HIGHLAND PARK MANUFACTURING COMPANY MILL NO. 3

This report was written on December 3, 1986

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 is located at 2901 N. Davidson Street, Charlotte, North Carolina.

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

Highland Park Group, Inc.
200 Queens Rd. Suite 200
Charlotte, NC 28204

Telephone: (704) 377-4700

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 5223, page 325. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is: 083-078-01.

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 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 Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) the Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3, erected in 1903-04, was designed by Stuart Warren Cramer, an architect of regional note who specialized in textile mill and textile mill village architecture; 2) the Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 was prominently featured in Cramer’s book, Useful Information for Cotton Manufacturers, Vol. 3, and, therefore, influenced the design and arrangement of other textile mills; 3) the Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 was one of the first textile mills in North Carolina designed for electric operation; and 4) the Old Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 served as an active mill and the centerpiece of the North Charlotte mill community from 1904 until 1969.

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 Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3 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 $222,330. The current appraised value of the 9.28 acres of land is $222,020. The total appraised value of the property is $444,350. The property is zoned I2.

Date of Preparation of this Report: December 3, 1986

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

Telephone: (704) 376-9115

 

Historical Overview

 

Dr. William H. Huffman

The Highland Park Manufacturing Company Mill No. 3, located in the 2900 block of N. Davidson Street, was built in 1903-4 and was by far one of the largest in the area. Along with two other mills constructed that year (the Hoskins and neighboring Mecklenburg), it was one of the last cotton mills to be built in or near Charlotte, and one of the last to close, in 1969. (Johnston Manufacturing Co., located between the Highland Park #3 and Mecklenburg [later Mercury] mills, was the last built, 1913, and the last to close, in 1975).

When Charlotte made the transition from being primarily a cotton trading center to a cotton manufacturing one in the period from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, a New South industrialization movement spearheaded by Daniel Augustus Tompkins (1852-1914), the Highland Park Manufacturing Co. was intimately a part of this progression. The city’s first mill was the Charlotte Cotton Mills (now the location of Speizman Industries on West Fifth Street), which started up in 1881 under the direction of R. M. Oates, a cotton broker. A year later, D. A. Tompkins, a South Carolina native who was educated and trained in manufacturing in the North, came to the city as a representative of the Westinghouse Company.

 

He quickly became aware of the potential for building cotton mills in the area, and so in 1884 he set up his own design, contracting and machine shop business, the D. A. Tompkins Co. Over a thirty-two year period, Tompkins built over one hundred cotton mills, fertilizer works, electric light plants and ginneries. He also changed the region’s cotton oil, formerly a waste product, into a major industry through the building of about two hundred processing plants and organizing one of his own, the Southern Cotton Oil Company.² Tompkins efforts started to appear in rapid succession in Charlotte when his company built the Alpha, Ada and Victor mills in 1888-9, the city’s second, third and fourth mills. On June 15, 1891, at the first stockholders meeting of the “Gingham Mill,” which was to be the city’s fifth mill, a board of directors was elected. At the meeting on January 11, 1892, a committee of D. A. Tompkins and two others suggested the name Highland Park Manufacturing Co., which was adopted, and the company’s Mill No. 1 was brought into operation on N. Brevard Street at Twelfth later that year. R. H. Jordan, who owned the drugstore at the southeast corner of Trade and Tryon, was elected the company’s first president. He was followed by Vinton Liddell in 1893 and W. E. Halt in 1895.

Accepting the offer of J. S. Spencer, president of the Commercial National Bank and secretary of Highland Park Manufacturing, Charles Worth Johnston (1861-1941) also joined the company in 1892, and was elected treasurer and secretary of the board of directors in 1895. Johnston was a native of Cabarrus County, attended Davidson College, and had been superintendent of the Cornelius Mills (controlled by Stough Cornelius), his first place of employment.

After expanding the original mill in 1895 and 1896, Highland Park branched out by buying Standard Mills in Rock Hill, SC at a public sale in 1898, which became Mill No. 2. At a board meeting in January, 1903, it was decided to expand the capital stock from the original $125,000 to $700,000 par value to finance the construction of a newer and much larger mill. The site chosen for Highland Park No. 3 was the location of the municipal water works at the far edge of the Wadsworth farm, located about one mile north of Mill No. 1 (the “Gingham Mills”) and about two miles from the Square. Construction on the half-million dollar plant began on March 2, 1903, for which a brickmaking plant was set up at the site. The mill was designed by Stuart W. Cramer, whose engineering firm designed and equipped many mills in the region (see Figures 1-3). Two other contractors on the job were R. A. Brown of Concord, who did the brickwork, and A. K. Lostin of Gastonia, the installer of the woodwork. In addition to the new mill, which had 30,000 spindles, 1,000 looms and over 800 employees, making it fifty percent larger than the second-largest Louise Mill, Highland Park also constructed a $100,000 power generating plant on Sugar Creek to run both the Gingham Mill (Mill No. 1) and the new Mill No. 3 (see Figure 1). The 2000-horsepower plant made the two factories the first electrically driven mills in North Carolina.⁸

When it was completed in November, 1904, the Highland Park Mill No. 3, which also specialized in making ginghams, took its place as the city’s largest, and the company as a whole was also the biggest until the Chadwick-Hoskins Co. was formed in 1908 (a merger of the Hoskins, Chadwick, Calvine (Alpha), Louise and Pineville mills.). But it was not just a cotton mill that was built in the then-rural area, it involved the establishment of an entire community, which became known as North Charlotte. Originally eighty mill houses, white frame dwellings in several blocks of neat rows across from the mill, were built, and more were added later. A quarter of a mile up the extension of Brevard Street another mill was being put up in 1904, the Mecklenburg (later Mercury), and eventually a third (Johnston Manufacturing Co., 1913) was built between the first two, both of which also had their own areas of mill houses. The North Charlotte community thrived for many years, complete with hotel, a mercantile business with stores and lodge rooms above, and drug and grocery stores.

