Lambeth-Gossett House

Charlie moved to Charlotte in 1913 after graduating from the University of North Carolina. He started his career working in the insurance department of the American Trust Company. By 1915, he had met and married Laura, a Salem Academy graduate whose father established Cannon Mills and founded the town of Kannapolis in Cabarrus County. They chose Willard G. Rogers (1863-1947), an architect of local and regional importance, to design their first home. A native of Cincinnati, Rogers came 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 later 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, in 1916, the house on Granville Road was completed, it measured more than 5,000 square feet on two floors, quite a residence for newlyweds in their early twenties. But the Lambeths lived there for only a brief time. In 1918, after the United States entered World War I, Charlie joined the U.S. Navy. He volunteered for the new air corps and, after training at a special Navy flight school at Harvard University, was stationed on Long Island, New York, where Laura joined him. When the Lambeths left Charlotte, they are said to have rented their house to the James B. Duke family during the extensive renovations at the nearby Duke Mansion. The Lambeths returned to Charlotte after Charlie’s 1919 discharge. In 1921, they sold the Granville Road home to Benjamin Brown Gossett (1884-1951), potentially to fund Charlie’s business interests which over time included an insurance business, car dealerships, and real estate development. The Lambeths later built the Lambeth-Sullivan House at 435 Hermitage Road, also a designated local landmark. 

Gossett was a regionally prominent textile leader who controlled a chain of mills stretching across several states. His father, James Pleasant Gossett (1860-1939), took over the presidency of an ailing cotton mill in Williamston, South Carolina, that he managed to build into a chain of factories. Benjamin entered the family textile business in 1907. By 1921, the family owned six South Carolina mills as well as controlling interest in Charlotte’s Chadwick-Hoskins mill group. Benjamin became president of the new acquisition and took up residence at 923 Granville Road for the remainder of his long and busy career. In 1939, upon his father’s death, Benjamin B. Gossett took over leadership of the entire Gossett chain, which by then also extended into Virginia. He sold the entire enterprise in 1946 to Textron, Inc., for an estimated $13 million. He was survived by his wife Katherine Coleman Gossett (1885-1965), with whom he raised three children. Katherine sold the house in 1961, and it has since changed hands several times.