotte,” writes historian Thomas Hanchett, “date from this period of prosperity” – Charlotte’s center city landscape in particular benefited from the economic boom and newly attracted businesses. A slew of new buildings rose along Tryon Street, including the ten–story Hotel Charlotte and the sixteen-story Johnson Building in 1924, topped by the twenty-story First National Bank tower in 1926.       The Wilder Building, also erected in 1926, was followed by the opening of a branch of the Federal Reserve in 1927.       The following year, Charlotte expanded its boundaries by almost twenty square miles.

In the midst of such frenzied construction and expansion, a local government building controversy raged.       The debate centered around a proposal, first suggested by The Charlotte Observer and taken up by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce in 1922, to erect a single public building that would serve as Charlotte’s city hall and the county courthouse, thus taking the place of the former City Hall at 5^th and N. Tryon Streets and the existing Mecklenburg County Courthouse building at the corner of 3^rd Street and South Tryon. The concept of a City-County Municipal building appealed to many Charlotteans, who took the view of prominent local attorney D. E. Henderson, proclaiming, “ . . . we are acting for the city of Charlotte and . . . for the county of Mecklenburg. That which is good for one is good for both.”2       The county population, consisting largely of farmers and rural workers, felt very differently. Supported by the Charlotte Mayor and the City Council, who lead the minority of the city’s dissenting vote, they succeeded in defeating the proposition by a two-to-one margin.       Although supporters of the proposition were enraged that the vote was decided by those who would rather spend the day “picking cow ticks and boll weevils,” they were soon placated by the city’s rapid advancement of plans for a new City Hall.3       The building, designed by prominent local architect C. C. Hook, was completed in 1923. With the City Council now housed in a fine, spacious structure on East Trade Street, the Board of County Commissioner felt the pressure to upgrade their facilities intensify.

The 1925 debate over the county courthouse reflected, as the proposition of a City-County Municipal building had just two years before, the differences that existed between the rural citizens of Mecklenburg County and the city dwellers in Charlotte.       Proponents of a new courthouse building, led by prominent Charlotteans who saw the courthouse as a symbol of the city’s progress and development in the New South era, insisted that the new structure be placed next to the City Hall building on Trade Street, thus creating a single governmental complex. Opponents, largely represented by Mecklenburg’s small farming communities, insisted that the existing courthouse building on South Tryon Street could be adequately expanded, and that the logical place for the Mecklenburg County Courthouse was Tryon Street, the “all-time center of the City,” where all but one of the previous courthouses had stood.4       Supporters and opponents of the new courthouse building and its proposed East Trade Street location voiced their arguments at two separate public hearings. On November 30, 1925, the Board of County Commissioners listened to speeches decrying the proposed new courthouse. John P. Hunter, magistrate for the Mallard Creek Township, voiced the concerns of Mecklenburg’s “country people.”       The county’s rural population, Hunter argued, consisting of farmers who rarely ventured into the city and who relied on the familiar Tryon Street location, would never be able find the new courthouse if it were placed on East Trade Street, far from the center-city square.       If the Board insisted on pursuing the new location, Hunter declared, officials would have to “place a big sign at the square showing the rural people how to reach it.”5

Mecklenburg County’s farming communities found an unlikely ally in the lawyers of Charlotte.       A majority of the city’s lawyers also opposed the new courthouse – the proposed East Trade Street location would prove to be a major inconvenience for attorneys, most of whom worked out of the Lawyers Building (itself less than twenty years old) on South Tryon Street.       Several lawyers, including W. C. Dowd, Sr. and A. R. Justice, spoke out against the new courthouse during the hearing, insisting that the existing courthouse could “provide enough space for adequate facilities for one thousand years.”6

Five days later, on December 5, 1925, proponents of the new courthouse turned out in record numbers (thanks in large part to the efforts of the Charlotte Woman’s Club) to advance the position of many of Charlotte’s leading New South citizens, who saw the courthouse as a symbol of the city’s recent progress and a reflection of its new status as the largest city in the state.       Judge Wade W. Williams asserted that the County Commissioners had an obligation to follow “the urge and surge of present day progress and development” by building a new courthouse.       The Charlotte Woman’s Club argued that the new courthouse building would benefit both city and county citizens by providing space for local organization meetings, agricultural workshops, and a produce market. All at the hearing maintained that the courthouse was a long overdue addition to the city landscape, and would be “in keeping with the dignity of the County.”7

