McManaway House
(ca. 1874)
Originally located on West Trade Street, the house later known as the McManaway House was first built and owned by business partners Samuel Wittkowsky and Jacob Rintels.
1700 Queens Rd, Charlotte, NC 28207
Business partners Samuel Wittkowsky (1835-1911) and Jacob Rintels (1836-1876) built and jointly owned the McManaway House that originally stood at 406 West Trade Street, but it was Rintels and his family who resided in the stately Victorian home with its Tuscan influences. The two men arrived in Charlotte in the mid-1850’s as young adult Prussian immigrants. They met as co-workers for Levi Drucker, a leader of the local Jewish community and owner of a mercantile establishment. In 1857, the two friends formed a partnership and opened a general store in Ellendale, a small community in Alexander County. The short-lived venture folded within two years. Rintels then moved to Statesville, where he met Bettie Wallace (1839-1903), sister of one of his partners in a newly established 1860 mercantile house. Jacob and Bettie were married the same year.
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Jacob returned to Charlotte in 1862 to join forces once again with Samuel. The firm of Wittkowsky & Rintels, located on South Mint Street, prospered and soon became one of the state’s major wholesale mercantile establishments. By the early 1870’s they were among Charlotte’s wealthy elite and prominent members of the growing local Jewish community. The partners expanded into the retail market in 1874, leasing a building on West Trade Street near the square. But their business was disrupted in June 1876 when Jacob died suddenly at the age of 40 after a debilitating stroke. Samuel sold his interest in the McManaway House to Bettie in 1878. He moved into the house next door, likely to assist his deceased partner’s widow and children. Bettie lived in the house with two of her daughters (Eugenia and Bessie) but hired Mrs. Lucy Nethers, and later Mr. William B. Gooding, in the mid-1890s to manage the home as a boarding house. Samuel remained a prominent figure in the local business community until his sudden death by heart attack in 1911. In 1901, Bettie sold the McManaway House to B. D. Heath and Nettle M. Heath, and moved to New York City, likely to live with one of her sons.
Some two weeks after that purchase, the Heaths sold the McManaway House to Dr. Charles Gustavus McManaway (1857-1918), a graduate of Baltimore College and the Medical College of Louisville, Kentucky. The structure continued as a boarding house until 1911, when Dr. McManaway moved into the house with his second wife Josephine Pharr (1876-1963). The doctor’s first wife, Virginia Rella Harris (1862-1894), predeceased him, leaving the doctor to raise five children. The McManaways shared their new home with several of the doctor’s children – including son and daughter-in-law Charles R. (1888-1954) and Eloise Libro McManaway – but the elder Charles and Josephine moved to Hawthorne Lane in 1913, likely due to the birth of their son Hugh (1912-1989). The younger Charles and Eloise lived in the Trade Street home until 1916, when Dr. McManaway moved the McManaway House from West Trade Street to a vacant lot in Myers Park at 1700 Queens Road. The doctor passed away in 1918, but the McManaway House on Queens Road remained in the family’s ownership until Josephine’s death in 1963 and Hugh’s move to a rest home in 1977.