History of Charlotte

[SgtCampsalot]

1 hour ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

I was part of that too!!!!! I was 9
 

Awwwww daaaaamn!

That training stuck with me through decades of rec leagues. I still do it to this day 

What was the guys name who led it? My parents said it was some famous player.

Edited April 6, 2019 by SgtCampsalot

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

Awwwww daaaaamn!

That training stuck with me through decades of rec leagues. I still do it to this day 

What was the guys name who led it? My parents said it was some famous guy.

I have no recollection haha. 

[KJHburg]

From the very back of KJ's large walk in closet this piece of Charlotte history.  Maybe I will sport it around town wrinkles and all.    Thanks for reminding me of this I also found my great Savannah Bananas baseball T shirt too.  That I will wear at the la playa. 

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by KJHburg

[videtur quam contuor]

My niece was n town (age 14) and I took her to the FF Experience or whatever it was called at the old convention center and shot free throws and looked at swag and any other stuff available. It took us out of the house and away from the rest of the family for several hours. The fake South Tryon experience with potemkin businesses was pathetic but a harbinger of better times, of a new convention center and a different city aborning.

[SgtCampsalot]

2 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

My niece was n town (age 14) and I took her to the FF Experience or whatever it was called at the old convention center and shot free throws and looked at swag and any other stuff available. It took us out of the house and away from the rest of the family for several hours. The fake South Tryon experience with potemkin businesses was pathetic but a harbinger of better times, of a new convention center and a different city aborning.

Are there any photos of the Potemkin Village S Tryon St? I've read about it many times, I was too young to remember that stuff. @KJHburg?

[videtur quam contuor]

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/02/us/charlotte-s-downtown-manages-to-stay-up-late-for-tournament.html

Best I could do

[CLTNative]

Coleslaw wrestling? Seriously... I did go to Hartigans once to see lesbian pudding wrestling. Anyway, Robert Krumbine, now with cccp was the mind behind those pop up restaurants/bars. There was not much uptown at the time aside from the mythos strip.  City fair hadnt even happened yet. They had to do something.

ill ask if he has any photos.

Edited April 6, 2019 by CLTNative

[KJHburg]

2 hours ago, SgtCampsalot said:

Are there any photos of the Potemkin Village S Tryon St? I've read about it many times, I was too young to remember that stuff. @KJHburg?

I remember seeing it but not sure if I have any photos.  

[KJHburg]

5 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/02/us/charlotte-s-downtown-manages-to-stay-up-late-for-tournament.html

Best I could do

I sure hope that writer if he is still around comes back next summer for the RNC or sooner and looks around.  He won't know where he is. 

[KJHburg]

Few historical markers uptown.   KJ walking tour uptown. 

1. 2. Mecklenburg Investment building a vestige of old Brooklyn community this building better not ever be knocked down.  Ever. 

Johnston Bldg is my favorite historical high rise.  (also Tryon Plaza at 112 S Tryon and Dunhill and Iveys all from the same era) 

Last photo inside the Latta Arcade where they use to grade cotton under these skylights rises the Barings 300 South Tryon building next door. 

Charlotte's got a lot... more history than your imagine at first glance. 

[KJHburg]

and how can forget the best statue in all of Charlotte the Captain Jack at Trade and Kings.   For those who don't know the story

https://www.mecknc.gov/ParkandRec/Greenways/LSCG/captainJack.html

Edited April 7, 2019 by KJHburg

[CarolinaDaydreamin]

On 4/2/2019 at 7:45 PM, Matthew.Brendan said:

Brick on point. Masonry *thumbsup*

I'd love to watch that being pressure washed.

[KJHburg]

Here is another historical building uptown saved and now is condos.  It was the old St Peters Hospital.  Here is a little history of it.

""St. Peter's Hospital, which opened in Charlotte in 1876, is credited with being North Carolina's first general hospital. Nineteenth-century Charlotte, like many communities throughout the South, lacked adequate medical facilities for poor and working-class citizens. The leading voice behind the new hospital was Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes, remembered as the "Godmother of Charlotte Hospitals." St. Peter's, originally called Home and Hospital, occupied two rooms on East Seventh Street. During its first year the facility moved to various locations throughout the city. In 1877 a local organization called the Busy Bee Society raised $273.42 and purchased a lot on modern Poplar Street, where the Home and Hospital of St. Peter's Episcopal Church began operations on 4 June. Fund-raising activities conducted by Jane and John Wilkes, as well as charity balls and monetary gifts from other philanthropists, kept the hospital open during its early years.

From the beginning, St. Peter's Hospital fought the public's fear of such institutions. Conditions in some nineteenth-century hospitals were so horrible that resistance to using them was common. Even though St. Peter's provided the finest medical care available, patients literally had to be forced to enter and local police officers stood guard to prevent rioters from shooting into the building.

Many of Charlotte's leading physicians practiced at St. Peter's, including R. E. M. Brevard and G. W. Pressly, who provided the first X-ray apparatus in a North Carolina hospital. The facility continued to grow and prosper until the late 1930s, when it became apparent to the board of directors that a larger hospital was needed to serve Charlotte's ever-growing population. St. Peter's Hospital closed on 7 Oct. 1940, when Charlotte Memorial Hospital opened.""   from https://www.ncpedia.org/hospitals

Photo from today.  the towering Vue apartment tower looms behind it.  