In 1906, C. W. Johnston became president of Highland Park Manufacturing, and not long afterward began an aggressive program of expansion by acquisition and consolidation to build what was known as the Johnston chain. Beginning with the acquisition of Anchor Mills, eventually there were thirteen Carolinas mills under Johnston ownership, including the newly-built Johnston Manufacturing Company of 1913. As a visible monument to the success of the textile enterprise, in 1924 the Johnston Building was built on S. Tryon Street to house the corporate headquarters and other offices.¹⁰

When C. W. Johnston stepped down as president of Highland Park in 1938, he was succeeded by his son, R. Horace Johnston, who led the firm until his own death in the early Fifties. The last president of the company, David R. Johnston, who was C. W.’s grandson, headed Highland Park until its dissolution in June, 1969, when all textile manufacturing ceased at the plant. When the other Johnston mills in North Charlotte closed in 1975, there was a distinct passing from one time into another for the mill community.¹¹

The fading paint on the water tower still says “Highland Park Mfg. Co.” on it, and the nearly as original North Charlotte mill building and its tidy rows of mill houses still stand solidly as a clear reminder of the base industry which was almost solely responsible for Charlotte’s growth and prosperity in the late nineteenth century and three-fourths of the twentieth: textile manufacturing, mostly cotton. With the city rapidly becoming a diversified commercial and manufacturing center, its all-important cotton-mill heritage is in danger of being forgotten, and thus lost in the rush to modernity.

 

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NOTES

¹ William H. Huffman, “A Historical Sketch of the Charlotte Cotton Mills,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, August, 1983.

² William H. Huffman, “A Historical Sketch of the Charlotte Supply Company,” Charlotte Supply Company, August, 1983.

³ Dan Morrill, “A Survey of Cotton Mills in Charlotte,” Charlotte Meckenburg Historic Properties Commission, October, 1979.

⁴ Letter from Highland Park Manufacturing Company, undated (c. 1964) in vertical file at Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library.

⁵ Ibid.; Charlotte Observer, July 5, 1941, p. 1.

⁶ Letter, note 4.

⁷ Record of Corporations, Book 1, p. 337.

⁸ Charlotte Observer, Feb. 27, 1903, p. 4; Ibid., June 18, 1903, p. 6; Stuart W. Cramer, Useful Information For Cotton Manufacturers (Charlotte: Queen City Printing Co., 1906) 2nd ed.; Vol. III, pp. 1227-1298.

⁹ Charlotte Observer, June 18, 1903, p. 6; Ibid., Aug. 4, 1904, p. 4.

¹⁰ Letter, note 4; Charlotte Observer, July 5, 1941, p. 1.

¹¹ Letter, note 4; Articles of Dissolution, Record of Corporations, Book 14C, p. 481; Charlotte News, March 13, 1975, p. 1.

 

Architectural Description

 

Thomas W. Hanchett

The Highland Park #3 Mill in the Charlotte’s North Charlotte industrial district was the largest textile factory in the county when it opened about 1904, one of the state’s first mills designed for electric operation.¹ It soon become one of the South’s best-known mills, for its architect was Charlottean Stuart Warren Cramer. Cramer, credited with designing and/or equipping “nearly one-third of the new cotton mills in the South” between 1895 and 1915, used this factory as a showcase of his techniques. Over seventy pages of his influential book Useful Information for Cotton Manufacturers Volume 3 ( 1906) are devoted to drawings and photographs of the mill and its machinery layouts.³ Twenty-four of those pages focus on the architecture of the main building itself, including facade elevations, structural drawings, specifications for contractors, and even detailed drawings of cast-iron column capitals and wooden windows and doors.

Highland Park #3 remained a working mill until 1969.⁴ Additions were made. Windows were bricked in. Clerestories were removed from the roofs. Cramer’s original machinery, including his pioneering efforts at air conditioning, gave way to newer technology. New ancillary buildings were constructed and old ones were demolished. After the mill closed, all of its machinery was sold to industrialists in South America, and today only one small section of overhead shafting (possibly part of Cramer’s original layout) survives. Since shutting down, the complex has been used for storage.

Despite all the changes, the Highland Park #3 Mill is a place of exceptional architectural significance to the city of Charlotte and to the South. Highland Park #3 is the only surviving Charlotte building closely associated with Stuart Cramer, the preeminent Southern textile mill architect of his day. Textiles constituted the primary industry in the South for many decades Cramer’s work not only had wide impact on the region but also helped the City of Charlotte emerge as a regional center. Cramer’s residence in the Dilworth neighborhood and his foundry and offices downtown have long since disappeared.

This factory is believed to be the best-documented example of the designer’s work. Taken together, Highland Park #3’s buildings and drawings provide an extraordinarily detailed picture of state-of-the-art mill architecture at the turn of the century. Because Cramer published pages of detailed drawings, it is likely that aspects of Highland Park #3’s architecture were copied throughout the South and beyond.

The Mill Complex

The site slopes sentry down from north to south. The property is bounded on the north, east and south by Thirty-Second Street, North Davidson (originally North Caldwell) Street, and angling Mallory Street. The single-track mainline of the Norfolk and Southern Railroad (1911) runs immediately adjacent to the west side of the mill, paralleled a few hundred feet away by the mainline of the Southern Railway (pre-1900). Both tracks have become part of the new Norfolk Southern Corporation system in recent years.

East across North Davidson Street is the former Highland Park #3 mill village. North of the mill, across Thirty-Second Street, is the red brick Johnston YMCA built in 1951 as a community center for all the North Charlotte mills. Several hundred yards south of the mill, across the Norfolk and Southern track, is the brick Transformer House which once supplied power to the mill. Today all of these structures have separate owners, and none are included in this architectural report. The accompanying map, drawn in 1954 for the Johnston Company by the Associated Factory Mutual Fire Insurance Companies of Boston, shows how the factory complex itself looked in its heyday.

In 1986 the factory consists of five buildings, plus a tall steel water tower. The main structure is the massive “L”-shaped mill, one to two stories tall and built of brick [numbers 1,2,3,4,16,19 on the map]. Within the “L” are two smaller brick buildings: the 1910s and 1920s Dye House (attached to the main mill with a brick passageway after 1954[ number 6 ]), and the original 1904 Boiler House (number 8). Another small brick building, erected in 1904 as a Waste House, is located immediately south of the main mill (number 9). A wooden Gate House (number 5) sits east of the mill, facing North Davidson Street. The water tower, a cylindrical tank atop four tall metal legs, marks the southeastern corner of the property, and still bears the legend “Highland Park Mfg.” in faded black letters.

