Historic Charlotte
An illustrated history of the City of Charlotte and the Mecklenburg County area, paired with the histories of companies, families and organizations that make the region great.
An illustrated history of the City of Charlotte and the Mecklenburg County area, paired with the histories of companies, families and organizations that make the region great.
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Right: Harry Dalton, on left, at age 75.<br />
COURTESY OF DAN AND MARY LYNN MORRILL.<br />
Below: Downtown <strong>Charlotte</strong>, 1940. In this<br />
Chamber of Commerce map, it is<br />
noteworthy both how <strong>Charlotte</strong> promoted<br />
itself as a distribution center and the impact<br />
of rail and air connections on the city and its<br />
growth. U.S. 29/74, Wilkinson Boulevard,<br />
was <strong>Charlotte</strong>’s first modern highway.<br />
COURTESY BRUCE R. SCHULMAN.<br />
was unsuccessful, this time losing to Clyde R.<br />
Hoey of Shelby, North Carolina. Governor<br />
Morrison did not run for public office again.<br />
Mayor Ben Douglas had a house on<br />
Malvern Road in Myers Park. Like so many<br />
other New South leaders of <strong>Charlotte</strong> in the<br />
first half of the twentieth century, including<br />
Ovens, Duke, and Morrison, and for that matter<br />
Tompkins and Latta of an earlier generation,<br />
Douglas was not a native. Born in Iredell<br />
County, Douglas moved to <strong>Charlotte</strong> from<br />
Gastonia in the mid-1920s and established a<br />
funeral home at the corner of Fox Street and<br />
Elizabeth Avenue, now Independence<br />
Boulevard and Elizabeth Avenue.<br />
Douglas was Mayor from 1935 until 1941.<br />
He earned the reputation of being the “Builder<br />
of Modern Day <strong>Charlotte</strong>.” Douglas’s greatest<br />
and most enduring contribution to the build-<br />
HISTORIC CHARLOTTE<br />
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