[Vitamin_N]

I just watched 'Wild Wild Country', the Netflix documentary about the Bhagwan Rajneesh cult in Oregon. I was in elementary school when everything went down, in the early 80s, so the extent of my knowledge going into this was that there was some guy with a bunch of Rolls Royces who got in trouble. What I had no idea about was that he was arrested right here in Charlotte . The whole series is fascinating and worth watching, but if you want to see the Charlotte part of it, it's in the first 10 minutes or so of the sixth and final episode.

[videtur quam contuor]

https://www.cmstory.org/content/jane-wilkes-statue

Jane Wilkes statue on greenway across the street from CMC/Memorial/Atrium and long before the St Peter's at K says above.

[CLT>]

 

 

 

On 4/4/2019 at 11:58 PM, King of the Queen City said:

25 years ago tonight (4/4/94), the National Championship Game of the Final Four was decided as Arkansas beat Duke at the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road. President Bill Clinton was in attendance.

 

I was there as well, and also saw this little guy outside the Final Four in Minneapolis a few weeks ago:

A legacy we still have today (well up until last year I guess) was that they 'scandalously 'changed the law to allow 12noon liquor sales on Sundays for the Final Four... That Sunday happened to be Easter Sunday too.

[King of the Queen City]

Happy Good Friday and Easter Weekend to everybody! Regardless of religious beliefs, I think about anybody can appreciate the architecture of historic church buildings. In the aftermath of the fire at the Notre Dame Cathederal in Paris this week, we should not take them for granted. The former First Baptist (aka McGlohon Theater) now also serves as the Uptown campus for Elevation Church.  A bonus “postcard” is included featuring Calvary Church as well.

[videtur quam contuor]

Churches are living histories and church cemeteries are even moreso. A fine work found here:

https://www.amazon.com/Sticks-Stones-Gravemarkers-Architecture-Decorative/dp/0807824178

by Ruth Little describes many in our region and elsewhere in North Carolina. Ruth Little wrote the architectural and historical guide to Dilworth which was the basis for the addition to the National Register of Historic Places.  

For instance, as history, the Steele Creek Presbyterian church cemetery has as its first interment in 1763  a stranger passing through, name unknown. He struck a limb while on horseback, if I recall correctly and was buried by the church members. It is redundant to describe more as we all know what the past tells us. Grave art, plagues, child mortality, wars, the story is there, we must but look.

[King of the Queen City]

8 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

Churches are living histories and church cemeteries are even moreso. 

Elmwood Cemetery (Source)

Old Settlers Cemetery (Source)

[videtur quam contuor]

This is from Epicenter thread that strayed to civil engineering fails:

It is possible to overcome some civil engineering liabilities. My best example is the Tyvola Road Coliseum. That area had a landfill, abutting a waste treatment plant with high power lines across. NO ONE would take that land even if offered as a gift. The city extended Tyvola to make a gateway to the airport, built the Coliseum, covered the landfill and made it a park and recreation area and suddenly (20 years later) all that is considered as amenities. The treatment plant is sequesterd on the opposite side of a new Graham Parkway from the development and presto-change-o, offices, housing, retail and restaurants and no one knows a thing about the underground and nearby issues of the past.

[Urban Cowboy]

ca. 1905-1915

1907

1908

1913

ca. 1915-1930

1916

1955

 

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Urban Cowboy

[SgtCampsalot]

56 minutes ago, Urban Cowboy said:

ca. 1905-1915

1907

1908

1913

ca. 1915-1930

1916

1955

Um... According to these postcards Charlotte was a veritable Metropolis of a small town in the first half of the 20th Century.

Look at pics #1 and #4: two shots of E Trade St, with the Hotel Charlotte building located in the center of each. That entire stretch doesn't exist anymore (except for that tiny strip across from the Federal Courthouse).

Oof...

Edited April 25, 2019 by SgtCampsalot

[nakers2]

On 4/23/2019 at 11:28 AM, tarhoosier said:

This is from Epicenter thread that strayed to civil engineering fails:

It is possible to overcome some civil engineering liabilities. My best example is the Tyvola Road Coliseum. That area had a landfill, abutting a waste treatment plant with high power lines across. NO ONE would take that land even if offered as a gift. The city extended Tyvola to make a gateway to the airport, built the Coliseum, covered the landfill and made it a park and recreation area and suddenly (20 years later) all that is considered as amenities. The treatment plant is sequesterd on the opposite side of a new Graham Parkway from the development and presto-change-o, offices, housing, retail and restaurants and no one knows a thing about the underground and nearby issues of the past.

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/jun/atplayonafieldof1150

Interesting article about the Renaissance Park landfill.

[videtur quam contuor]

Oh, yes, I recall the woman looking for the soccer ball and being blown back by the methane fireball.

Full Disclosure: when the landfill was open I cleaned the debris from my basement and dropped it there. It was weigh-in and weigh-out payment system. There is an antique outboard motor and other trash under there from my contribution. 

[Bruco72]

On 4/6/2019 at 2:49 PM, tarhoosier said:

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/02/us/charlotte-s-downtown-manages-to-stay-up-late-for-tournament.html

Best I could do

As a fairly recent transplant, that is an amazing article. Thanks.  There's been just a *few* changes since then.