Until 1986, the complex also included several other buildings. Most interesting was a large multi-bay cotton warehouse (numbers 11-15), facing Mallory Street and built of wood with brick firewalls. It was part of Cramer’s original design, and included a pneumatic piping system to blow cotton directly into the mill. There were also a pair of newer free-standing concrete water tanks near the boiler house (a huge cylindrical 350,000 gallon main reservoir (number 22) and a smaller square back-up tank, two Valve Houses which controlled flow from the tanks, a pair of small free-standing wooden Pump Houses, and a large wood-frame shed (number 10) attached to the machine shop. A small frame Waiting Room steed next to the North Davidson Street gets. According to the owner, these structures had become deteriorated, and all were bulldozed.

The Main Building

The main mill, taken as a whole, is a large “L”-shaped brick structure. The brick was made on the site. A gentle gable roof with virtually no eaves runs the length of each leg of the “L.” The wood and glass clerestories, shown running along the ridgelines in Cramer’s drawings, are gone except in one small area. Most of the tall, segmental-arched windows which originally lit the main floors have been bricked in, though a number of basement window openings remain. The interior structure is primarily of wood, with regularly-spaced round columns topped by cast-iron capitals, upon which rest massive wooden beams and floor-planking.

Exterior towers in a variety of sizes are placed at irregular intervals around the perimeter of the building. Wooden mill construction could be surprisingly fire-resistant, but only as long as there was no way for flames to spread from floor to floor. All stairways, elevator shafts, and even bathrooms with their vertical plumbing shafts were confined to towers outside the building itself. The smallest towers shown on Cramer’s plans were windowless and held elevator shafts. Next in size were the stair towers, each of which had a water tank at the top. Largest were the “closet towers” which held men’s and women’s washrooms (fixtures still extant). The outsides of the stair towers and closet towers boosted the mill’s fanciest brickwork: segmental-arched windows, corbelled brick cornices with rend “bullseye” windows above, and castle-like crenellated parapets. Today the cornices and bullseye windows may still be seen, but the segmental arches have been filled in and the parapets have been rebuilt, except on one tower. The exception, fortunately, is the tall main tower lasted on the west side of the building. It served as the front entrance to the mill (the original stair with tongue-and-groove woodwork and painted advertisements for textile machinery components is well-preserved inside). This tower’s elaborately corbelled cornices and windows and doorways were intended to impress visitors to Charlotte, which is why it faces the Southern Railway mainline rather than Davidson Street.

The huge building may be thought of as a number of smaller structures joined together to form the “L.” Though conceived and executed at the same time, these units are divided by thick brick firewalls, which in fact make them into distinctly separate spaces. As we move through the factory from south to north (approximately following the manufacturing path from raw cotton to woven cloth) we shall use the space names designated on Stuart Cramer’s published plans.

The Card and Spinning Room (number 1) takes up two-thirds of the south leg of the “L,” a space 214′ x 128′ in size. It is two stories tall with no besetment. An addition to house massive air-conditioning equipment (still extant) was made to the west side sometime between 1929 and 1954. Inside the main space, four rows of close-spaced wooden columns ( 8’x25′ costars) provide interior support. The second story housed the spinning machines. The first story held clubbing and recording machinery, driven by an arrangement of electric motors, metal shafts and leather belts. Today four long shafts run one-third the length of the space, suspended from the ceiling beams over the area where the “Revolving Top Flat Cards,” originally stood. An electric motor still drives each shaft. The shafting corresponds with that shown in Useful Information for Cotton Manufacturers, and it may hold a high degree of significance as a last remnant of Cramer’s machinery design.

The rest of the south leg of the “L” is devoted to the Lapper Room and Dye House (number 2 and 3). As designed by Cramer these were two separate units divided by a brick firewall, with different window arrangements and even different floor levels. The Lapper Room held warping machines on its upper floor and lapping machines on its lower floor. The Dye House had no lower level. Instead, its upper floor was dropped six feet to accommodate dying machinery. Sometime between 1911 and 1929 a larger Dye House was erected outside the main building and after 1929 major changes were made to the old area. The second story of the firewall between the Lapper Room and the original Dye House was torn out, and a new floor was put in, making the area one large space. A small addition was made to the west side about 1945. It is interesting, however, that despite the interior changes, this area is the only part of the building which retains its original clerestories. Two wood and glass units rise above the roof-line to provide abundant natural light to the interior.

The largest part of the main mill is the Weave Room (number 41), which makes up the entire north leg of the “L.” It is 446′ x 128′ and is one-story tall with a partially exposed full basement. Its main floor is at the same height as the second story of the Card and Spinning Room, due to the natural slope of the site. The original wooden columns in the high-ceiling main space have been replaced with metal ones. An interesting detail that remains is the “tobacco spit gutter” that runs at baseboard level around the outside walls. A wood and glass interior wall, now partially destroyed, divides the west end off from the cavernous main space. In the basement, structural changes have also been made, but some of the wooden columns survive.

The last era of great prosperity for Charlotte textile mills was the mid 1940s, when World War II military production pumped money into the industry. About 1946 Johnston Mills added a New Weave Room to Highland Park #3 (numbers 16 and 19). Located on the north side of the original Weave Room, the new one-story building featured brick exterior walls and a steel structure. At about the same time, the stairtower on the north facade of the original Weave Room was demolished and a new tower was constructed at the southeast corner.

The Boiler House and the Waste House

The Boiler House (number 8) shown in detail in Stuart Cramer’s drawings still stands near the Card and Spinning Room. Its trapezoidal shape conformed to a now-vanished railroad siding. Though its crenellated parapet has been rebuilt, and its arched door and windows have been bricked in, one can still see the corbelled cornice.

Nearby is the Waste House (number 1), a flat-roofed rectangular building angled to fit the same rail siding. Cotton waste would be collected here from the plant for shipment to companies which converted it to bearing-packing for railroad cars, among other uses. Cramer did not publish drawings of the structure, but its segmental arched windows match those elsewhere in the plant. Unlike the main building, much of Cramer’s original window work remains intact here.

The Dye How and the Gate House

The Dye House, a separate one-story brick building added between 1911 and 1929, is the mill’s largest ancillary structure, 54′ x 174.’ It retains its monitor roof. The building may be built atop a natural spring, for there is a large pump set into one side of the main floor. Between 1929 and 1954 an large awkward-looking addition was made at the southeast corner. Inside this addition is a raised concrete floor intended to hold dye vats. After 1954 a one-story brick passageway was added to connect the Dye House to the main mill.

