History

The City of Charlotte will take stock of its historic buildings and neighborhoods over the next few years, thanks to a federal Historic Preservation Fund grant. The $20,000 grant will help the city’s planning department hire a consultant for a comprehensive historic resources survey. The city will pay $30,000 in matching funds. The survey, the […]

Redevelopment of textile mills across the Carolinas has increased in the past decade as local officials have been able to offer state tax credits for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In Charlotte and across the region, mills have been turned into condos and apartments, senior housing, offices, shopping complexes and restaurants. […]

Years ago, a friend in Uwharrie showed me a crooked tree on his family’s property. Its trunk was bent at two right angles, creating a horizontal span about 4 feet off the ground. He said they called it their “ducker-header” tree. Their clever terminology came to mind again recently when I learned about the Trail […]

Some well-known intersections in the city hide the remnants of a now forgotten, but once major highway through the Carolinas. It was known as Potter Road and its name referred to the one-time pottery industry in western Lincoln County. Today, after neighbors pushed the city to save a piece of the old road’s route, an […]

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 […]