History
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If there’s one constant in Charlotte, it’s change. And while the pace of new building and construction might make you think Charlotte doesn’t have much history (at least, not much left), there’s plenty to explore in the city’s past. The rebranding and upcoming changes to the Epicentre got me thinking about the ephemeral nature of […]
Charlotte City Walks returns in 2022
For the first time in three years, Charlotte City Walks are back with a full line-up of free, in-person, community-led tours to introduce Charlotteans to new sides of their city. City Walks were canceled in 2020 and went virtual-only in 2021 because of the pandemic. This year, we are excited to welcome people from across […]
Preserving the past while embracing change
Charlotte has a reputation as a shiny new city, one that tears down grand old buildings to replace them with bland new apartments and historic marker plaques. But that’s not the whole truth, and the guests on this episode of “Future Charlotte” are devoted to preserving and promoting more of Charlotte’s history. Historian Dan Morill, […]
Here and gone: When major buildings don’t even make it to middle age
Charlotte is a city that’s often criticized for tearing down its history. But some of the most significant demolitions of the past few decades haven’t been historic structures, but rather buildings that didn’t make it to middle age — or even puberty. In a fast-growing city, plenty of change is to be expected. The built […]
With Price’s closing, South End loses the last vestige from before “South End”
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Mary Newsom’s blog The Naked City. The first three paragraphs are from Newsom. I stood in line two hours today to order chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, the iconic fried chicken takeout joint on Camden Road in South End that had just announced it will close in two […]
What does COVID-19 mean for place-based development?
When Paul Sires and his partner Ruth Ava Lyons started looking at the neighborhood that would become the NoDa arts district in north Charlotte back in 1983, it looked like opportunity. The main drag had a ribbon of historic buildings with “structural reality,” and the kind of masonry where the inside is revealed from the […]
New toolkit lets you probe Charlotte history
Who used to live in your house? When was your neighborhood built? Was your subdivision legally segregated? How’d your street get its name? Start wondering about where you live, and these kinds of questions are bound to crop up. And in a fast-changing, shiny “New South” city like Charlotte, it can seem like there isn’t […]
Charlotte’s library through the decades
Charlotte has had four main libraries on the same site since 1903. Here’s a look at them, and what the changing architecture says about our city.
UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens’ Historical Trail to interpret cultures
An outdoor, living exhibit on its way to the UNC Charlotte campus will tell the story of North Carolina through plants and crops crucial to the state’s development. A team representing the University’s Center for the Study of the New South, Botanical Gardens and Urban Institute received a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council […]
Historical Overview Part 2: Post-Civil War, the region becomes an industrial system
From an agrarian system to an economy based on rural mills and factories drawing workers from former farms and sending goods to Charlotte for distribution, the region undergoes rapid change.