POPLAR APARTMENT CONDOMINIUMS

Special significance in terms of its history, architecture, and/or cultural importance: The Commission judges that the property known as the Poplar Apartment Condominiums does possess special significance in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the following considerations:
1) the Poplar Apartments, completed in 1930 and designed by Lockwood, Greene and Company, represented a major breakthrough in the local apartment development business in terms of the elegance and lavishness of its architectural appointments;
2) the Poplar Apartments document the transformation of Fourth Ward into a fashionable multi-family residential district in the 1920s;
3) the building is the most elegant early 20th Century apartment building which survives in uptown Charlotte; and
4) the Poplar Apartments have more recently participated in the conversion of Fourth Ward into the residential showcase of uptown Charlotte.

Dr. William H. Huffman

The Poplar Apartments, located at the corner of Tenth and Poplar Streets in Charlotte's Fourth Ward, is still one of the most majestic and well-built multiple-unit buildings in the South. This landmark was a physical representation of the growth, confidence and affluence of Charlotte in the late 1920s. Coming as it did at the very end of the boom of the Twenties and beginning of the Great Depression, if it had been delayed even six months or a year, it is doubtful that this unique building would ever have been constructed at all. The bad economic times of the early Thirties still played a role in the Poplar's early history, however.

The site where the Poplar now stands had been occupied by the residence of Professor George B. Hanna (1835-1906) and his wife, Nola Alexander Hanna (1857-1927). Hanna, a Massachusetts native, was an assayer at the Charlotte mint for nearly forty years, from 1868 to 1906, and president of the Charlotte YMCA for twenty-nine years.1 Nola Hanna, who was the daughter of Dr. A. W. Alexander of Charlotte, lived in the house alone after her husband died until her own death in November, 1927.2 In a deed handled by the Home Real Estate and Guaranty Company of Charlotte, the property was subsequently sold by Mrs. Hanna's executor (her brother, Charles L. Alexander), to Willetts Construction Company of New York in July, 1928.

It was Willetts' intention to build the five-story Poplar as "cooperative homes," that is, similar to those in New York, it wanted to sell 99-year leases and issue stock in a cooperative apartment house. In January, 1929, three local businessmen set up the Poplar Apartments Corporation, headed by Hal L. McKee (1898-1979), a Charlotte realtor, to contract the building for Willetts. To design the structure, the firm of Lockwood, Greene and Company was engaged, which was a major architectural and engineering company with offices in Charlotte, as well as Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Montreal, and Paris. Among others, Lockwood, Greene also designed the Charlotte Supply Company building on Mint Street in Charlotte's Third Ward. In the building permit taken out on January 25, 1929, the apartment house was estimated to cost $250,000, which was a considerable sum for a residential building not in the very center of town, even though within walking distance.

By that fateful month of October, 1929, work on the building had progressed to the point where Willetts contracted with Home Real Estate and Guaranty to manage and handle leases for the apartments. It was signed on the 24th, the day of a massive sell-off of stocks in New York, and five days before "Black Tuesday," when the bottom fell out of the stock market. Nonetheless, construction of the apartments continued, and in December, 1929, Willetts borrowed $125,000 from the Independence Trust Company in Charlotte to help finance the project, and by March, 1930, the Poplar was completed and ready for occupancy. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 20-22, 1930, a truly exciting event took place in Charlotte on the occasion of the Poplar's formal opening. Home Real Estate and Guaranty took out three full-page ads in the Charlotte Observer inviting the citizens of the city to visit "Charlotte's newest and most elaborate project":

"The Poplar Apartments represent an investment of a half-million dollars and are the latest things in ultramodern large apartment. Above 23,000 visitors saw our model home. Attendance at exhibition of model apartment expected to be as large..... The comfort, convenience and high quality of these magnificent apartments is rapidly filling the 39-family structure with select and highly pleased tenants. Representatives and hostesses will be in attendance to escort visitors from top to bottom of the building, explaining its fine features and the excellent material that went into its make-up." The showplace of the grand opening was indeed the model apartment, which had been furnished by the W. T. McCoy Company of Charlotte, one of the finest in the area, and the Smith-Wadsworth Hardware Company (which provided bric-a-brac), all done in the best of taste for comfortable middle-class living of the time. It also featured a shiny new majestic four-legged radio, and "even the refrigerator has been stocked by E. W. Berryhill, neighborhood grocer."

