Craig House
(ca. 1929)
The Craig House was built by a local entrepreneur who once was part-owner of Blowing Rock’s landmark Green Park Hotel landmark Green Park Hotel.
900 Ardsley Rd, Charlotte, NC 28207
The Tudor Revival styled Craig House was the home of entrepreneur David Jenkins Craig, Sr. (1877-1948). A Gastonia native, the 1897 graduate of University of North Carolina moved to Statesville in 1904 to establish himself in business. He went into partnership with brothers LaFayette Polycarp Henkel (1861-1931) and Columbus Vance Henkel (1867-1926), serving as secretary and treasurer of the Henkel-Craig Live Stock Company. In addition to dealing in horses, mules, cattle, and later automobiles, they ran a horse-drawn taxi or “hack line” between Lenoir and Blowing Rock, catering to the tourist trade. During the 1910s, they formed the Blowing Rock Development Company and acquired the landmark Green Park Hotel (built in 1891). In 1915, the partners constructed a nine-hole golf course on surrounding acreage, adding an additional nine holes in 1922, as well as enlarging and modernizing the hotel.
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Craig wed Vera Copeland (1882-1974) in 1906. Together they had three sons and a daughter. They also raised the daughter of Mrs. Craig's sister and brother-in-law, who had died. When the Craigs chose to move to Charlotte in 1929, they chose to a home in Myers Park, already established as a fashionable and exclusive neighborhood. In keeping with their new neighbors, the Craigs hired a prominent local architect to design their new home, William H. Peeps (1868-1950).
Peeps was four years old when his family immigrated from London to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like his father, Peeps started as a furniture designer. He later apprenticed in architecture before moving to Charlotte between 1905 and 1910. He quickly became a leader in the city’s development into a regional hub of business and architectural activity, including service as president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Peeps’ most notable work included the Latta Arcade, the Hovis Funeral Home building, the Ratcliffe Florist Shop, and two skyscrapers (the Johnston Building and the First National Bank Building). In addition to the Craig House, he designed several other fashionable residences in and around Charlotte such as the G. G. Galloway House on East Morehead Street, his own home on East Worthington Street, the Lethco House on the Queens University campus, and the E. T. Cannon House in Concord. He also designed such distinctive buildings as Gastonia’s North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital and the Masonic temples in Gastonia and Waynesville.
Craig lived in his Peeps-designed home for the last nineteen years of his life. Vera lived on in the house until 1971, when the house was sold to Dr. William Robert and Virginia Brame (Ginnie) Story (1931-2006 and 1936-2021, respectively), natives of Wilkes County, North Carolina who moved to Charlotte in 1965.