2009 Patton Avenue

Built in 1960-61 for schoolteacher Ira Brewer, Jr., and his wife Arcasia Brewer.

Mr. Brewer, a native of Cabarrus County about an hour northeast of Charlotte, graduated from North Carolina A & T University in 1947. He taught art at Unity High School in Statesville, N.C., during the late 1940s before moving to Charlotte. He was an art teacher in Charlotte’s public schools for thirty-four years.

Like many of his McCrorey Heights neighbors, Ira Brewer took pride in social and civic involvement. He was active in Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the NC A&T Alumni Association, and in retirement worked part-time for Charlotte Mecklenburg’s Park & Recreation Department. In 1976 he founded Los Bravos, a non-profit organization of fifteen African American men from Mecklenburg and Gaston counties who met regularly to work for charitable causes, a partner organization of the Charlotte chapter of the women’s group Las Amigas, Inc. Los Bravos continued its work well after Mr. Brewer’s death, still active at this writing in 2017. Its annual Sweethearts Ball each February and other activities had by then raised over $100,000 for more than 20 beneficiaries during 40 years.

Las Amigas, the sister organization of Los Bravos, grew from its 1957 Charlotte founding to become a multi-state service organization. When the group donated health supplies to Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools in 2017, a press release read: “Las Amigas, Incorporated is a national, public service women’s organization founded by two dynamic ladies, the late Mrs. Dora R. Mason and the late Mrs. Mary Q. Moore, on February 5, 1957 in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Today the organization has a total of 22 chapters in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, DC and Pennsylvania.”

Ira Brewer Jr. died in 2000. His wife Arcasia D. Brewer passed away on January 5, 2017.