George Stephens House

A Guilford County native, George moved to Charlotte in 1896, following his graduation from the University of North Carolina where, as a varsity football and baseball player, he is credited with having caught the first forward pass thrown in a college football game. George was considered by many to have been one of the best college baseball players of the day, drawing employment offers from four of the then-eight National League professional baseball teams. He instead launched his business career in Charlotte in insurance with his college roommate, Walter Brem Jr. (1875-1937), and Walter’s father, the senior Mr. Brem (1849-1925). Soon thereafter, George’sPiedmont Realty Company launched its first project – the development of the Piedmont Park suburb (now part of the Elizabeth neighborhood). His Southern States Trust Company (later the American Trust Company) ultimately merged in 1960 into North Carolina National Bank that later became Bank of America. George also played notable roles in the successful campaigns to secure the Camp Greene army base for Charlotte during World War I and to locate the Blue Ridge Parkway on the North Carolina side of the mountains.

George and Sophie married in 1902. Her father, John Springs Myers (1847-1925), notably started accumulating farmland just south of Charlotte in 1869. By the early 1900s, he owned some 1,200 acres that he envisioned as a beautiful, park-like development for an expanded Charlotte. In 1911, George founded the Stephens Company to make his father-in-law’s vision a reality. In 1915, with Myers Park well underway, George and Sophie finally got around to building their own home in that neighborhood. They are believed to have hired a talented local architect, Mecklenburg County native Leonard LeGrand Hunter (1881-1925), to design their new home. Although Hunter died at the relatively young age of 43, his impressive body of design work includes the Carnegie Library at Johnson C. Smith University, the Chalmers A.R.P. Church on Starbrook Drive, the Charlotte Auditorium that once stood on College Street at 5th Street, and the Lumberton Municipal Building in Robeson County.

The Stephens lived in their new surburban home for some three years before moving to Asheville, apparently for health reasons. They sold their Myers Park home to the vice-president (and later president) of the Stephens Company, Arthur J. Draper (1875- 1932), notable also as one of the original incorporators of the Chadwick-Hoskins Company (1907). In 1930, Draper sold the house to another early Stephens Company director, William States Lee (1872- 1934), a talented and energetic electrical engineer who teamed with James B. Duke to develop a hydroelectric power network that later evolved into Duke Energy. The Stephens House remained in the Lee family until 1969. It has since primarily been used as a private residence.