_915 Condon Street

George W. C. Moreland took out the permit to build this single-family rental residence in 1964. Moreland, one of the city’s few African American real estate investors, lived two blocks away at 1801 Patton Avenue in McCrorey Heights. Moreland developed four rental dwellings on this block, all in the ranch style, apparently variations on the same plan.

The initial tenant made his mark on Charlotte as a leading medical man. Dr. Spurgeon Webber, Jr, and his wife Loretta rented here as he was beginning his dental career, with his office on Keller Drive (renamed Dr. Webber Avenue circa 2014) near West Charlotte High School.

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Spurgeon W. Webber, Jr. (1.26.1934 – 12.6.2011) grew up in Gaston County just west of Charlotte. His mother taught at Lincoln Academy, a private school for African Americans out in the countryside near the town of Kings Mountain. Nationally known alumni included artist John T. Biggers and Hogan’s Heroes TV actor Ivan Dixon. The boarding school had been founded by the American Missionary Association and Congregational Church (an uncommon denomination in this part of the South). Spurgeon Webber, Jr., would remain a member of Gaston County’s First Congregational United Church of Christ all of his life, even during his long residence in Charlotte.

The strong education that Webber got at Lincoln carried him to Hampton University, then to a dental degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, one of the two top medical schools open to African Americans. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force Dental Corps at Dover Air Force Base before coming to Charlotte to launch his career.

Dr. Webber forged a statewide reputation as a leader in his profession, elected President of the black Old North State Dental Association. As barriers began to fall during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 70s, Webber was appointed as the first African American on the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners.

He married wife Loretta Jean Hill Webber when she was a nursing student at Meharry. In Charlotte she became program director for the Metrolina Lung Association and also consulted as a health analyst with the City of Charlotte. She was named North Carolina Small Business Person of the Year for her leadership of American Minority Industries, Inc., a computer tabulating business that she and her husband founded in the mid-1970s. The couple had two children: son Dr. Spurgeon Webber III, a dentist who took over his father’s practice, and daughter Diedra Webber Humphrey.

This house at 915 Condon was evidently the couple’s second residence in Charlotte. About 1962 they had moved into 2005 Washington Avenue, another of George Moreland’s cluster of four rental dwellings. Dr. and Mrs. Webber would later relocate to Hyde Park, an elite African American neighborhood developed during the late 1960s and 1970s further out Beatties Ford Road.