History

In Charlotte: The Praise Connor and Harriett Lee House3714 Country Ridge Road in the Mountainbrook neighborhoodBuilt in 1963; designed by architect Praise Connor LeeDesignated in 2002 The Robert and Elizabeth Lassiter House726 Hempstead Place in Eastover neighborhoodBuilt in 1951 (oldest Modernist house in Charlotte); designed by architect A.G. OdellDesignated in 2003 In Davidson: The James […]

Cemeteries are popping up in yards across our region. Ghosts and skeletons dangle from nearby trees. Zombies claw their way back to the surface of the earth, refusing to rest in peace. My sister and her kids place their graveyard, Eerie Acres, in a low spot along the driveway where fog often settles in fall. […]

In any other time, the request might not have been so hard. But a nonprofit developer’s plea last week to use $2.3 million in city money from federal grants to help repair Charlotte’s historic Mecklenburg Mill came after a recession and a brutal, lingering downturn. It also came after the City of Charlotte had already […]

By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had become sensitized to the environmental damage caused by harmful human practices, particularly the use of pesticides and DDT, following Rachel Carson’s 1962 pivotal book on this issue, Silent Spring. Carson was an eminent biologist, ecologist, and writer at a time when women in the fields of science and research […]

In the Western United States, fire season generally runs from April to September. This year has seen historic fires. The largest wildfire on record in New Mexico started in the Gila National Forest in May, eventually growing to nearly 300,000 acres. A record heat wave in June helped spur the Waldo Canyon fire, Colorado’s most […]

Welcome, Democrats! You have received loads of material on restaurants, sights and the strange habits of the locals. Here is a primer quick enough for you to digest while you spoon through your breakfast grits. First and most important, Charlotte is not some other city. It is not by the sea (that’s Charleston), it does […]

Tea has been synonymous with political protest ever since colonists dumped shiploads of the stuff into Boston Harbor in a 1773 act of rebellion against the Crown. In historian Eric Rutkow’s recent book, American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, he notes that trees were an equally potent symbol of liberty in […]

In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were in London to negotiate a trade deal and follow up on unfulfilled terms of the peace treaty reached at the end of the Revolutionary War. When talks bogged down, they took a break to visit the English countryside. Despite their animosity toward their former enemy, they were […]

The City of Salisbury has had great success as a community in preserving its past. These photos highlight some examples of the many treasures in its commercial center and historic neighborhoods. Read related article on this site. Photographs by Nancy Pierce

“Frank Lloyd Wright described vernacular architecture as ‘folk building growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment…’  Early settlers to the Piedmont – English, Scots-Irish, and German – arrived with traditional European building styles in mind, but they quickly adapted them to our local conditions.  As such, the old farmhouses in the Uwharries became […]