Near the Dye House is the one-story frame Gate House. Cramer’s plans showed a smaller guardhouse near this spot facing North Davidson Street. The more spacious Gate House was probably erected soon after 1911 when the new roadbed of the Norfolk and Southern crowded next to the west entrance tower. The Gate House has a high hip roof with triangular side vents. The wooden walls have been covered with artificial siding, and an addition has been made to the front. Its interior has been remodeled as well.

 

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NOTES

¹ Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Printing for the State of North Carolina, 1904, pp.93-97. Experiments with electric textile production been in the late 1880s or early 1890s, but have not been well documented. The first new mill in the United States constructed expressly for electric operation was the 1899 Olympia Mill in Columbia, South Carolina. The February 27,1903 Charlotte Observer proclaimed that Highland Park No. 3 would “be the first electric driven. mill in North Carolina.” For more on electrification see Sydney B. Paine, “Electric Power as Applied to Textile Machinery,” in Marjorie Young, ad. Textile Leaders of the South (Columbia, SC: James R. Young, 1963), pp.884-686.

² Young,ad. Textile Leaders of the South, pp.50-51, 744. Themes R. Navin, The Whitin Machine Works Since 1831: A Textile Machinery Company in an Industrial Village (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), pp.217-235.

³ Stuart W. Cramer, Useful Information for Cotton Manufacturers ,volume 3 (Charlotte?: Stuart Cramer, 1906), pp. 1227- 1297. It is likely that photos of machinery layouts elsewhere in the books were taken at Highland Park # 3.

⁴ Charlotte Observer, September 7,1986. The “Mecklenburg Neighbors” section is devoted to North Charlotte.

⁵ Charlotte Observer, June 18,1903.

Hermitage Court Gateways

Hermitage Court – 1912

By Dr. Dan L. Morrill
July 2, 1980

On February 28, 1912, the Charlotte Observer annouced that Floyd M. Simmons of the Simmons Company, a local real estate firm, had purchased a tract of land which was contiguous with Myers Park, the elegant streetcar suburb which the Stephens Company had recently begun. John Nolen (1869-1937), the landscape architect for Myers Park, also designed the Simmons developement, which was named “Hermitage Court.” ¹ Hermitage Court opened on October 10, 1912. ² Among the amenities of the suburb were massive entrance gates at either end of the boulevard. ³ “It is believed by the developers these gateways will lend a tone and exclusiveness to the suburb which could be derived in no other way, “the Charlotte Observer reported on March 21, 1912. ⁴ Construction of the gateways was in progress by early September 1912. ⁵ They were finished before the offical opening of Hermitage Court on October 10, 1912. The Charlotte Observer was expansive in its description of these edifices.

At either entrance to Hermitage Court is a handsome granite gateway, pointed with red cement mortar. The work on these was done by two Scotchmen who came here for the purpose from Aberdeen Scotland last June. On one Gate appears the inscription, ‘Ye Easte Gayte,” and on the other, “Ye Weste Gayte.” They are designed after the entrance ways to Andrew Jackson’s old home near Nashville. ⁶

 

Hennigan Place S&R

Henderson – King House

This report was written on September 9, 1997

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the Henderson – King House is located at 4723 Stafford Circle in the Sharon Township of Charlotte in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

2. Name, address, and telephone number of the present owner of the property: The owner is :
Inez King
4723 Stafford Circle
Charlotte, NC

Telephone Number: (704) 364-7673

3. Representative Photographs of the property: This report contains interior and exterior 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 references to the property: The most recent deed to the Henderson – King House is listed Mecklenburg County Deed Book 5803 at Pages 0617. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is 163-082-09.

6. A brief historical description of the property: This report contains a historical sketch of the property prepared by Sherry J. Joines.

7. A brief architectural description of the property: This report contains an architectural description of the property prepared by Sherry J. Joines.

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

 

a. Special significance in terms of history, architecture, and cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Henderson – King House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) the property is a well preserved example of vernacular Queen Anne architecture; 2) the property is an important rural resource that has been engulfed by suburban development; and 3) the property has associations with significant Mecklenburg families.

b. Integrity of design, setting, workmanship, materials, feeling, and association: The Commission contends that the architectural description by Sherry J. Joines included in this report demonstrates that the Henderson – King House meets this criterion.

9. Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal: The current Ad Valorem appraised value of the .692 acres of land is $26,000. The current Ad Valorem appraised value of the house is $88,570. The total Ad Valorem appraised value is $166,220. The property is zoned R-3.

Date of Preparation of this Report: September 9, 1997

Prepared by: Sherry J. Joines
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission
2100 Randolph Road
Charlotte, N.C. 28207

 

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

 

Sherry J. Joines
September 9, 1997

Location Description

Currently located in the Sherwood Forest subdivision, the Henderson – King House was moved to its current site in 1972/1973 to avoid demolition. The original site of the house is a short distance directly north. The house was situated on a rise, in a grove of large trees, that may still be seen at its former site on Sharon Amity Road. It is fortunate that the present site of the house is on part of the original farm associated with the house. In fact, the house is located near a small creek that runs beside the former site as well. The main difference in the siting of the house is its orientation. When it was moved the house was rotated 180 degrees to face Stafford Circle to the south. Originally, the house faced Sharon Amity Road to the north. Although the present site lacks the elevation of the original, it is fairly large, with trees on all edges, partially enclosing the house from the modern development surrounding it.

Architectural Description

Believed to have been constructed around 1902 / 1903, the Henderson-King House is an interesting folk interpretation of the popular Queen Anne style. Such interpretations are often dependent upon ornamentation applied to a traditional building form and are referred to as Folk Victorian. In this house the resemblance to a Queen Anne dwelling is found not only in ornament but also in the irregular building form itself. The Queen Anne style was popular nationally during the last years of the nineteenth century and very early twentieth century. It became common in North Carolina by the mid-1880s. The style was directly related to the Picturesque Movement in the arts that can first be seen with the Gothic Revival style in the 1830s. The Queen Anne style was touted as uniquely modern and individualistic.