The Poplar Apartments were truly unique in a number of ways, making them unusual not only in Charlotte, but among those in the South. Not only was the building fireproof and soundproof, every apartment had cross-ventilation (there were no inside rooms) and an unobstructed view. The thirty-nine unit building ranged from a three-to a seven-room apartment, with corresponding rents from $70 to $150 per month, and each apartment was equipped with a working open fireplace in the living room. All also had a completely equipped modern kitchen of the day with electric refrigerator, tiled baths (the larger apartments had two baths) and the latest steam heat and incinerator. Included as well was a garage basement for the residents' motor cars.14 In sum, the Poplar was clearly one of the best, if not the best, multi-family dwelling to be erected in Charlotte and the entire region. It was a splendid anchor for Charlotte's residential Fourth Ward.

Unfortunately for the owner, Willetts Construction, the economic climate worsened rapidly after the stock market crash, and just over four months after the grand opening, Willetts defaulted on their note to Independence Trust, and the Poplar was sold to S. T. Henderson of Charlotte for $165,000 in August, 1930.15 Stephen Thomas Henderson (1896-1940) was quite familiar with the elegant apartment building, because he was president of Home Real Estate and Guaranty at the time of its construction and opening. After his successful bid, Henderson assigned ownership to another of his companies, Henderson, Whitener and Company, which had been formed in 1928 with Henderson, his brother-in-law, J. H. Whitner, and H. L. McKee and John D. Shawl. Two months later, Henderson, Whitner sold the Poplar to Home Real Estate and Guaranty, which then made the original agent and manager also the owner.

When Home Real Estate borrowed money in October, 1930, they also eventually fell victim to the effects of the Depression, although they lasted through five of the worst years. Poplar Apartments, Inc., a company formed in August, 1935, by W. Latimer Brown, his wife Ruth Harding Brown, and H. B. Lockwood, bought the building through a foreclosure sale for $32,000, plus the assumption of a $135,000 deed of trust in September, 1935.21 For fifteen years, Poplar Apartments, Inc. successfully guided the dwelling through the remainder of the Depression and the following wartime years. In 1950, the corporation was taken over by a new set of stockholders, headed by Edwin L. Jones, Sr., and included his wife, Anabel L. Jones, their son, Edwin L. Jones, Jr., a daughter, Louise Jones Brown, and son-in-law, W. Franklin Brown, and the name was changed to Jones Realty Co., Inc. (later Jones-Brown Realty Co., Inc.).

After nearly thirty years of ownership of the Fourth Ward landmark, Jones-Brown sold the Poplar to NCNB Community Development Corporation in 1978.23 Two years later, under a joint development venture with SYNCO, Inc., a major Charlotte developer, the venture, going under the name Hackberry Place Associates, converted the Poplar into condominiums. Under the conversion, the first units were sold in September, 1980, some fifty years after its much-heralded opening during a very different time.

It is entirely fitting, however, that the Poplar should be a part of the revitalization of Fourth Ward in Charlotte. It was built at a time when that mostly-residential neighborhood near the city center was enjoying the peak of its prosperity, as was the rest of the city. Its massive elegance and exceptionally solid construction, complete with the best equipment of the time, and fine tile, marble, terrazzo and woodwork, represent a visual testament to the belief the developers had in the life of the city then and in the future. Their view has proven true through the renaissance of Fourth Ward following a decades long period of decline. Through it all, the Poplar remained the vision of the solid, lasting values of the community.