Bryce McLaughlin House

When first constructed, the McLaughlin House faced what is now Caswell Road. During the mid-1910s, the house was picked up and turned to face the still-undeveloped Greenway Avenue. The McLaughlin House was the sole house on Greenway for nearly ten years. The house is a genuine Craftsman bungalow, built from a plan by legendary furniture designer and architect Gustav Stickley. The McLaughlin House is the only known Stickley design among Mecklenburg County’s designated historic landmarks. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, the land surrounding downtown Charlotte remained overwhelmingly rural. Originally from Philadelphia, Andrew J. Dotger moved to Charlotte in the late 1800s. In the 1890s, he purchased some 89 acres of farmland, including an old plantation house, on Monroe Road, an area comprising much of what is now Elizabeth’s Rosemont section. By 1899, Andrew had left Charlotte to settle in Essex County in northern New Jersey. Andrew granted a life estate in the Monroe Road property to his brother Henry C. Dotger and Henry's wife, but numerous restrictions imposed by the deed effectively denied Henry any control as to the future disposition of the property. 

Meanwhile, Charlotte's urban development pressed outward, inching closer and closer to the Dotger Farm. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the approaching neighborhoods of Dilworth, Highland Park, Piedmont Park, Oakhurst, and Elizabeth Heights positioned the Dotger land as an attractive and potentially lucrative development target. Not wishing to squander the opportunity, Henry successfully petitioned the county courts for permission to subdivide and sell off the land. One of the first sales was to the McLaughlins, who acquired 0.45 acres near what was then described as the intersection of East Sixth Street and Old Monroe Road (now Greenway Avenue and Caswell Road).  

Bryce McLaughlin was the son of John B. McLaughlin, a fourteen-year Charlotte city alderman and a four-year chairman of the Mecklenburg County board of commissioners. Bryce attended Baird School for Boys, Brown University, Davidson College, and Erskine College before returning home to work in his father's store, Cochrane & McLaughlin Company on College Street. At some point, he transitioned into real estate loans and insurance, working for the Federal Land Bank (Columbia, SC) and the State and City Bank and Trust Company (Richmond, VA). Although frequently away from home, Bryce stayed in this line of work for many years, employing a live-in housekeeper to look after the couple’s three children, especially after Bertha’s unexpected death in 1919 at the age of 28. Since Bryce’s death in 1969, the house has passed through a succession of owners.