It is noteworthy that the style’s ornate wooden trim was made possible by innovations in saws and mass production during the industrial revolution occurring at this time.¹ Several elements of the Henderson-King House can be isolated as directly inspired by the Queen Anne style. These include: the wrap around porch with small pediment over the entrance steps, irregular massing, irregular hipped roof with gabled projections, sawn-work, varying window size and placement, Classical porch columns (typical of the “Free Classic” variation of the Queen Anne style), dark interior woodwork, and ornate mantels. The house is basically a cube in shape with various projections near the front to create an irregular effect. The front (or southern) facade is dominated by the deep porch that wraps around three sides of the building.

A low-pitched gable or pediment marks the entrance steps, which are in line with the off-center entrance door. Simple, Doric columns support the one-story, shed roofed porch. The columns are repeated in the form of pilasters on the house wall at each end of the porch. Between each column spans a simple balustrade with square balusters set at forty-five degree angles to the rails. An unadorned architrave tops the columns. The architrave is repeated at the junction of the house walls and its roof.

A second gable graces the front facade of the house. It is created by the end of the gable roof, which covers a projection of about one-foot on the upper story of the front facade. The gable is actually wider than the projection and is “supported” by scrolled sawn-work brackets. The second floor windows found on the projection and on the main body of the house on the front facade are paired. And, like the windows on the rest of the house, they have simple frames and drip molding at their tops. The windows are one over one light. The first floor front windows are large panes of beveled glass topped by transoms. On the western side there is an interesting gabled projection. On the first floor, the projection is three-sided, creating a bay. Each side has a large window with the center side having a large beveled glass window with transom like those found on the front. Above this is a full rectangular space with paired windows. Thus, the bottom corners of the upper floor project beyond the three-sided bay and are “supported” by scrolled brackets. Beyond the bay projection the house shows its more traditional rectilinear character. The windows on the rear of the house are rather irregularly placed, and one should note that the first floor of the eastern corner of the rear of the house was originally a porch.

The eastern side of the house is fairly simple with one gabled projection near the front corner. On the second floor, front side of this projection there was once a window that was infilled to accommodate a shower. Another window on the main body of the eastern facade was infilled near the second floor front corner. Other changes according to the current owner include the infilling of the back porch as already mentioned and the replacement of the porch floor with boards matching the originals. Historic photographs indicate that the roof was originally shingled.

The interior of the Henderson-King house is well preserved, retaining much of its original tiger oak and pine trim. One enters the house into a modest entrance hall. The notable features of this space are the large beveled glass window to the right, in front of the elegantly simple stairway and finely crafted pocket doors to the parlor and sitting rooms. The trim above each of the pocket doors and small closet door under the stair is a simple architrave reminiscent of that on the exterior of the house.

To the west of the entrance hall is the parlor. An elegant mantle and fireplace surround highlights it. The fireplace surround is tiled (a popular Victorian feature) with speckled blue and brown rectangular tile. Interestingly, the floor directly in front of the fireplace has the same speckled tile as the surround. Simple scrolled brackets support the mantle shelf. Over the mantle shelf is a rectangular mirror above which is an overmantle or second shelf supported by Doric columns on pedestals. These columns recall those of the front porch. The fireplace projects slightly into the room. The corners of this projection are accented by three-quarter round corner protectors with turned top and bottom finials.

Located directly behind the entrance hall is the room likely intended to be sitting room. A door in the northeast corner of the room currently leads to a powder room, but originally led to a butler’s pantry that one could walk through into the kitchen. On the south wall is another graceful fireplace. The fireplace surround tile here are mottled teal. The mantle shelf rests on quarter-circle brackets, and a mirror is above the mantle. The wide trim of the mirror is convex with a narrow shelf at its top.

To the west of the sitting room, through a set of pocket doors, is the dining room. The space is created by the three-sided bay with the large central beveled glass window being the focus of the room. The fireplace here is on the south wall and is surrounded by mottled forest green tile. Doric columns support the mantle shelf with miniature Ionic columns resting on the shelf to support the overmantle shelf. A small mirror is located in the space between the two shelves. Indicating that this space was originally the dining area is a plate rail about five inches wide positioned about two-thirds of the way up the wall. Additional molding includes a picture rail located at the junction of wall and ceiling. This narrow strip has a small convex curve at its top designed to hold picture hooks. This molding is found in most rooms of the house. Similar to the architraves in the entrance hall, the pocket doors and central bay window also have simple architraves.

As in most historic homes, the kitchen area is the most altered space of the house. The kitchen was extended by enclosing the rear corner porch. The lower ceiling height in this area marks the original porch space. The butler’s pantry was divided into two rooms. The first is a powder room accessible from the sitting room and the second a laundry which opens into the kitchen. Located under the back stairs on the west wall is a small pantry that retains its original beadboard sheathing. A door at the northwestern corner of the room opens into the rear stairs. The current owner has been told that the children of a previous owner always used these stairs since it was prohibited for children to be present in the formal entrance hall and parlor. Upstairs, each of the four bedrooms retains its original door and architrave. The doors have six oblong raised panels and glass knobs. Two of the bedrooms retain their original picture molding matching that found down stairs. The baseboard is quite tall, measuring about eight inches, and is capped by a simple molding. It is apparent that the house was custom built, rather than relying on mass produced moldings and doors since the door to the master bedroom near the front stair is significantly taller than the three short doors at the rear end of the hall, while the doors in the middle of the hall are of medium height. Also, few of the windows are the exact size of any other window.

The front bedroom is a master suite with a narrow room, perhaps a dressing room located off it. This space has been converted into a bathroom. There are two closets: one in the bath and one next to the fireplace. The fireplace, like the other fireplace upstairs, has a simple mantle. The original tile is missing in most of the second floor fire surrounds. They were likely damaged when the house was moved. And the fireplace in one bedroom has been closed off altogether. The mantles are simple frames around the fire surround with shelves supported by small, scrolled brackets. The only bedroom originally built without a fireplace is located at the rear of the hall beside the large bath which was also originally a bath. It is quite possible that this small, unadorned room was intended to be used by a servant. The large bath was created by the Henderson family according to family member, Mrs. Dorcas Hinson.² The Henderson-King house exemplifies the finer sort of dwelling built by prominent rural Mecklenburg County farmers during the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century. Despite its being engulfed by modern development, the property provides an important insight into Mecklenburg County’s rural past. The architecture of the house retains almost all of its original character. The Henderson-King House, therefore, is an extremely rare and important resource.