In the end, the new courthouse’s urban supporters proved more convincing than its rural opponents. On December 7, 1925, the Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously to construct a new courthouse on East Trade Street.       As with the new City Hall, the courthouse project, once decided, moved forward quickly. Within a month of the final vote, the Board commissioned Charlotte-native architect Louis H. Asbury to design the building. Asbury’s plans for the building were approved by the Board in May of 1926, and Charlotte-based contractor J. J. McDevitt Company was awarded the general construction contract in June.       The $1,250,000 Neoclassical courthouse building was completed by January of 1928, and formally and extravagantly dedicated on March 10 of that year. County officials and members of the Board of County Commissioners greeted curious citizens, including many one-time opponents of the new building, as they toured the courthouses, offices, meeting rooms, and the rooftop jail, which The Charlotte Observer reported was “the most popular part of the courthouse,” which “every caller was anxious to visit.”8

Asbury’s Mecklenburg County Courthouse served as the main courthouse building until 1977, when a new courthouse building, designed by Charlotte architect Harry Wolf, was constructed at 800 East 4^th Street.9 During the 1970s and 1980s, the area bordered by 3^rd and East Trade Streets became a center for government and court buildings, including the 1989 14-story Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, a civil courts building, a criminal courts building, and an underground intake center (now the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office) adjacent to the Mecklenburg County Jail at 801 East 4^th Street.       In the late 1980s the area was officially named the Mecklenburg County Courthouse Complex – the 1928 Mecklenburg County Courthouse Building, renamed the Mecklenburg County Courthouse Annex in 1977, once again became the official Mecklenburg County Courthouse building.10   The 1928 Mecklenburg County Courthouse continues to serve as offices for Mecklenburg County but not for the courts.

Architectural Description and Contextual Statement

              The Mecklenburg County Courthouse is locally significant as an excellently preserved example of the Neoclassical style of architecture and as a representation of the changing styles of architecture in the early twentieth century “The 1900s and 1910s,” Thomas Hanchett states, “saw a revolution in architectural taste” in Charlotte and across the United States.       The Victorian aesthetic, with its “complex decoration, eclectic combinations, colors, shapes, and historical motifs,” was overshadowed by a resurgence in the clean lines and simple forms of the Colonial Revival, the Bungalow, and the Neoclassical styles.11       The Neoclassical style became particularly popular for government, commercial and institutional buildings.       It provided a clean break from the lighthearted Victorian style, while still conforming to the fundamentally conservative “political, social, and economic thinking of Charlotte’s business elite.”12

During the early 1900s, professional architects, attracted by the city’s wealth and its citizen’s eagerness to build in the new styles, began bringing their firms to Charlotte for the first time. Louis H. Asbury was one such architect. A Charlotte-native, Asbury received formal degrees from both Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.       After graduation, he traveled abroad for over a year, studying European architectural masterpieces and deriving first-hand experience with classical architectural styles.       When he returned to Charlotte in the 1910s to set up his first practice, Asbury arrived with the distinction of being one of the first formally trained architects in North Carolina and the first North Carolina member of the American Institute of Architects – he quickly became a well-known name as a residential, commercial, and civic architect with a diverse array of influences and fluent in a variety of architectural styles.13 By the time the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners began their search for an architect to design the new courthouse at East Trade Street, Louis Asbury had designed the several houses in Myers Park, Dilworth, and Elizabeth, as well as the Mt. Carmel Baptist Church and the Morgan School in the Cherry Neighborhood. In 1926, the Board of Commissioners awarded the contract for the new courthouse building to Asbury.

Louis Asbury designed the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in the Neoclassical Style – a uniquely American style using the classical elements from the baroque Beaux-Arts style distilled to their most basic essence. The clean lines, simple ornamentation, and timeless beauty of Neoclassical architecture made it a popular choice for public and civic buildings in the early decades of the twentieth century, and Asbury’s decision to build the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in the Neoclassical style was a logical one. Several of Charlotte’s most impressive public buildings, such as the Charlotte Post Office (now the Charles R. Jonas Federal Building) on West Trade Street, built in 1917 and expanded in 1934, and the Johnston Building, the Charlotte National Bank, the First National Bank, and Hotel Charlotte – all of which were built in the flurry of building activity that characterized the 1920s in center-city Charlotte – utilized the Neoclassical style.14

