Images along Blue Line tell city’s unheralded stories
While Charlotte’s light rail line runs through the city’s glittering uptown – a tunnel of office towers and parking decks – at the farther reaches, the landscape tells different stories. Along the route of the Blue Line, from the edge of Pineville on the south to the UNC Charlotte campus at the north, you find reminders of Charlotte’s once-agricultural past, its long and continuing industrial history and its booming future.
Some places evoke the car-infatuated 1950s. Others tell of a 21st-century city. A close eye will find small businesses that are decades old; other shops display the role immigrant entrepreneurs play in building Charlotte’s economy.
Photographer Nancy Pierce took a journey along the Blue Line and the newly opened Blue Line Extension, documenting the people and places she found along the way. Retrace her journey with the accompanying photos.
— Mary Newsom
A futuristic, 71-foot lighted glass car vending machine from the online auto dealer Carvana sits at the Scaleybark Station along Charlotte’s Blue Line light rail. From 1955 to 2007 the site was home to the iconic South 21 Drive-In, where carhops serving motorists evoked the ’50s and ’60s. At center is Thomas Sayre’s sculpture, “Furrow,” modeled on farmers’ disc harrows and commemorating the agricultural past that predated Charlotte’s 19th- and 20th-century industrial growth. Near the southern end of the Blue Line light rail sits the headquarters of Snyder’s-Lance, formerly Lance, maker of the popular ToastChee peanut butter and cheese crackers. The company, the second largest producer of salty snack foods in the United States, is being acquired by Campbell Soup Co. Photo: Nancy PierceEver wondered what’s in these tanks visible from the Blue Line and from South Boulevard, between the Tyvola and Woodlawn stations? It’s Cargill’s tropical oils refinery, which runs 24/7 and produces more than 400 million pounds of edible oils annually. Photo: Nancy PierceMore than 400 apartments and 25,000 square feet of retail are under construction by Lennar at the New Bern Station in South End. The site was home to the Pepsi Bottling Plant from 1938 until its demolition in 2016. Photo: Nancy PierceAfter 27 years in the Sedgefield Shopping Center, near the New Bern Station, the Anh Dao Sakura Oriental Market will move by June 1 to larger space near the Scaleybark Station. Marsh Properties will demolish Sedgefield Shopping Center and build a two-story office/retail structure. Photo: Nancy PierceNeon lights from the decades-old South Boulevard adult entertainment venue, Leather and Lace, illuminate the parking lot of beloved burger and ice cream shop, Mr K.s, which dates to 1967. In the background, a short walk from the East-West Boulevard Station, Crescent Communities’ Novel Atherton “luxury apartment homes” is set to open in 2019. Photo: Nancy Pierce On the newly opened Blue Line Extension at North Davidson Street and Craighead Road, NoDa Street Market opened in summer 2017, offering a coffee house, pub, restaurants and a brewery. Situated between the 36th Street and Sugar Creek Road stations, this area shows how NoDa’s entertainment district is expanding northward into old industrial buildings. Photo: Nancy PierceIf NoDa Street Market is “new Craighead,” then the nearby Southern Resources, a scrap metal recycler, evokes the Craighead Road area’s longstanding industrial character. Photo: Nancy PierceA five-minute walk from the Sugar Creek station sits this house on Bearwood Avenue, a one-block street that dead-ends at Howie Acres Neighborhood Park. Real estate records show this unoccupied, 400-square-foot house was built in 1952. In 2016 it sold for $64,000 to Light Rail Properties LLC. Photo: Nancy Pierce All the stalls were booked on a weekday afternoon at Mery Mi Salon at the North Pointe Plaza near the Old Concord Road Station: The shop’s front window prominently advertises a Dominican stylist. Photo: Nancy Pierce Owner and master tailor James Holloway opened his men’s clothing shop, Holloway’s Men’s Shop, in 1974 at Tryon Mall (now Asian Corner Mall) and moved to North Pointe Plaza in 1995, near the newly opened Old Concord Road Station. Photo: Nancy Pierce Sara Edwards, the second-generation owner of the Last Place on Earth pet store, grew up in the shop which has been on North Tryon Street near Old Concord Road for more than 30 years. The Lynx Blue Line’s North Tryon Street flyover is so close you can see its reflection in the shop window. Photo: Nancy Pierce The North Tryon Mobile Home Park near the Old Concord Road Station dates to a time when this part of North Tryon Street was on the rural fringe of the city. Today it offers much-needed affordable housing. Photo: Nancy Pierce AMF University Lanes, between the Old Concord Road Station and the Tom Hunter Station, was built in 1960 as a bowling and roller skating venue. Today it hosts bowling leagues, family bowling nights and UNC Charlotte fraternity and sorority parties. Photo: Nancy PierceLook closely at the brick and you can see the faded letters for Old Hickory House BBQ. Founded in 1957, it operated at this spot (built in 1966) from 1972 through 2015, and for its first decades was considered the top barbecue restaurant in Charlotte. During a tour of N.C. barbecue restaurants in the early 1980s, famed New York Times food editor and critic Craig Claiborne dined here. Photo: Nancy PierceJust south of the Tom Hunter Station, the entrance to the Cambodian Buddhist Temple on Owen Boulevard is visible from the train. Photo: Nancy PierceReal estate records show that the original Holiday Motel on this site was a 2.5-story structure built in 1948 and since demolished. This one-story structure near the new Tom Hunter Station was added in 1956 and is owned and operated by the Patel family. Photo: Nancy PierceSee it while you can. This graffiti-covered old well house remains from when the area across from the University City Boulevard Station was a dairy farm. The property owner sold half the 14.7-acre site to apartment builder Oxford Properties, and this section isn’t likely to be far behind. Photo: Nancy PierceOwner George Saini bought land next to his Fashion Warehouse for more parking when the light rail right-of-way and sidewalk took most of the existing parking lot in front of the building, near the Tom Hunter Station. Each evening, it takes him about a half hour to take all the clothes back inside his store. Photo: Nancy PierceThe Last Word, a used books, media and coffee shop, moved in 2015 from the Grand Promenade shopping center at Harris Boulevard and North Tryon Street to a North Tryon building near the Old Concord Road Station that for 50 years housed Faulk Brothers Hardware. Photo: Nancy PierceSouth 21 Junior Diner, near the University City Boulevard Station, is related to the South 21 restaurants started by three Greek immigrant brothers in 1955. The flagship South 21 on South Boulevard closed around 2007 and was demolished for redevelopment adjacent to the Lynx Blue Line Scaleybark Station. The South 21 Drive-In on Independence Boulevard survives. Photo: Nancy PierceThe new Blu at Northline development near the University City Boulevard Station offers studio and one- to three-bedroom apartments for $975 to $1,800 a month. Photo: Nancy PierceSugar Creek Station: Its a five minute walk from the station to this house on one-block-long residential Bearwood Avenue, which dead-ends into a neighborhood park. According to real estate records, This 400 square foot unoccupied house on .17 acre, built in 1952, was purchased for $64,000 in 2016 by Light Rail Properties LLC. Its tax value in 2011 was $23,600.Old Concord Road: A short walk from the Lynx station, The Last Word Used Books, Media and Coffee is at 5744 North Tryon.Industrial buildings and warehouses surround the newly built Sugar Creek Road station. It contains one of three new parking decks along the Blue Line Extension, and offers free parking. Photo: Nancy Pierce.