 

 

Historical Overview

 

Sherry J. Joines
September 9, 1997

The preceding architectural description hints at the sort of person the house’s builder must have been. Although not “high style” or architect designed, the house was clearly intended to show the elevated status of its original owner. In fact, Dr. Dan L. Morrill, Director of the Historic Landmarks Commission, has commented that this house is unusual in that its design reflects very urban tastes for a rural farmhouse. It must be remembered that at the turn of the century the area near the dwelling’s original site on Sharon Amity Road was still a rural farm community. The inhabitants of this portion of Sharon Amity are not listed in the City Directory of Charlotte until 1961.³

The 174 acre property which encompassed both the original site of the house and its current site was purchased by Samuel D. Faulkner at a court sale (for settlement of debt) from John E. Oates and Margaret L. Barringer, widow of Rufus Barringer, on October 9, 1895. Very little can be said of Mr. Faulkner other than that by 1911, he was residing on Providence Road. Since City Directories do not cover the rural areas of the county, we can assume that Mr. Faulkner was living in rural Mecklenburg during the very first years of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the large number of real estate purchases (over 500 acres) recorded by S.D. Faulkner in the last years of the nineteenth century with additional purchases after the turn of the century indicate his substantial means. ⁴

Faulkner owned the Henderson – King property until November 1, 1902 when he sold it to Elizabeth N. Myers. Mrs. Myers was the wife of Walter P. Myers. The 1900 City Directory indicates that Mr. Myers was a traveling salesman living at 204 South Myers Street. By 1902, however, Mr. Myers’ occupation was as a farmer. The family now made their home on East Avenue Extension. A similar entry is found in 1903, but in 1904/1905 the family is not listed in the directory. They reappear, however, in 1905/1906 living in Myers Park with Mr. Myers still employed as a farmer. This could indicate that the family lived in the rural precincts for a year or two between 1903 and 1906. This is just after Mrs. Myers’s purchase of the Henderson – King property.⁵

It is impossible to say with certainty whether the Myers built the house or if it had been constructed by Faulkner. It seems that with the information currently known, the Myers family were probably the builders. As previously mentioned, the house was built by someone with an interest in urban tastes. Having lived in the city prior to 1904 and returning to a fashionable new suburb by 1906, the Myers would likely have been this sort of family. Also attesting to the social prominence of the family, Mrs. Myers was one of five alumni who donated a large sum to ensure the survival of the Presbyterian College For Women, later Queens College, in the late nineteenth century. That she was privileged enough to have attended the college and that she had money to donate give some indication of her socio-economic position.⁶ Whether they built the house or never lived in it at all, Elizabeth (Bessie) Myers sold the property to J.L. Davis on January 2, 1911. Since the Myers were living in Myers Park by 1906, the occupants of the house in the intervening five years before its sale is a mystery. Perhaps it was used by tenant farmers who might have worked the land for the Myers. Or, more likely, it may have been a “country home” occupied occasionally by the Myers. Whatever the case, Jacob L. Davis never lived in the house. Rather, he is listed as residing at 300 North Brevard Street with his wife Josephine in 1911 and 1912. Davis was associated with the Davis & Byerly Company.⁷

The J.L. Davis family sold the property to J.R. and Alice P. McCall on September 5, 1911. Joseph R. McCall, a bookkeeper for Y & B Company, resided at 5 North Fox Avenue in 1911 and 1912. The McCalls sold the property to Forest Hill Realty Company in 1915 who in turn sold the property to Ammie (Amoret) E. Henderson on December 1, 1915.⁸

Ammie Henderson was the wife of Charles Philo Henderson. In the 1912 City Directory, the Hendersons are listed as residing at 403 North Brevard Street. Mr. Henderson was a farmer. By 1916, however, there was no listing for the family indicating that they had likely moved out of the city to the farm on Sharon Amity Road. Holding the property for nearly forty years, the Henderson family is the most significant in the history of the house. Charles Philo Henderson was born in 1854 and died in 1934. He was a member of Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. His family were among the early settlers of Mecklenburg County, having arrived here around 1749. The family farm was located on Old Statesville Road where they also ran a tanyard. Mr. Henderson’s cousin, Philo Henderson (1832 – 1852), is noted as being the only Poet Laureate from Mecklenburg County.⁹

Ammie Henderson died on March 27, 1938, leaving the family farm to her four surviving children: Lillie W. Henderson, Mary E. Henderson, Grace H. Russell, Irene H. Andrews, and to her deceased daughter Jennie’s husband Clarence O. Lowder, Sr. Neither Lillie nor Mary ever married. Lillie still lived in the house then known as 426 North Sharon Amity Road in 1971 despite the sale of the farmland to Construction Materials Company on June 12, 1953. Construction Materials Company transferred the farmland to Mecklenburg Builders, Inc. who subdivided the property into the Sherwood Forest development.¹⁰

Lillie and her sister Mary Henderson conveyed the house and its five acres to the Trustees of the Joppa Lodge on September 3, 1971. At her death on August 27, 1974, Lillie Henderson lived at 3931 Forest Drive. Joppa Lodge planned to destroy the house to build their facilities, but neighbors living behind the property on Stafford Circle intervened.¹¹ H. John and Shirley J. Croasmun purchased the Sherwood Forest lot next to theirs on January 10, 1969. They had the house moved there in 1972/1973. The address of the house became 4727 Stafford Circle. The Croasmun’s sold the house to James Robert Collins, Jr. on April 4, 1973. The current owner reports that Mrs. Collins was an interior designer. Her unusual tastes were still evident when Shelby Stearns and Martha Whiddon (Inez) King purchased the house on November 26, 1976. Mrs. King still resides in house.¹²

 

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Notes

¹Catherine Bishir, North Carolina Architecture, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990 , pp. 342 – 354 and Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981, pp. 96 – 113.

²Interview with Mrs. Dorcas Hinson, September 8, 1997, conducted by Sherry J. Joines.

³Charlotte City Directories : 1900 – 1975, microfilm, Robinson – Spangler Carolina Room at the Main Branch of the Charlotte – Mecklenburg Public Library.

⁴Mecklenburg County Deed Book: 105, page 416 and 170, page 622.