The Mecklenburg County Courthouse is an imposing three-story, rectangular limestone building, topped with a recessed structure that served as the county’s jailhouse until the 1960s and supported by a foundation fashioned from locally quarried granite. The building is set on a large, manicured plot of land, fronted by mature gingko and Southern magnolia trees. The façade of the building, facing East Trade Street, is dominated by a shallow recessed portico supported by ten massive fluted Corinthian columns and accessed by a broad granite stairway that spans the entire length of the portico. The façade features regularly punctuated fenestration – the third floor windows are original arched multi-paned windows, while the smaller, more modest openings on the first floor, second floor, and basement level seem to be modern replacements. An elaborate Corinthian entablature, featuring a delicate dentil mold, egg and dart detailing and modillion brackets, encircles the entire top perimeter of the building and is topped with a recessed balustrade designed to mask equipment and ductwork housed on the rooftop.       Three pairs of original paneled bronze doors, set in stone encased openings spaced evenly under the façade’s central portico, form the Courthouse’s impressive main entranceway.       Egg and dart molding along the edge of the doors mimics the detailing in the building’s entablature.       A transom window with original patterned cast iron grills and large stone pediment crown each of the main doorways.       The building’s side elevations feature secondary entrances sheltered by flat roof porches supported by Doric columns – the original glass and bronze doors and transom windows (which mimic the main entrance) remain on both elevations. The side elevations also feature original arched windows similar to those on the facade. The rear elevation, facing 4^th Street, was designed by Asbury to be nearly as monumental and impressive as the Courthouse’s façade. A slightly smaller portico, supported by four Corinthian columns, forms the center of the rear elevation. Large bays flanking the portico feature Corinthian pilasters alternating with vertical rows of windows. Simple, relatively unadorned wings project from each end of the rear elevation.

Louis Asbury

The interior of the building has been remodeled extensively over the past sixty years – the original courtrooms have been transformed into various offices, and the entire east wing on the first floor was given over in the early 1990s       to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Law and Government Library. Although the interior retains most of its original polished marble floors and high marble wainscoting, as well as the original wrought iron and marble staircases, the interior as it stands now bears little resemblance to Asbury’s plan. The courthouse’s once spacious courtrooms, which formed the heart of Asbury’s design, have been partitioned and extensively remodeled into small office spaces.       The original plaster ceilings have been covered with dropped ceilings, which are themselves partially concealed by masses of large ductwork, painted white. The first floor east wing and west wings are partitioned by clear glass walls and clear glass doors, and thus are still clearly visible from the middle of the hall. The second and third floors have been extensively altered to accommodate the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s office. One of the most impressive spaces inside the Courthouse, the rooftop jail (considered at the time to be a masterful solution to the concerns of nearby residents), is now, according to Building Superintendent Roger Ellison, used mainly for storage.       The second story of the jail space is the only well-preserved area of the building.

Despite the fact that much of the decorative marble-work and details such as the wrought iron staircase balustrades remain, the interior of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse as a whole has lost much of its original integrity, and should not be considered for designation.

Within the past two decades, many of center city Charlotte’s most impressive historic structures have been demolished.       Little evidence remains of the building boom that transformed the city’s built environment in the 1920s. Such structures as the Johnson Building and Hotel Charlotte no longer grace the Charlotte skyline.       The Mecklenburg County Courthouse, along with its neighbor, C. C. Hook’s City Hall Building, remain as an integral part of the center city landscape and a tangible reminder of Charlotte’s progress and development as a leading New South city in the early 1920s.          

 

 

1. Thomas Hanchett, “The Growth of Charlotte: A History” (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission), p. 15.
2. “Report on the Mecklenburg County Courthouse” (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, 1977), p. 2.
3. The Charlotte Observer, July 29, 1923, p.1.
4. “Report on the Mecklenburg County Courthouse,” p. 4.
5. Minute Book 1916-1925 of the Board of County Commissioner of Mecklenburg County, p. 349-544.
6. Ibid.
7. “Report on the Mecklenburg County Courthouse,” p. 4.
8. The Charlotte Observer, March 11, 1928, p.1.
9. Lew Powell, “The Courthouse That Sis Built:           All Consuming Renovation Plans Strain Committee,”           The Charlotte Observer, March 24, 1988, p. 6C.             Gary Wright, “The Courthouse? You Can’t Miss Them,” The Charlotte Observer, May 24, 1988, p. 1C.
10. Ibid.
11. Thomas Hanchett, “Charlotte Architecture: Design Through Time,” (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission).
12. Dr. Dan L. Morrill, “Survey and Research Report for the Textile Mill Supply Company Building” (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, 1998), p.5.
13. Jack A. Boyte, “Architectural Description of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse” (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, 1977), p. 2.
14. Hanchett, “The Growth of Charlotte,” p. 15-16.

