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Elizabeth College
Lutheran pastor Charles D. King had a dream. He wanted to offer young
southern women an education in "classics, mathematics and sciences
equal to...our best colleges for young men" and to add training in
"social culture, music, art and conversation." The first brick
buildings of Elizabeth College were built in 1896-97 on the former Charles
Law Torrence plantation at the end of a leisurely lane just beyond the
eastern edge of Charlotte, when the town population was about 18,000. The
Reverend King named the small Victorian college for Anne Elizabeth Watts,
whose husband's tobacco fortune largely financed the college. People from
all over Charlotte came to musical events and plays at the college
conservatory. A formal entry gate and a thick, thorny hedge of locust was
" planted all around the college, to keep the girls in and the boys
out." Beyond the college lay fields where townspeople found fine
rabbit, squirrel, and bird hunting in days when citizens commonly ate all
three. The central college building, designed by architect J.A. Dempwolf
of Pennsylvnia, later became Presbyterian Hospital. Elizabeth College
moved to Salem, Virginia, in 1915. |
