Around Town

If you love Charlotte history, you need to be following @ObserverArchive right now

By Corey Inscoe

When she’s not helping reporters track down phone numbers and addresses or doing background checks, Charlotte Observer archivist and research librarian Maria David spends her days sifting through the newspaper’s robust archives, scrolling through microfilm and flipping through photo files looking for forgotten gems from Charlotte’s past.

About three years ago, she started sharing those forgotten gems on Twitter as @ObserverArchive and on her blog, Retro Charlotte.

Maria joined the CharlotteFive Podcast this week to talk about Charlotte’s history and four of her favorite Retro Charlotte stories.

If journalism is the “first rough draft of history,” then Maria has the past 100+ years of Charlotte’s history at her fingertips. Her blog and Twitter accounts offer up a smorgasbord of historic Observer front pages, old photos and even “adult” drive-in movie ads from the 1960s.

On the podcast, we asked Maria to share some of her favorite Retro Charlotte stories. She came up with four:

(1) The opening of Carolina Theatre.

The theater, which is currently being remodeled and will have an InterContinental Hotel built atop it, originally opened on North Tryon Street in 1927, and the Observer did a special section on it.

One part of the section raved about the theater’s bathrooms, claiming “Femininity will be pleased with the commodious arrangements which have been provided in the ladies’ rest room.”

(2) The convent in Dilworth. 

I had never heard about this convent before reading Maria’s story about it. The Little Sisters of Assumption order established the convent in 1958, moving into a house on Arosa Avenue, between Dilworth Road and Morehead Street. And Maria ended up talking to the new owners of the house.

(3) Lakewood Park amusement park in West Charlotte.

The amusement park was located just northwest of uptown, near what is now Enderly Park, and offered “swimming, boating, a dancing pavilion, amusement rides and even a zoo!” according to Maria. Then a dam broke in the late 1930s and the park was not rebuilt.

(4) “Unknown Boy.” 

Maria stumbled upon this gravestone from 1932 while walking through Elmwood Cemetery. She dug through the archives and found the full story of this “unknown boy.”

Hear Maria talk way more about those stories in this week’s podcast.

Other things discussed on the podcast:

– 3 ways to enjoy this spring weather that don’t include breweries or the U.S. National Whitewater Center.

– This historic house in Plaza Midwood that Sarah Crosland is obsessed with. Here’s a link to the story about the owner of the house drowning in a pond on the property, and here are her illegally obtained photos. (I promise this will all make sense when you listen to the episode.)

– And, of course, what you should be doing this weekend.

The CharlotteFive Podcast — presented by The Charlotte Observer and powered by OrthoCarolina — is a weekly podcast that aims to get you Charlotte Smart, Fast with fun, interesting and useful news about the city. It’s hosted by Corey Inscoe and Sarah Crosland, and produced by Richard Brooke and 2Waves Media.

You can find The CharlotteFive Podcast on Soundcloud, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and TuneIn. You can follow us on Twitter @Charlotte_Five, on Instagram @cltfive, and on Facebook, and you can shoot us an email to charlottefive@charlottefive.com.

Photos: Observer archives; Sarah Crosland

This story was originally published April 11, 2017 at 11:08 PM with the headline "If you love Charlotte history, you need to be following @ObserverArchive right now."

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