1. Name and location of the property:  The property known as the McQuay House is located at 3200 Tuckaseegee  Road, Charlotte, North Carolina.

2. Name and address of the present owner of the property is: 

Edgar McQuay

      1112 3rd Avenue NW

      Conover, N.C. 28613

      (828) 464-3279

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. UTM coordinate:  17 510556E  3900220N

 

6. Current deed book and tax parcel information for the property:

The most recent deed to this property is recorded in Mecklenburg County Deed Book

17354 on page 629. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is 06504211.

 

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:

 

1. Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance:  The Commission judges that the property known as the McQuay House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.  The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations:

 

1. The McQuay House, originally the home of Robert E. McQuay, was built by his brother, John B. McQuay, in 1882.  The domicile served as a farmhouse on a 13 acre parcel of land, and exists as a physical reminder of the rural landscape of Mecklenburg County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

2. The McQuay House features Folk Victorian architectural elements, which were inspired by the Queen Anne Style and popular during the 1880s.  The wraparound porch, added in the early 1920s, represents the free classical style, which was a common decorative detailing subtype among Queen Anne homes. The property’s existing outbuildings include a gabled, wood garage, and a dilapidated chicken house.

 

3. The McQuay House, located approximately two miles from the center of center city Charlotte, is now surrounded by residential development on all sides.  Despite the home’s altered surroundings, the McQuay House still retains the physical integrity of a rural domicile.

 

 

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 McQuay House meets this criterion.

 

10. 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 McQuay House is $73,200.00.  The current total appraised value of the house is $58,700.00.  The current total appraised value of the lot is $8,100.00.  The current total value of the outbuildings is $6,400.00.
11. Portion of the property recommended for designation:  The exterior and interior of the McQuay House, and the property associated with the tax parcel are recommended for historic designation.

Date of preparation of this report: May 2005

 

Prepared by: Paul Archambault  and Dr. Dan L. Morrill  

  

Historical Overview

 

     The McQuay House, located on Tuckaseegee Road in Charlotte, N.C., was built in 1882 by John B. McQuay for his brother, Robert E. McQuay.  Members of the McQuay Family continuously occupied the house from 1882 until 2002.[1]  At the time of its construction, the dwelling sat on a thirteen-acre farm and was situated approximately two miles from the center of Charlotte.[2]  The home presently sits on a two-acre lot but serves as a reminder of the rural lifestyle and landscape that existed in Mecklenburg County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Developmental pressures have virtually destroyed much of Mecklenburg County’s rural built environment.  The growth and prosperity of Charlotte and its environs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, resulting largely from the rise of the railroad, textile mills, and banks, created an increase in urbanization and a decline of rural communities. The McQuay House, therefore, possesses special significance as an artifact of Mecklenburg County’s rural heritage.

     The McQuay property has a compelling history.  Thomas Hale McQuay, great-great grandfather of the present owner, Edgar E. McQuay, purchased 110 acres of land in 1817 where the McQuay House currently stands. The builder of the house was Robert E. McQuay, son of James and Margaret McQuay, who was born in 1851 and grew up working on the McQuay farm.  In 1881, Robert married Virginia Rhyne of Gaston County and a year later constructed the present Folk Victorian home with the assistance of John McQuay, his brother.[3]  The cross-gabled dwelling, inspired by the Queen Anne style, was popular among farmsteads during the late nineteenth century and was feasible to construct because the railroad system in Mecklenburg County made embellished pre-cut lumber more available to builders of the traditional folk house forms.[4]

     Robert McQuay made his living by growing produce for sale in Charlotte.  The primary crops cultivated on the farm were corn, fruit, and a variety of vegetables.  Robert was also an apiculturist.  He constructed bee boxes to extract honey from the hives for profit at the market. The family also raised animals, including cows and chickens.  Robert and the family often traveled two miles to the market in Charlotte to sell the produce and vegetables which he grew on the farm.  The McQuays were able to maintain a self-sufficient lifestyle from the 1880s until the 1930s and make a modest living from the sale of their crops.[5] 

