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Southern Manufacturers' Club and Charlotte Daily
Observer This was one of Charlotte's most historic
buildings, the city's last identifiable link with the Civil War and
Reconstruction, altered significantly, then razed in 1973. The three-story
Charlotte Branch of the Bank of North Carolina at 122 South Tryon Street
was built before 1860 and was used for one of the last cabinet meetings of
the Confederacy in April 1865. Subsequently the bank failed following the
financial panic of 1873, and the building was home to the Charlotte Daiy
Observer from 1893 to 1916. The Chronicle was the Observer's afternoon
publication. In this "Observer building", the group organized by
New South Activist D.A. Tompkins founded the influential Southern
Manufacturers' Club in 1894. Tompkins's partner was Joseph P. Caldwell,
the Observer editor who became one of North Carolina's greatest newspaper
editors. With an invited membership of 100 in 1902, the Club operated at
this site in twenty-two rooms before constructing an imposing new club in
1910 at 300 West Trade Street. The fourth story was added after 1899. On
the roof gleams Charlotte's first lighted sign. |
