"Lost" Charlotte

The Jenkins House
(c. 1917)

In early January, the circa 1917 Jenkins House at 15221 E 7th Street was demolished, despite previous attempts by the Historic Landmarks commission to purchase the house. Upon purchasing the house the HLC would have put protective covenants on the house. The Jenkins House was very comparable to the current home of the Fig Tree Restaurant (the 1913 Lucas House) just across the street. The Lucas house, a similar classic bungalow of this period, has won numerous preservation and design awards, including a Residential Preservation award from HCI, for its extensive historically accurate restoration work. Unfortunately the owners of the Jenkins house were not interested in preserving the house by selling it to the HCL. The importance of the house can best be understood as it pertains to the history of the Elizabeth neighborhood.

The Elizabeth neighborhood on Charlotte’s east side is the city’s second oldest streetcar suburb. It began in 1891 along what is now Elizabeth Avenue, an easterly extension of East Trade Street, one of the city’s major business and residential streets. The present-day neighborhood includes five separate early subdivisions developed along the Elizabeth Avenue-Hawthorne Lane-Seventh Street trolley line and the Central Avenue trolley line by the 1920s. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, before neighboring Myers Park developed as Charlotte’s elite residential area, the tree-shaded main boulevards of Elizabeth were among the city’s most fashionable suburban addresses for business and civic leaders.

The early residential development of Elizabeth is but half its history, however. More than any other early Charlotte suburb, Elizabeth has felt the effects of the automobile as it has transformed the city. Charlotte’s hospitals left the central business district for suburban Elizabeth beginning in the late 1910s, and now the neighborhood is the site of two of the city’s three general hospitals, and two smaller medical facilities are nearby. Small neighborhood shopping clusters began to form in the twenties. By the 1950s every one of Charlotte’s principal east-west traffic arteries sliced through the neighborhood. During the next two decades a private business college and one of North Carolina’s largest community colleges built their campuses in Elizabeth, and a 1960’s zoning plan encouraged extensive demolition of houses to allow new office development.

The Antique Kingdom

Antique Kingdom contributed to the historic character of this part of the Elizabeth neighborhood called Piedmont Park. Located at the overpass of Independence Avenue and Central Avenue it was one of the original prominent homes along the 1920’s Central Avenue Trolley Line. The house/business was demolished in December after
doing business for 26 years as the Antique Kingdom. The demolition will allow the Charlotte Metro Credit Union, which is located next to the Antique Kingdom Lot, to expand their business and parking lot. The house, a familiar site to Charlotte residents new and old, will be missed on their daily commute out of Charlotte’s Uptown.