John Baxter Alexander House
(ca. 1913)
The elaborate bungalow-style John Baxter Alexander House is one of three early 1900s Alexander family homes on a single block in Elizabeth Heights.
509 Clement Ave, Charlotte, NC 28204
The John Baxter Alexander House represents an elaborate variation of the bungalow style of architecture popular in the early 1900s and seen in modified forms throughout the Elizabeth neighborhood, Charlotte's second-oldest suburb. Along with his brother Walter (1858-1924), John Baxter Alexander (1867-1943) – one of six children born to Dr. Cook Alexander (d. 1882) and Sarah Coburn Stewart Alexander (d. 1902) – was among Charlotte’s most prominent real estate developers in the early twentieth century. The year his house was completed, John was vice president of Walter’s Highland Park Company – the development firm responsible for Charlotte’s Elizabeth neighborhood – and salesman for his brother's other business, Southern Real Estate, Loan and Trust Company. Walter served as the president of the latter company from 1908 until his death in 1924, when John took over the top post.
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A graduate of the Charlotte Military Academy and Davidson College, John married Mary Virginia Mott of Lincoln County, North Carolina around 1895. They had two children. In 1906, with the intention of creating an Alexander family compound, John purchased an entire block of land in the Elizabeth Heights neighborhood – bound by Clement, 8th, and Lamar on three sides, and the Oakhurst development on the fourth – from the Highland Park Company for $3,600. After the completion of his spacious home, his nephew Walter L. Alexander built a similar bungalow-style house next door in 1915, followed by a duplex (christened The Pines) by John’s sister Jennie Alexander in 1921.
John and Mary ’s daughter Mary Stuart wed Dr. Edward Jones Wannamaker, Jr. in 1925. The newlyweds moved in with her parents so that Mary Stuart could help care for her ailing mother. Mary Virginia died in 1928 of spinal meningitis. The Wannamakers continued to live in the home until 1938 when John Alexander remarried at the age of 71. After the Wannamakers moved to their own home, John and his second wife Flax LeGrand Caldwell began taking in boarders, a practice continued in various forms by subsequent owners of the house to this day. Since the deaths of John and Flax, the house has served alternatively as a rooming house, a convalescent home, and condominiums.