     Edgar H. McQuay, son of Robert and Virginia, was born in 1897 and began laboring on the farm at an early age.  In 1904, the death of Edgar’s father caused Edgar to leave school after only four years and help support his mother and sister, Nona.  To supplement his income,  Edgar worked at nearby Lakewood Park from 1910 until 1915.  The park, constructed by Edward Dilworth Latta  in 1910, was located behind the farm and served as a major amusement center for white Charlotteans.  It contained facilities for swimming, boating, a merry-go-round, various rides, a dance pavilion, and a zoo.  The streetcar extended its line to Lakewood Park to bring visitors from the city.[6] 

    By 1910, approximately one-half of the residents of  Mecklenburg County  lived within the Charlotte city limits.[7]   Farmers in Charlotte’s surrounding countryside understandably began to sell their land to developers, because it proved to be more profitable.  Also, the destruction of cotton crops by the boll weevil prompted many farmers to pursue more stable jobs in the factories.[8]   Edgar H. McQuay secured employment with the Ford Motor Company in 1915 to increase his income.[9]  In 1925, Edgar began working in Ford’s new assembly plant on Statesville Road where Model Ts and Model As were built.[10]  Edgar was able to maintain his job throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s because of his hard work ethic and good reputation with the company.

 Edgar H. and Maude McQuay reared two girls and two boys.  The McQuay children, in their spare time, performed routine farming and household duties in the early morning and evening.  Edgar E. McQuay, born in 1928, recalls helping his father construct bee boxes in the wood shop.[11]  The children attended grades one through six at the Glenwood Elementary School, which was located within the city limits.  Edgar remembers attending the city school free of charge, because of the proximity of the family’s homeplace to Charlotte. The McQuay House, according to the Charlotte City Directory, became part of Charlotte in 1939.  After leaving Glenwood School, Edgar E., and his siblings, James, Martha, and Juanita, attended grades seven through eleven at the Thomasboro High School, which was located on Bradford Drive.[12]

   The growth of the McQuay Family in the 1920s and 1930s caused Edgar, Sr. to make several changes to the house. In the 1910s, electricity was added; and outbuildings were constructed on the property, which included a barn, garage, and chicken houses.   The domicile originally featured a simple shed roof porch over the main entrance; but in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Edgar completed a wraparound porch with classical columns.  In addition, he added a kitchen, back porch (“sleeping porch”), and pump house at the rear of the dwelling.  A bathroom was built in the 1940s and subsequently converted into a kitchen, which was completed with a stove, sink, and cabinets in 1948.[13] 

   The Agricultural Adjustment Administration Act, part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, reduced crop acreage and livestock production, and as a result affected the economic viability of the McQuay Farm.[14]  The family began to disperse and eventually sold eleven acres in the 1940s to developers after the death of Edgar H. McQuay in 1938 and his mother in 1946.   Edgar, Sr.’s married sister, Nona Stone, built a home and resided directly west of the McQuay House where the Solo gas station and convenience store are presently located.  Juanita McQuay moved into a duplex west of her aunt’s house on the corner of Tuckaseegee Road and McQuay Road after she married Jack Treat.[15] Edgar, Jr. and younger brother, James, left home in the 1950s for military service and college at North Carolina State for engineering and horticulture, respectively.  Juanita moved to Steele Creek with her husband; but Maude and her daughter, Martha, remained in the house.  Maude died in 1981, and willed the home and property to her daughter. Martha worked for Southern Bell Telephone Company until her retirement and resided in the dwelling until 2002, when she moved to Park Road and conveyed the property to Edgar.[16] 

Edgar E. McQuay graduated from Thomasboro High School in 1945 and left home for college at North Carolina State.  He paid his way through school with the G.I. Bill, because work was limited with the returning World War II veterans. He received a degree in engineering at N.C. State, and moved to Sharon, PA from 1951 until 1956 to work at Westinghouse.[17]  Edgar returned to Charlotte and received a job at Douglas Aircraft Company where they assembled missiles.[18]  Douglas Aircraft was located in the same building where the Ford Motor Company had existed and where Edgar, Sr. had worked over thirty years earlier. 

