Crutchfield-Bomar-Brem House
(ca. 1903)
The Crutchfield-Bomar-Brem House is one of the last original houses constructed on Dilworth’s East Boulevard.
307 East Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28203
Built in 1903, the Crutchfield-Bomar-Brem House is one of the oldest houses on East Boulevard, the grand thoroughfare of Dilworth, launched in 1890 as Charlotte’s first streetcar suburb. The Queen Anne style house was built by the neighborhood’s original developer – the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (known as the 4-Cs) founded by Edward Dilworth Latta (1851-1925) – for William G. Crutchfield (b. 1871).
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Employed as a railroad agent by the Southern Railway, Crutchfield married Mary D. Crutchfield (b. 1869) in 1894. They lived in Salisbury before a transfer brought them to Charlotte in 1903. Crutchfield purchased the new house $4,803 in October 1903. The Crutchfields apparently lived in the East Boulevard house only briefly. By 1904, they were no longer in Charlotte. William M. Lyles, a traveling salesman for Schiff and Company, and his wife Carrie rented the house from 1904 to 1908.
In 1908, Rev. Dr. Edward E. Bomar purchased the house in a foreclosure sale at the County courthouse. He was the pastor of the Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church on South Boulevard. Upon assuming his duties in September 1906, he became that church’s second pastor. During his tenure, Rev. Bomar supervised construction of a new sanctuary and helped organize the Associated Charities of Charlotte, a forerunner of the United Way. He and his wife Nannie sold the house in 1912 to Hannah Caldwell Brem (1851-1936), wife of Walter V. Brem (1848-1925) in 1912, and moved from Charlotte in 1916 to take up the pastorate of a church in Owensboro, Kentucky.
The Brems had previously built a house in 1903 in the first block of East Boulevard about a block to the west (now 211 East Boulevard) of the Crutchfield House. Mrs. Brem was the former Hannah Caldwell, daughter of North Carolina Governor Tod Robinson Caldwell. Walter Brem was a longtime agent for the Traveler’s Insurance Company with offices in downtown Charlotte. He started in the insurance business about 1890 with George S. Stephens, who later married Sophie Myers (daughter of John Springs Myers) and developed his father-in-law’s 1,200-acre farm into what became Myers Park. After Walter died at the residence in February 1925, Mrs. Brem moved to the Addison Apartments, where she lived until shortly before her death in 1936. The East Boulevard house then passed to the Brems’ three children. Between 1930 and 1977, the house changed hands several times, often used as rental property. In 1977, the house was converted into office space.