Lost Charlotte: the landmarks that vanished

Charlotte has a reputation for tearing down its old buildings and replacing them with plaques, and the reputation is earned. This guide is the roll call: the landmarks that are gone, what replaced them, and the argument the city keeps having with itself about the next one. Every date links to a source, mostly the Charlotte Urban Institute and the news outlets that covered the demolitions; the businesses that occupy the old sites link to the directory.

Hotel Charlotte, 1924-1988

The 13-story, 250-room Hotel Charlotte opened March 10, 1924, at Trade and Poplar, a William Lee Stoddart design in granite and buff brick built by J.A. Jones, and was listed on the National Register in 1979 (Wikipedia). It was demolished on November 6, 1988, imploded as part of a David Copperfield television special (Wikipedia, Charlotte Urban Institute). A national landmark blown up for a magic trick is the story Charlotte preservationists tell first, and it’s the reason the Historic Landmarks Commission has the teeth it has.

The Masonic Temple, 1914

The Egyptian Revival Masonic Temple on South Tryon, from 1914, was among the finest classic buildings the city had, and it’s long gone (Charlotte Urban Institute). So is Mecklenburg County’s first main library, built in 1903 with an Andrew Carnegie grant, and, more recently, the library and auditorium at Central Piedmont’s central campus (Charlotte Urban Institute). Independence Tower joins the list (Charlotte Urban Institute). Our read: the pattern is consistent. Charlotte keeps the mills and loses the monuments, because a mill converts to apartments and a temple doesn’t (Charlotte Urban Institute).

Eastland Mall, 1975-2013

Eastland opened July 30, 1975, at 5471 Central Avenue as the largest mall in North Carolina, with Belk, J.C. Penney and Ivey’s; it closed June 30, 2010, and the city, which had bought it, voted to demolish it for $871,520 when no developer wanted the building. Demolition began October 1, 2013 (Wikipedia). Thirty-eight years, which the Urban Institute calls the granddaddy of the buildings that didn’t make it to middle age; the 80-acre site is slated for a mixed-use development with a major league soccer facility, and Northlake Mall and Carolina Place are the next malls at risk (Charlotte Urban Institute). Every east Charlotte family of a certain age has an Eastland story; the East Charlotte page covers what’s around the site now.

The Excelsior Club, 1944-2026

The most recent loss is the hardest. The Excelsior Club at 921 Beatties Ford Road, a designated historic landmark that stood for eight decades as the social and political heart of Black Charlotte, sat vacant for a decade and was demolished in July 2026 after the owner filed plans in June; a developer intends a near-replica on the same footprint, reopening in early 2028 with a restaurant, rooftop and free meeting space for nonprofits, West Charlotte High and Johnson C. Smith (Charlotte Observer, via AOL). A boutique-hotel plan had failed in 2024 (Charlotte Observer, via AOL). Whether a replica can carry the weight is the question the whole West End is asking; our Historic West End guide stands on that corner.

The four at once

In December 2024 the owners of four historic landmarks applied to demolish them at the same time, the most preservationists had ever seen: the Midwood school on Central Avenue in Plaza Midwood, the Atherton Millhouse in Dilworth, the Grier House near the airport in Steele Creek, and the Thrift Mill near the Whitewater Center (WFAE). Landmark designation in Charlotte buys a delay, not a veto; the commission can hold a demolition for a year to find a buyer, and then the owner can proceed. Some of the four will be standing when you read this and some won’t.

Why a boomtown does this

Charlotte is now the 15th most populous city in the country, having passed San Francisco, and the demand for housing drives demolition as much as any developer’s taste; most of what’s lost isn’t a temple but an older house in a gentrifying neighborhood, and those houses are the affordable stock (Charlotte Urban Institute). The commission has protected hundreds of properties since 1973, including the Carolina Theatre, the old Charlotte Coliseum and Old St. Peter’s Hospital, but a building has to be above the norm in architecture or history to qualify, and the mill house down the street isn’t (Charlotte Urban Institute). The then-and-now guide covers the ones that survived by changing jobs.

The ones nobody mourns

Not every loss is a temple. The 1960s and 1970s took Brooklyn, the Black business district in Second Ward, under urban renewal, and the highway loop took blocks of the old center city; the debates over Brooklyn still echo in every West End demolition (Charlotte Observer, via AOL). The original Charlotte Coliseum on Independence, the round one, was landmarked and lives on as the Bojangles Coliseum; the second Coliseum on Tyvola, where the Hornets played, was imploded in 2007 after 19 years, another entry on the Urban Institute’s list of buildings that didn’t reach middle age (Charlotte Urban Institute). The sports side of the city’s memory is in the sports calendar guide.

What you can do

The preservation groups take members and money: the Historic Landmarks Commission, Preserve Mecklenburg, Historic Rock Hill, Historic Cabarrus and the Mint Hill Historical Society. The Charlotte Museum of History keeps the record. And the businesses that saved buildings by using them, City Club at Gibson Mill, Alexander Homestead, Main St. Antiques in its restored building, are the argument that the old ones can pay. Remember a building we’ve left off? Tell us; the list is longer than this page.