Edgar lived at the McQuay House for a year and made several changes to the home’s front entrance, hallway, front bedroom, and sleeping porch. He married Barbara Jean Williams in February 1958, and later had a son and daughter. In 1959, they moved to Conover when he was hired at General Electric.  They continue to reside there today.  His brother, James, received a job in the horticulture department at Duke University and lives in Durham, N.C. [19]

  

Physical Description

 

Site Description

 

The McQuay House is located  in Mecklenburg County at 3200 Tuckaseegee Road, approximately two miles west of center city Charlotte.  The house sits on a two-acre lot and is situated approximately one hundred feet north of Tuckaseegee Road.  A gravel driveway, which extends to the rear of the dwelling, is located directly west of the house. Several trees, bushes, and shrubs adorn the front yard.  Outbuildings include a wood, gable-roofed garage, which sits approximately twenty feet northeast of the domicile, two dilapidated chicken houses behind the garage, and a gable-roofed pump house, which is attached to the rear of the home.  A patch of woods stands between the rear of the house and a  residential development, and a large lot owned by Edgar E. McQuay, bordered on the east by Opal Street, is located directly east of the abode.    The Solo gas station and convenient store, and McQuay Avenue sit directly west of the McQuay property.

 

Architectural Description

 

Exterior

 

The McQuay House is a one-and-a-half story, Folk Victorian, cross-gabled house with Queen Anne Style elements, and is three-bays wide and two-bays deep.  The dwelling is covered with wood siding, and rests on brick piers, which have been infilled with block. The facade’s moderately pitched roof features two patterned, wood-shingled gables with rectangular, wooden vents.  The larger gable is aligned with the west elevation, and a lower gable rests above and between the front entrance and one-over-one, sash window.  The front-end gable protrudes slightly from the facade, which features two, original one-over-one, sash windows, and a metal replacement door with a decorative, wood surround, and rectangular, transom windows on both sides, which were added by Edgar E. McQuay in 1957.  A wraparound porch, added in the late 1910s and early 1920s, stretches along most of the front facade, and extends to the center of the east elevation.  The porch roof is supported by full height, white, classical columns, with porch railings in between the columns.  A low-pitched, gable rises from the porch roof above the concrete steps, which are surrounded by an original, fieldstone foundation on both sides.  The original porch roof was a simple, shed roof above a wooden door with a deocrative glass border.

 

The east elevation features two, one-over-one, sash windows with an exterior chimney located in between them.  The wraparound porch extends to the end of the east elevation.  A shed roof addition, which features three replacement windows, extends from the rear of the east elevation, and wraps around to the back porch.  The addition was constructed by Edgar H. McQuay in the 1920s, and served as a screened porch, or more commonly known to the McQuay Family as the “sleeping porch.”   Edgar E. McQuay converted this addition into a room for his sister, Juanita, and her husband, Jack Treat, in 1945-1946, and into a bathroom in 1948.

 

The west elevation includes two, two-over-two sash windows, and several additions, which extend from its rear elevation.  A one-room gable-and-end addition, which served as the kitchen and bathroom, extends from the rear elevation.  It was constructed by Edgar H. McQuay in the late 1910s and early 1920s to accommodate the growing family.  The shed roof extension near the kitchen, which served as the bathroom, was later converted as additional kitchen space in 1948.  Maude McQuay had it refurbished, and it included a sink, oven, and cabinets.  Edgar E. McQuay moved the bathroom to the “sleeping porch” addition the same year. 

 

The rear elevation features a gabled pump house with three bracketed ends, and a shed roof porch supported by square, wood posts.  The porch has a stone foundation, and includes a replacement door, which originally was a window at the rear of the house.  The well used by Robert and Virginia McQuay in the late nineteenth century was located directly behind the house, and later was surrounded by the stone foundation and covered by the porch’s concrete surface.   Another well was dug in the early 1900s by Edgar H. McQuay, and later covered by the present wood, gable-roofed wellhouse.  The well was used by the family until the 1940s.  The remainder of the rear elevation of the house includes concrete steps, which extend from the shed porch, and the enclosed porch where the bathroom is located. 

