Seeing Charlotte’s history on foot

The Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter this week is taking a summer break from covering the business world to present a series looking at Charlotte’s history on foot. So we’re going to talk about that instead. It’s written by Lawrence Toppman, who joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.

Marshall Terry: You covered the arts for the Charlotte Observer for decades and you do it for the Ledger now. What made you want to take on some of the city’s history? And why by walking?

Lawrence Toppman: Well, all the stories I follow now are motivated by curiosity. I've driven past Elmwood for years. I shop actually at Park Road Shopping Center all the time, but I didn't know much about it. And of course I've gone uptown, walking up and down Tryon Street thinking, ‘who stuck these things in the sidewalk?’ And now it's just a case for me to explore the things I've always been mildly curious about.

Terry: And Elmwood that you just mentioned is Elmwood Pinewood Cemetery, that huge cemetery on the edge of uptown, which is popular among walkers and joggers. I was surprised to read that it’s a place where you can see the history of racial division in Charlotte. Can you explain that a little bit?

Toppman: Well, it was formerly divided in two by a fence, and the white side was Elmwood and the Black side was Pinewood. The fence was eventually removed in the 1960s, but almost all of the two cemeteries are maintained differently. Elmwood has curbs, it doesn't have debris, it doesn't have fallen tombstones, it doesn't have a fence that's sagging and covered with ivy. It's a very tidy fence. And Pinewood has all of those things. That's not to say that Pinewood isn't an easy and interesting walk, but when you cross over that invisible divide, you can see that this once was not well kept for and is now kept up, I think, a little bit less efficiently, I'll say, than the Elmwood side.

Terry: You also wrote about Charlotte's Liberty Walk, a stroll through Revolutionary-era history that you said is left mostly to the imagination. Why is that?

Toppman: The landmarks are almost all gone. If you go to where Cook's Inn, which is one of the stops, is on West Trade Street, you find that it now sits next to a defunct Hooters, and it's a business now. It's a high-rise. And so for me, these are things I have to see plaques about and read about and think, ‘OK, a hotel once stood here where Washington visited. What was it like?’ We don't know. We don't have pictures, and we don't really have written reports much. There are four places along that route where Cornwallis came in and fought the Colonial army, and most of that you have to imagine.

Terry: And to bring it back to business, you also wrote about a vintage mall that's outlasted its peers. That comes out Friday. But give us a preview if you will.

Toppman: Park Road Shopping Center was the first mall of its kind in this region, really, certainly in western North Carolina. And it still survives from its 1950s origins. The sign is there, and the U.S. Post Office is still there. A lot of it still has an old charm that many places in Charlotte have lost, and I just feel a sense of comfort when I go in there. These are businesses that have been around for decades. They're individualized, they're welcoming, and they feel like, in a way, the main street of the small southern New Jersey town in which I grew up. They are owned generally as a rule, not by chains, and for me that has a very friendly and welcoming feeling that a lot of Charlotte businesses do not have.

Terry: Charlotte has long been accused of always tearing down its history to make way for something new. And to be sure, many older buildings have been torn down. But after doing this series, do you think that accusation is true?

Toppman: I think it's true because we tend to preserve history as memories. Park Road is still a very active and busy shopping center, but that's a little bit of an anomaly in Charlotte. So yes, I think I've got to say that. The Observer building, in which I worked for 37 years, was torn down almost as soon as the Observer moved out of it. So for me, Charlotte is a place that talks about preservation but doesn't seem to do a great job of it.

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