North Carolina

Tobacco barns were essential to the culture and economy of North Carolina. They were once ubiquitous across great swaths of the state, but they are fast disappearing as they fall into disuse and disrepair with the country’s changing attitudes toward smoking as well as its agricultural policies. North Carolina’s flue-cure tobacco barns are distinctive, purpose-built structures whose form is entirely shaped by their function—the heat curing of bright leaf tobacco through carefully controlled temperatures, with no smoke touching the leaf.

Grace AME Zion Church survives as a rare and tangible reminder of the Brooklyn neighborhood in Charlotte, a once thriving early-twentieth-century African American community. It is also one of Charlotte’s best examples of Gothic Revival.

The Latta Arcade is one of just a handful of commercial arcade buildings in North Carolina. It was built by Edward Dilworth Latta, an influential Charlotte businessman during the early twentieth century. At the time, Charlotte was experiencing an economic boom based largely on textile manufacturing, making it the largest city in the Carolinas by 1930. Latta’s investments and real estate development was largely influential in these changes and the large number of high-rise buildings now surrounding the Latta Arcade pays testament to this.

At the time of its construction in 1955, Bojangles’ (then Charlotte) Coliseum had the largest unsupported steel dome in the world. It was one of two structurally impressive arenas that were designed and constructed in North Carolina in the 1950s, the other being Dorton Arena in Raleigh. While Dorton Arena gained notoriety for its saddle-shaped roof, Bojangles’ Coliseum was topped with dome that spanned an incredible 332 feet.

The Mecklenburg County Courthouse exemplifies the forms of the City Beautiful movement and the ideals represented in the creation of a civic center. In 1922, the citizens of Mecklenburg County were entangled in a debate. By the 1920s Charlotte, the county seat, had grown impressively to become the largest populated city in North Carolina. The success of textile manufacturing, banking, and power generation triggered a building boom in the downtown area.

Charlotte City Hall exemplifies the forms of the City Beautiful movement and the ideals represented in the creation of a civic center. In the 1920s, the citizens of the expanding City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County engaged in a debate about whether to house the city and county government offices in one structure or two; voters decided to keep the two governments separate.

Myers Park, the premier streetcar suburb of Charlotte, exemplifies the changes of urban living patterns in the early twentieth century. The original Myers Park development comprises 1,200 acres of gently rolling farmland between Providence Road and Sugar Creek, roughly one-and-a-half miles southeast of downtown Charlotte. The land originally belonged to John Springs Myers, whose parents gave him 300 acres in 1869; Myers gradually purchased the rest as he enlarged his cotton farm.

Pinehurst Village forms part of the larger history of American resort towns and utopian retreats. In the late nineteenth century, mass industrialization created unprecedented wealth but people became increasingly weary of the rapid and drastic changes to the urban environment. They felt something essential was being lost, and this nostalgia became a driving force behind middle- and upper-class residents retreating to secluded villages in the countryside for vacation. James W.

The Pinehurst Resort was conceived in 1895 by soda fountain magnate James Walker Tufts. Approximately 6,000 acres of scrub-pine landscape was purchased in the sand-hills region of Moore County to capitalize on the supposed curative effects of the dry climate and clean waters. A plan for the grounds was drawn up by the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, and carried out by landscape architect Warren Manning. Recreational amenities soon became a focus of the Pinehurst Resort.

The opulent Bellamy Mansion serves not only as evidence of the kind of wealth amassed in antebellum Wilmington, but it is also a testament to the skill of the free and enslaved African-American artisans who built it. The house is located east of downtown in what is now a historic district.