1631 Patton Avenue
Built 1960-1961. The first occupant was Winston B. Fletcher, a teacher at Second Ward High School.
Built 1960-1961. The first occupant was Winston B. Fletcher, a teacher at Second Ward High School.
Built 1965-66 for Second Ward High School principal E.E. Waddell, one the city’s top educators and civic leaders, and his wife Frances C. Waddell, also a teacher. Two educational facilities today are named in Dr. Waddell’s honor: E.E. Waddell Community Center in Albemarle, N.C., where he served as principal for two decades, and E.E. Waddell High School in Charlotte.
Built in 1957, this house first was home to Mrs. Louella M. Currie, a teacher at West Charlotte High School. A later long-time resident was Arthur A. Wilson, Jr., one of two teachers who launched Drivers Education as a course in Charlotte schools.
Built 1957-58 by Marsh Realty. The first owner-occupant was Eddiola Alexander, a long-time Home Economics educator first at Sterling High School then later at West Mecklenburg High.
Built in 1976, this is the most architecturally significant house in McCrorey Heights, an early design by noted Modernist architect Harvey Gantt who later became Charlotte’s first African America mayor.
Gantt created it for Matilda Spears, a path-breaking educator. In the 1960s Mrs. Spears became “one of the first black female school principals to work in an integrated community when she became Principal of Park Road Elementary,” noted her funeral program. She also served as principal at Zeb Vance Elementary School, and late in her career taught as Associate Professor of Education at Barber Scotia College. Mrs. Spear’s husband Arthur Eugene “A.E.” Spears headed the Charlotte branch of North Carolina Mutual Insurance, one of the largest black-owned economic enterprises in the United States.
Constructed about 1968-69 and occupied for its first decade by Rev. and Mrs. Mayo L. Rich. Rev. Rich led Greater Bethel AME Church, then worked for the city’s mental health agency.
Built in 2002, according to municipal tax records. Initial occupant was Cora L. Scott.
In December of 1959 Otis L. Young took out the building permit to have contractor Edwin O. Clarkson construct this home. Young and his wife Lou Venia S. Young lived here through least 1989. Young worked as a porter with the Southern Railway, one of the top jobs available to African American men in the era of segregation. Porters were usually unionized, and thus had better wages and job security than most workers in the South, black or white. “Mrs. Young spent her career as a teacher at Bruns Ave. and after 1977 as a librarian at Our Lady of Consolation Catholic School,” according to a 1989 article honoring their gardening efforts as winners of the Charlotte Post Lawn of the Year Contest.
Coleman Rippy took out the permit to build this house in 1952. It was among the earliest dozen or so houses completed in McCrorey Heights after World War II. For decades, Rippy was one of Charlotte’s strongest voices for social justice. He initially directed the Oaklawn Community Center, a social work effort that aided low income residents in the Double Oaks area of Charlotte. He next created the program in Sociology and Social Work at Johnson C. Smith University. He also served as a national lay leader in the A.M.E. Zion Church. His wife Almeda Rippy had a long career as an educator, a curriculum development administrator in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, and a professor of education at UNC Charlotte.
Built in 1955 by “spec-builder” E.O. Clarkson and sold to Mrs. Wilma G. Williams, an instructor at Johnson C. Smith University.
In the mid 1960s this became the residence of contractor and cement mason Malachi Greene, Sr., whose accomplishments included co-founding the Charlotte local of the OPCMIA, the national plasters and cement finishers union. Mr. Greene’s sons became important leaders. Malachi Greene, Jr., held several positions in North Carolina state government and served two terms on Charlotte City Council in the 1990s. Dr. William H. Greene — who became the owner of this house in 1979 and lived here with his wife, JSCU psychology professor Dr. Ruth Greene, into the early 1990s — had a career as a university administrator, including a stint as president of Livingstone College 1983 – 1987.