⁵Ibid. and Deed Book 262, page 506 and City Directories: 1900 – 1912.

⁶Ibid. and interview with Andrew King, August 26, 1997.

⁷Deed Book 262, page 506.

⁸Deed Book 276, page 410; 351, page 274; and 351, page 385 and City Directories: 1910 – 1916.

⁹Information submitted with application for designation as Local Historic Landmark.

¹⁰Deed Book 1619, page 539; 1789, page 102; and 1789, page 120.

¹¹Mecklenburg County Vital Statistics: Death Certificates and Interview with Andrew King.

¹²Deed Book 3011, page 403; 3561, page 287; 3900, page 61; and 5803, page 617; Interview with Andrew King and City Directories: 1961 – 1975.

DAVID HENDERSON HOUSE

 This report was written on March 5, 1986

1. Name and location of the property: The property known as the David Henderson House is located at 1510 Russell Avenue, Charlotte, North Carolina.

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

Matthew Brown & Wife, Lillie Mae
c/o James Jose Brown
1510 Russell Avenue
Charlotte, NC 28216

Telephone: (704) 333-3933

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 3547, page 265. The Tax Parcel Number of the property is: 075-061-04.

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 Mr. Joseph Schuchman.

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 of terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the David Henderson House does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations: 1) the David Henderson House (c.1830) is one of the few antebellum plantation houses which survive within the David Henderson House current boundaries of the city of Charlotte; 2) David Henderson (1805-1879), the original owner and occupant, was a prominent cotton planter of the nineteenth century, who also participated in the economic life of Charlotte; and 3) the house is a locally significant example of a Federal style plantation house, especially when one considers its location so near to the center of the largest city in North Carolina.

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 David Henderson House meets this criterion. Admittedly, the house has lost its context, and several alterations and additions have been made over the years. However, on balance, the Commission believes that the David Henderson House possesses individual architectural significance, especially when one takes into account how little of the antebellum built environment survives in Charlotte, in any form.

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 is $20,530. The current appraised value of the land is $6,500. The total appraised value of the property is $27,030. The property is zoned R6.

Date of Preparation of this report: March 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 Henderson House, a tall, white antebellum farmhouse with a commanding view of Charlotte’s central business district some two miles away, is a surprise to find in the middle of a street mostly lined with modern brick ranch homes. It is located on Russell Avenue, not too far from Beatties Ford Road, and appears to have been built by David Henderson in the late 1820s or early 1830s. To find such an intact house of this age so close to the city center is a rare occurrence.

David Henderson was born July 20,1805, in North Carolina and possibly in Mecklenburg County, and died November 24,1879.² For most of his life he farmed his plantation of about 240 acres just two miles north of town, and prospered well (with the likely exception of during the Civil War). On February 7, 1827, he married Minty S. Wallace of Mecklenburg County, who unfortunately died in 1833.³ Three years later, on November 15, 1836, he wed another Mecklenburg County woman, Harriet C. Henderson (28 September 1815 – 26 March 1883), to whom he may have been related.⁴ By 1850, the Hendersons had five children and personal property worth $3000, and by 1860, they had doubled the number of children and quintupled their net worth: their land was worth $6000, and their personal property was valued at $14,900.⁵

For reasons that are not clear from the records, ownership of the Henderson home place seems to have passed about the time of the Civil War to James Henderson, perhaps a brother, who was a nearby farmer five years younger than David Henderson.⁶ The latter continued to own plantation land in the area which he devised to his wife and sons Charles, Miranda, Thomas Edwin and Isaac, as well as various lots and houses in Charlotte, one of them being on Tryon Street. The real estate in town was devised to daughters Laura Henderson Ahrens, Susan Henderson, and Lilly Henderson Neal, except the Tryon Street house, which went to son Thomas Edwin. In his will Henderson also left stock in the Merchants and Farmers National Bank and the Traders National Bank of Charlotte.⁷

Thus it is clear that whatever losses were incurred during the war did not prevent David Henderson from enjoying a good measure of the prosperity he had built up over the years. It is also apparent that much of his success was due to the fact that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County began to mushroom in economic growth after the early 1850s. When the first railroads were put in, which eventually gave Charlotte easy access to the port of Charleston, through Columbia, and direct connections with the markets of the Northeast through Norfolk, VA.⁸ Another notable fact is that he was typical of wealthy planters of the area in that he invested in real estate and banking in Charlotte. This showed his confidence in the town’s future growth and as has been shown, it was fully justified. At the same time, his investments and those of others like him, provided the capital for the city’s expansion.

In 1868, a neighbor, F. W. Ahrens, who also owned real estate in Charlotte, bought the plantation, and the following year Ahrens sold off 174 acres, (of the original 240) to another landowner, John S. Means.⁹ In his will of 1877, Means left a diminished tract of 117 acres of “the Henderson place” to his daughter, M. L. Creighton (wife of Hiram L. Creighton).¹⁰ In 1910, the same property was bought by a J. J. Wisenheimer, who a number of years later, sold portion to Adele L. Hendrix and Ervin Construction Company for development.¹¹ Mrs. Hendrix had a development map first drawn up for that part of Russell Avenue, in what was known as Biddle Heights Annex, in 1945.¹² It encompassed thirty-three acres on both sides of Russell Avenue, and extended about four and a half blocks. As that development progressed to meet the demand for housing during that period, the Henderson place became surrounded by modern, post-war houses, and its identity forgotten. Since 1948, it has changed hands four time, but was bought twice by the current owners.¹³

The Henderson House is a relatively rare piece of Charlotte and Mecklenburg’s history that serves as a rich reminder of the connection between the two. The movement from prosperous antebellum plantation life to living and investing in an up and coming commercial rail crossroads is embodied in the career of David Henderson, and the simple plantation house he started in two miles north of town is a striking monument to how far the city and county have come in such a relatively short time.

 

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NOTES

¹ Since Henderson was period in 1827 and 1836, it is probable that the house was built during that period.

² Cemetery listing of Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church, Third Cemetery.

³ Ibid., Second Cemetery; NC Marriage Bonds, Grooms.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ 1850 US Census, Mecklenburg Co., NC, p. ff; l860 US. Census, Mecklenburg Co., NC, p. 94. In the census of 1830, Henderson owned two female slaves (p. 376); by 1840, he owned seven, three women and four men (p. 292).

