Historic Charlotte

THE NEW SOUTH ELITE IN CONTROL
David Ovens exhibited the best qualities of Charlotte’s New South upper class. As early as 1912,
when he had headed a fundraising campaign to build a new YWCA, Ovens had begun to establish
himself as a prominent local philanthropist. Ovens was president of the Charlotte Chamber of
Commerce, which was established in 1915 as the successor to the Greater Charlotte Club. He was
president of the Good Fellows Club, a charitable organization that had its origins in Second
Presbyterian Church. Ovens headed Charlotte’s first Community Chest Drive, forerunner of today’s
United Way. He was the local chairman of the American Red Cross during World War II and served
on the boards of several other prestigious Charlotte-Mecklenburg institutions, including Queens
College, Davidson College, and Presbyterian Hospital.
Ovens was a member of the delegation that traveled to Washington, D.C. in July 1917 to lobby
for the establishment of a World War One military training camp in Charlotte. Much as Dr. Charles
J. Fox, James W. Osborne, and William Johnston had done in the late 1840s, Ovens and his compatriots
were seeking to stimulate the local economy through the introduction of new infrastructure.
They too were successful. General Leonard Wood, commander of the Army’s Department of
the Southeast, visited Charlotte on July 5, 1917. Wood toured “the site offered on the southwest
of the city.”
The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce raised thousands of dollars of private money to purchase
a sufficient amount of land to accommodate the needs of the U. S. Army. Named Camp Greene in
honor of Nathanael Greene of Revolutionary War fame, the massive facility, containing approximately
2000 buildings on 2340 acres of land, opened just to the southwest of town by the end of
✧
The Duke Mansion in Myers Park. Duke’s
house impressed not only because of its size,
but also its huge fountain, which pumped
water directly from the Catawba River
several miles to the west.
COURTESY BRUCE R. SCHULMAN.
CHAPTER X
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