Red Front Department Store

(ca. 1902)

Century-old department store building and community fixture for the historic Belmont Park neighborhood.

The Red Front Department Store building is the oldest commercial/retail building in the Belmont Park neighborhood, a significant and well preserved early-20th-century blue-collar suburb of Charlotte that evidences the city’s industrial growth. The neighborhood’s only surviving two-story, pre-World-War-II commercial building, the Red Front Department Store building is one of Belmont’s most prominent non-residential buildings. Indeed, aside from the nearby Louise Cotton Mill and Highland Park Manufacturing Company Plant No. 1, the store building is Belmont Park’s most prominent early twentieth century building of any type.

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Local insurance agent Thomas Hill Haughton, Sr. (1841-1915) owned the building and leased it to the Red Front retail chain of departments stores that operated across North Carolina, including locations in Asheville, Shelby, Mocksville, and Fayetteville. Upon the store’s opening on Belmont Avenue, advertising claimed that the Red Front Department Store sold “Everything from a Postage Stamp to a House and Lot.” Its inventory included groceries, fresh produce, drugs and medicinal products, clothing, chinaware, crockery, and glassware. The store even made home deliveries by horse-drawn wagon or buggy, capitalizing on the neighborhood’s relative separation from Charlotte’s central business district. Ads for the store often reminded Belmont Park residents, “You should be one of the lucky ones who trade at the RED FRONT.” Centrally located at the intersection of Belmont Avenue and Pegram Street in the heart of Belmont Park, the store also served informally as a community center. The Charlotte News operated its “Belmont Bureau” in rented space within the building. The Belmont Glee Club offered musical performances in the store’s parlor, and local civic organizations like the International Sunshine Society for young girls used the store as a recruitment center.

However, the Red Front Department Store was short lived. Its first manager, Jesse B. Rudisill, was quickly replaced by Alex Phifer (1864-1929), a former Union County resident. Despite Phifer’s efforts, the store closed in 1905. But Phifer remained, becoming the proprietor of a grocery store that occupied the eastern half of the building’s first floor. His name is still faintly visible on the front façade. An active civic leader, Phifer supported efforts to improve local education and to raise funds for a memorial to former North Carolina Governor Charles B. Aycock. Phifer even won election to the Charlotte Board of Aldermen in 1915 as the Ward 6 representative.

Over the years, the Red Front Department Store building housed a series of retail operations, including several family grocery stores and a pharmacy. But with the 1957 closure of the Louise Cotton Mill and the departure of Belmont residents for new moderately-priced suburban developments in northeast Charlotte, the neighborhood – the most significant clientele base for the building’s retail operations – declined. The building likewise deteriorated and was vacated in the 1990s. With the building facing demolition in 2010, the owner elected to repair the historic structure, reviving the century-old Red Front Department Store building for future commercial operations.