⁶ Mecklenburg Co. Deed Book 5, p. 690, 29 June 1868. Since he was then in his sixties, it may he that had retired from farming, but I have been unable to locate him in the 1870 census.

⁷ Mecklenburg Co. Will Book K, p. 354, dated 30 January 1879, probated 3 November 1879.

⁸ Thomas Hanchett, “Charlotte Neighborhood Survey,” Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, 1983.

⁹ Mecklenburg Co. Deed Book 5, p.690, 29 June 1868; Ibid. Book 5, p. 708, 1 February 1869.

¹⁰ Mecklenburg Co. Will Book K, p. 256, probated 23 Day 1877.

¹¹ Mecklenburg Co. Deed Books 1332,p.205, 30 November 1948, and 1885, p. 45, 17 January 1957.

¹² Mecklenburg Co. Map Book 5, p. 3.

¹³ See note 11; Mecklenburg Co. Deed Books 2107, p. 370,11 February 1960; 2816. p.603, 6 December 1966; 3547. p.265, 16 March 1975.

 

Architectural Description

 

Joseph Schuchman

The Henderson House is one of the oldest surviving structures within the Charlotte city limits. This simply executed building was constructed in the late 1820s or early 1830s by David Henderson (1805-1879) and originally served as the seat of his two hundred and forty acre plantation. The Federal style house is simply executed, typical of the homes of fairly substantial Piedmont farmers during the early nineteenth century. The symmetrical massing and balanced arrangement of fenestration are indicative of the long-standing tradition of classically inspired building patterns. Although the house has received subsequent alterations and additions, a significant amount of original detailing survives.

The single pile main block rises two and a half stories to a gabled roof. The overall appearance is representative of the popular I-house. The main block is of mortise and tenon construction and extends three bays in width and two bays in depth. The original weatherboard sheathing remains on the side elevations. Front and rear elevations are covered in German siding, which may have been installed during the early part of the twentieth century; German siding enjoyed a great period of popularity beginning in the 1910s and 1920s. A two-story porch, which shelters the main facade, also appears to be a later addition and may date from the early twentieth century when Mount Vernon style porches were widely incorporated onto new and existing dwellings. The wooden porch piers rise to a shed roof which covers a boxed roofline cornice. The main entrance is set within a Victorian fluted surround with decorative corner blocks; this door frame was removed from another structure and installed on the Henderson House approximately thirty years ago by the father of the present owner, James Brown.² Six/six sash is the primary glazing material. Plain surrounds frame the sash windows. The house originally rested upon random blocks of fieldstone and was later underpinned with brick.

Side elevations rise to a flush gable, a common vernacular motif of the Federal style. Single step shoulder chimneys are centrally placed within the gables. Each chimney is constructed of handmade brick arranged in Flemish bond. The step brick bases rest upon fieldstone; freestanding stacks rise to a corbeled cap. On the east chimney, a portion of the stack and cap have been rebuilt using manufactured brick. Four pane casement lights, set in two-part surrounds, are placed in the attic and frame the chimneys.

A boxed cornice runs across the rear of the main block. On the second story, the center bay, which opens into the hall, is placed on a higher level than the flanking window openings. A rear shed, which runs across the first story, appears to have been constructed in two stages. The smaller west section is believed to be original to the house; weatherboards continue across the west side of the main block to the shed. The use of German siding and the appearance of brick underpinning on the east section indicates a later, possibly early twentieth century construction date.

The interior has been altered although some original detailing remains including two mantles, the pine flooring and the plain surrounds which frame window and door openings. Walls and ceilings were likely sheathed originally in flush horizontal board. Interior spaces have been plastered; rooms are encircled by a molded baseboard and cornice. Original doors have been replaced with two panel doors which appear to date from the early twentieth century. The main block presents a two room plan on the first floor and a center hall plan on the upper floor. The first floor may have originally followed a center hall plan, the partition wall having been removed at a later date. In the nineteenth century, a center hall represented gentility and respectability; it is quite possible that David Henderson would have preferred a center hall to separate entrance and living spaces and to provide an appropriate atmosphere in which to greet visitors.

The main entrance leads into a parlor, the largest room within the house. A Neoclassical mantle, with Doric columns, a bracketed shelf and a beveled overmantle mirror, was removed from another dwelling and installed in the Henderson House approximately thirty years ago. It replaced an earlier mantle which was removed at that time.³ A straight run open string staircase rises from the parlor; the simply detailed stair displays rectangular balusters, two per stair tread, and rectangular newel posts which support a molded handrail. Several of the balusters have been replaced.

An adjacent sitting room, to the east of the entrance, contains a notably wide classically-inspired mantle. Paired fluted piers rest upon a rectangular base and rise to a molded capital. The plain frieze is set betwasn a molded architrave and cornice, the latter supporting a projecting shelf. The mantle appears original to the house; a decorative cast iron grate is believed to date from the turn of the century.

 

On the second floor, a narrow center hall separates the two bedrooms. To allow for the addition of a bathroom at its rear, the east bedroom was reduced in size. The west bedroom contains the floor’s only mantle. Federal detailing is evident in this noticeably wide mantle. Single fluted piers rest upon rectangular bases and rise to molded capitals. The mantle’s entablature, consisting of a molded architrave, plain frieze and a molded cornice, is similar to that of the mantle found in the first floor’s sitting room. A molded shelf rests atop the entablature.

The roof framing is evident within the unfinished attic. The original semi-circular pegged logs are interspersed with more recent two by four joining.

The house sits on a slight rise and occupies a standard size city lot. None of the original outbuildings survive but the remains of a well stand adjacent to the house’s west side. Adjacent to the well is a two car garage. This weatherboarded structure rises to a gabled roof with exposed rafters. The garage doors are sheathed in vertical tongue and groove ceiling, boast wrought iron hinges and display angled corners.

 

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Notes

¹ Based upon information in the North Carolina State University publication Carolina Dwelling and the researcher’s own experience in this region’s rural dwellings, the typical early to mid-nineteenth century farmhouse usually displayed a one-story porch, either shed or hip roofed, which either covered the front three bays or ran across the entire main facade.

² Interview with James Brown, present owner of the David Henderson House, August 28, 1985. Mr. Brown’s father had previously owned the house.

³ Ibid.