 

Interior

 

The domicile, originally a hall-and-parlor with a master bedroom and a dining room/kitchen, experienced several changes from the 1910s until the late 1950s.  The pine floor in the master bedroom and the dining room, baseboards, door and window surrounds, and fireplace mantles are original. Edgar E. McQuay lowered the ceiling from eleven feet two inches to eight-and-half feet in the late 1940s.  Some of the architectural features in the home’s interior have been damaged because of vandalism during the abode’s vacancy during the past two years

 

The front entrance of the dwelling leads into a sitting room, which used to be the hallway.  In 1957, Edgar E. McQuay removed the west wall of the hallway, reducing the size of the master bedroom, and enlarging the hall space to accommodate guests in the sitting room.  Edgar, in addition, added a closet, which is west of the front entrance.  The room’s original pine floor was replaced with an oak floor.

 

The master bedroom, located west of the sitting room, includes two closets, two windows, and a fireplace, which is double-sided.  The chimney used for the fireplace was destroyed by a storm.  This room functioned as the family bedroom from 1882 until the 1940s, and Maude McQuay occupied the bedroom after her children moved from the home.  The fireplace, on the north wall of the room, has a ceramic tile surround, and once had an oak mantle with a large mirror above it.  However, during the past two years, the mirror was damaged and the mantle was stolen from the domicile.  Directly to the west of the fireplace is an original closet, which was a novelty feature of new homes in the 1880s.  An additional closet was added on the east wall in the 1950s.  A one-over-one, sash window, and a two-over-two, sash window are located on the south wall and west wall, respectively.  The bedroom door and closet door are original, and the walls are covered with wood paneling.

 

Located to the east of the sitting room is the entrance to the parlor.  It features two, one-over-one, sash windows on the east wall with a fireplace, and a one-over-one sash window on the south wall.  The fireplace includes an original, decorative, wood mantle.  The room, used for the family’s special events, served as the location for Juanita McQuay and Jack Treat’s wedding ceremony.  Edgar E. McQuay converted the parlor into a bedroom for his older sister, Martha, and added a closet on the room’s north wall in 1957.

 

The dining room and its entrance are located north of the sitting room and master bedroom.  This room once functioned as the kitchen and gathering place for family meals, and as the bedroom for Robert’s mother, Virginia.  When Edgar and Maude’s family grew in the 1920s and 1930s, a kitchen was added to the north wall of the room (rear of the house). The fireplace surrounded by a decorative, wood mantle, located on the south wall, served as the dwelling’s primary cooking area, and a coal burning stove was later added.  Edgar E. McQuay remembers the meals prepared in the room, as well as heating water on the stove for bathing. The dining room also features an original closet, located to the west of the fireplace, a two-over-two, sash window on the west wall, and the entrance to the bathroom and additional bedroom. 

 

The entrance to the kitchen is located on the north wall of the dining room.  The kitchen, added in the late 1910s and early 1920s, included cabinets, a large table, and benches for meals.  In addition, it later served as a laundry room. The walls feature three- foot, wood baseboards, a multi-paned, wood door (originally a window) on the north wall leading to the back porch, and a multi-paned, wood door on the east wall.  A bathroom was added to the west of the kitchen, and was later refurbished to accommodate cabinets, a stove, and sink.  The bathroom was moved to the “sleeping porch” in 1948.

 

Edgar E. McQuay converted the “sleeping porch” to a bathroom and bedroom, which was built for his sister, Juanita, and her husband, Jack in the 1940s.  The bedroom features a closet, and two replacement windows on the east wall and north (rear) wall.  In between the bathroom and bedroom is a small hallway with cabinets, and features an original door, which leads to the sitting room.  Before the addition of the screened porch, this door served as the rear entrance of the house.

 

 

 

[1] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] McAlester, Lee and Virginia. A Field Guide to American Houses.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 310.

 

[5] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

 

[6] Ibid.

[7] Blythe, LeGette and Brockmann, Charles R. Hornet’s Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg

                County, p. 262.

[8] Hanchett, Thomas, and Sumner, Ryan.  Images of America: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont.

Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003, p. 36.

[9] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

 

 

[10] Hanchett, Thomas, and Sumner, Ryan.  Images of America: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont.

Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003, p. 89.

[11] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

 

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Historic Rural Resources in Mecklenburg County, North, Carolina.” (Modern Era)

[15] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

 

 

[16] Mecklenburg County Deed Book 14265, Page 502.

[17] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.

 

 

 

[18] Blythe, LeGette and Brockmann, Charles R. Hornet’s Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg

                County, p. 301.

 

[19] Edgar E. McQuay, Interview, January 4, 2005.