Oaklawn Avenue

Built 1968-1969 for Mildred P. Aldridge and her second husband Theodore A. Aldridge. She earned degrees at Shaw University, University of Cincinnati and Columbia University in New York City. She taught elementary school in Charlotte for many years at the Morgan, Biddleville, Oaklawn and Paw Creek schools.

Mrs. Aldridge had an impressive family background. Her father Edgar was a local business leader who owned the Service Barber Shop downtown, known for its elite white clients. Her first husband, Dr. Milledge Brodie, was a physician and the son of the pastor of Charlotte’s imposing Brooklyn Presbyterian Church. When Dr. Brodie passed away, Mildred married Theodore Aldridge, about whom little is known.

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First Baptist Church West dedicated this new sanctuary on Oaklawn Avenue in 1977. The institution is said to be Charlotte’s oldest black Baptist congregation, founded in 1867 and housed for many years in a handsome brick building at 1020 South College Street in the center city.

The building on Oaklawn Avenue is architecturally significant as the work of important African American architect Harvey Gantt. Gantt integrated Clemson University as an architecture student, established the long running Charlotte firm Gantt-Huberman in 1971, and won two terms as Charlotte’s first black mayor in the 1980s. The church’s boxy, geometrical massing, a Gantt-Huberman hallmark, projects a sense of simplicity, clarity and power.

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Built in the mid 1910s, this is one of the earliest residences on Oaklawn Avenue. The street was first called Double Oaks Avenue (until about 1930) and was initially considered part of the Washington Heights streetcar suburb, which had been developed on the other side of Beatties Ford Road in the early 1910s.

Elias L. Foster and wife Mary were listed as living in “Washington Heights” starting in the 1914 city directory, then residing on “Double Oaks Avenue, Washington Heights” beginning in 1918. He was a barber downtown on South Mint Street. In that era there were few white barbers; African Americans had largely controlled the trade since slavery days. Barbers who owned their own shops often became important community leaders.

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1907 Oaklawn Avenue first appeared in the 1932 city directory, occupied by Rev. William Moore and wife Sallie. Subsequent directories through 1937 listed him as Rev. Wade H. Moore, but did not indicate his church, nor give an occupation for her.

About 1938, Alexander W. Davis and wife Leila bought the house, living here for twenty years. He was a porter at Pound and Moore, the city’s leading office supply store, and she taught at Myers Street School. Most businesses in that era employed a “porter” as a jack-of-all trades delivering packages, running errands and doing light building maintenance. Davis eventually joined the Federal Reserve Bank, one of Charlotte’s most prestigious institutions, where he was initially listed as “porter” and later as “clerk.”

In 1956-57 the couple built a new brick house next door at 1911 Oaklawn Avenue. They kept 1907 Oaklawn as a rental property, along with adjoining 1901 Oaklawn, into the 1970s.

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Alexander W. Davis took out the permit to build this house in 1956, contracting with Ervin Construction, then the city’s busiest contractor and developer of suburban housing. Davis was a “porter” at the Federal Reserve uptown. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most Charlotte businesses employed a “porter,” a trusted jack-of-all-trades who ran errands and handled building upkeep. His wife Leila M. Davis worked as a public schoolteacher at the Myers Street School.

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Oaklawn Avenue became a favored suburban location for leading African American physicians and ministers starting in the 1920s-30s, with additional fine houses filling out the street during the 1950s-60s. AME Zion minister Rev. Samuel W. Hamilton lived here for three decades starting in 1926, becoming a regional leader in the denomination. His wife Helen worked as an office manager at the AME Zion Publishing House in downtown Charlotte during the 1950s and 1960s.

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In 1924 Edward O’Daniel bought this lot from next door neighbor J. Henry Warren and had this Bungalow built for himself and wife Bonnie. O’Daniel worked as porter/bellman at the Mecklenburg Hotel, one of the city’s largest downtown hotels. Porter/bellman was considered a good job by African Americans in that era, where a hard-working, dependable man could earn an income that allowed a middle-class lifestyle.

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This house is among the earliest on prestigious Oaklawn Avenue, built sometime around 1917 for J. Henry Warren, a barber and civic leader, and his wife Lula, daughter of noted AME Zion Bishop Thomas Henry Lomax.

Soon after graduating from what is now Johnson C. Smith University in 1894, J. Henry Warren helped chose the school colors of gold and navy blue. He opened a barber shop for white clients in the heart of downtown and by 1920 the Charlotte News recognized him as one of the “leaders in public life among the [N]egro population of Charlotte.” Warren served on many civic committees: raising funds to expand Good Samaritan Hospital; urging black men to volunteer for World War I military duty; asking Charlotte to create a public park for African Americans. His passion was the creation of Sunday Schools; in an era when public schooling was scarce, especially for low-income African Americans, church-related schooling often provided not only faith training but also practical skills. In 1923 Warren served as president of a national convention of Sunday School activists held in Cleveland, Ohio, under auspices of the AME Zion denomination.

Warren and his wife Lula evidently lost the house in the Great Depression. Subsequent occupants during the 1930s were Rev. Benjamin Swain, Presiding Elder of AME Zion’s Charlotte District, then Rev. William A. Blackwell, Editor of the Star of Zion, the denomination’s national newspaper.

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This residence first appeared in the city directory in 1932. Owners for over fifty years were Rev. Abraham H. Prince and wife Susan Prince. Rev. Prince ranked among the leading ministers in the southeastern United States. He pastored Brooklyn Presbyterian Church in Charlotte during the 1930s, then in 1939 stepped into the top administrative position in Presbyterian denomination’s Synod of the Atlantic: Field Representative covering South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. His wife Susan Peacock Prince taught in Charlotte’s public schools.

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During the 1920s-1930s Oaklawn Avenue became a prestigious address for African American doctors, ministers and other Charlotte leaders. This substantial house on a corner lot was constructed in 1937 for physician Dr. Robert H. Greene.

Dr. Greene became a plaintiff in the 1951 lawsuit to desegregate the golf course at Revolution Park. The case, watched widely across the United States, helped invalidate the deed covenants that barred African Americans from public parks. Dr. Greene served as statewide president of the black Old North State Medical Society; in 1970 it named him Doctor of the Year.

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