An architecture walk through Uptown, built from the register

An architecture walk through Uptown

This is a suggested order, not a surveyed route. We have not walked it. Distances and street continuity have not been checked on the ground. Treat it as a list of things worth looking at, in a sensible sequence.

What you are looking at, and who made it

Independence Building, 100–102 West Trade Street — Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival. Architect: William L. Stoddart.

Hotel Charlotte, 327 West Trade Street — also by Stoddart, and by J. A. Jones as builder. Two Stoddart buildings within a few minutes' walk of each other.

First Presbyterian Church, 200 West Trade Street — Gothic Revival.

Charles R. Jonas Federal Building, 401 West Trade Street — Classical Revival and Renaissance.

Merchants and Farmers National Bank Building, 123 East Trade Street — Italianate.

Philip Carey Building, 301 East 7th Street — Romanesque.

Charlotte Fire Station No. 4, 420 West 5th Street — Early Commercial and Chicago style. The Chicago-school designation is rare in Charlotte and worth stopping for.

Liddell-McNinch House, 511 North Church Street — Queen Anne and Shingle Style. Next door at 515 stands the Frederick Apartments.

Overcarsh House, 326 West 8th Street — Queen Anne, in Fourth Ward.

Seaboard Air Line Railroad Passenger Station, 1000 North Tryon Street, and the Southern Asbestos Company Mills at 1000 Seaboard Street — Italianate — mark the industrial northern edge.

The one that isn't there any more

The Barringer Hotel, 426 North Tryon Street, was Art Deco — designed by Bobbie Dial and Albert Thomas with the Jno. C. Heslep Company, with periods of significance running 1925–1974. It was listed on the National Register in 2011 and demolished in 2022.

Listing on the National Register is an honour, not a protection. Walk past the gap.

The names worth knowing

From the Park Service's architect fields across all 110 Mecklenburg listings:

• William L. Stoddart — Hotel Charlotte, Independence Building
• J. A. Jones — Fire Station No. 2, Hotel Charlotte
• John Nolen — the city planner behind both the Elizabeth and Myers Park historic districts
• Stuart Warren Cramer — Highland Park Manufacturing Company and the North Charlotte (NoDa) historic district
• D. A. Tompkins Company — Highland Park Mill No. 1 and the Orient Manufacturing Company/Chadwick mill; Tompkins also built the Alpha Cotton Mill in Optimist Park and is buried at Elmwood
• M. R. Marsh — the former Charlotte Coca-Cola Bottling plant and the Fritz Seifart House
• Louis Asbury — Wesley Heights, among many others
• W. W. Smith, Charlotte's first Black architect — the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building

Seventy-three architects and designers are named across the county's register listings.

Styles you will actually meet in Charlotte

Property counts from the register:

Twenty-five styles in all.