Addison Apartments
(ca. 1926)
The Neoclassical Revival Addison Apartments building was a commercial venture of the J. A. Company, once a global construction firm based in Charlotte.
831 E Morehead St, Charlotte, NC 28202
From a farm near Asheboro, James Addison Jones (1869-1950) came to Charlotte in 1889 as a 19-year-old brick mason. In 1890, the hardworking ambitious young man married Mary Jane (Minnie) Hopper (1872-1914) with whom he had twelve children. By 1894, Jones had formed his own construction company, and the J. A. Jones Construction Company began to win increasingly important contracts for commercial, governmental, and residential buildings in and around Charlotte. Headquartered in Charlotte, J. A. Jones Company became an international construction firm by the mid-twentieth century.
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Prior to the 1920s, many of Jones’ major projects were in Charlotte, including the Independence Building (North Carolina’s first steel frame skyscraper; demolished), Hoskins Mill, Cole Manufacturing Plant, the YMCA (demolished), the Masonic Temple (demolished), and the Belk’s, Efird’s, and Ivey’s Department Stores (all demolished). His company also built the Carnegie Library (now Hill Hall) at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1907. In 1920, Jones incorporated his firm with himself as president and his sons Raymond A. (1894-1950) and Edwin L. (1891-1971) as vice-president and secretary-treasurer, respectively. That team built some of the state’s most impressive buildings during the booming 1920s, including fifteen buildings at what is now UNC-Greensboro, North Carolina Baptist Hospital, and Charlotte’s Professional Building, City Hall, and Carolina Theater.
In 1922, Jones and his sons formed the Addison Realty Company to develop a new apartment building in Dilworth (Charlotte’s first suburb) at the corner of East Morehead and McDowell Streets. They chose Willard G. Rogers (1863-1947), an architect of local and regional importance, to design the building. A native of Cincinnati, Rogers worked in his father’s firm and later Atlanta before coming to Charlotte in 1900. In 1916, after partnering for several years with local architect C. C. Hook (1870-1938), Rogers started his own practice and designed such notable buildings as Gastonia’s First Baptist Church, the Davidson School gymnasium, the Catawba and Haywood County courthouses, and the Southern Manufacturers Club in uptown Charlotte. When the J. A. Jones Company completed construction of the Addison Apartments, each unit featured such luxurious amenities as hot and cold running water, steam heat, a radio attachment for each room, and a dining room. The building also offered room service, a beauty parlor, garages for each tenant’s car, and a gas station and car wash.
In the late 1940s, Gen. Paul R. Younts acquired controlling interest in Addison Realty, which he held until his death in 1971. The Addison building changed hands several times before 1974 when Charlotte’s Housing Authority bought the building for low-income housing for the elderly. It has since been refurbished and converted for office use.
Despite its important role in the development of uptown Charlotte’s early skyline and its significant influence on construction in the Southeast and eventually the world, the J. A. Jones Company did not survive the twentieth century. Sold in 1979 to international construction conglomerate A.G. Holzmann, J. A. Jones was forced to declare bankruptcy and sell off its subsidiaries in the late 1990s when Holzmann suffered severe financial difficulties.