Charlotte Mecklenburg Library

You are here

Home

Turn of the 20th Century: Life in Charlotte 1900 - 1910

Reading List

Here is a reading list that a teacher might have assigned students at the turn of the last century. Some of the books are classics, like Robin Hood,  and some would have been just published.

Dusk jackets of the books appearing on the reading list.

The Call of the Wild    - 1903 by Jack London

Drugstore & Soda Shoppe

This is an interior shot of Fitzsimmons Drugstore. There are twenty pharmacists who own their own stores throughout Charlotte. Fitzsimmons was at 126 South Tryon Street. Soda shops in drugstores were popular places for young people to socialize and enjoy handmade sodas and milkshakes.

Next

St. Mark's Lutheran Church

St. Mark's Lutheran remains the oldest Evangelical Lutheran Church in Charlotte. Worship services were first held in 1859. The church occupied a number of facilities, including the one seen here at 408  North Tryon Street before moving to its current location on Queens Road. Black Lutherans organized a church with the same name. It was at 510 South Davidson Street. Unfortunately, we do not have an image of that church.

Rural Schools

Rural schools looked quite different from those in the city. Small, one-to-two room schools dotted the landscape in Mecklenburg County.  Usually there would be more than one school in a community so it would be within walking distance for the children living in the  ten or more nearby farms. Each school  had at least one professional teacher for students from grades one to nine. Most children walked to school.

Carnegie Library (Charlotte's First Public Library)

In 1891, the Charlotte Literary and Library Association was a subscription library located above Stone and Barringer's Bookstore. This means the library customers had to pay to use the library. After it closed, it became obvious that a city the size of Charlotte needed a public library. Alderman Thomas Franklin applied to the Carnegie Foundation and secured a $15,000 grant with the stipulation that the city had to provide the site and support the library with no less than $2500 annually.  Architects Oliver D. Wheeler and J.M.

First Baptist Church (Black congregation)

At one time, segregation-- either enforced or implied-- permeated every aspect of life in Charlotte, including in its churches. Prior to the Civil War, enslaved persons attended the First Baptist Church for whites. However, in 1867, two years after the Civil War,  the newly freedmen and women, sixty-six total,  no longer wanted to be forced to sit in the balcony of the white church. They  gathered under an oak tree on the grounds of the predominately white First Baptist Church of Charlotte to discuss their  future as a congregation.

The Myers Street School

This is the Myers Street School (1886) at 515 South Myers Street. At the turn-of-the-century, it was the only public school for black students. The students nicknamed it the “Jacob’s ladder” because of the exterior stairways. Approximately sixteen teachers led by Principal Isabella Wyche taught at the Myers Street School. Children heading home after school.