Myers Park Streetcar Waiting Stations
(ca. 1912)
The Myers Park Streetcar Waiting Stations are all that remain of the streetcar line that served the neighborhood and Charlotte from 1891 to 1938.
Queens Road at its intersections with Hermitage Road and East Fourth Street, Charlotte NC
Charlotte’s growth and expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are due in large part to the installation and development of its streetcar network. Streetcars first appeared in the city in January 1887, when a small horse-drawn system commenced operations. The Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company, locally known as the 4 C’s, revolutionized the city’s transportation facilities in 1891 by signing a $40,000 contract with the Edison Electric Company to construct an electric streetcar trolley system. The first trolley departed from the intersection of Trade and Tryon Streets in the heart of Charlotte on May 18, 1891, consisting of two lines focused primarily on Dilworth, the first streetcar suburb opened that same year by the 4 C’s.
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Thereafter, accessibility to the trolley system became indispensable for successful residential real estate ventures in Charlotte. By late 1902, the 4 C’s had opened a streetcar line that extended some three-quarters of a mile from the intersection of East Avenue (now East Trade Street) and McDowell Street along Elizabeth Avenue to a point just west of the Elizabeth College campus, providing a powerful impetus for the growth of Elizabeth from the surrounding countryside into an affluent residential district, including the approximately 1,200 acres of farmland owned by John Springs Myers (1847-1925). Myers’ son-in-law George Stephens (1873-1946), through his Stephens Company real estate firm, secured an extension of the Elizabeth College trolley line that branched off at the intersection of Elizabeth Avenue and Hawthorne Lane to extend southward into what would later become Myers Park, entering the nascent suburb at the intersection of East Fourth Street and Queens Road.
As a further amenity, waiting stations were erected at regular intervals along the Myers Park line to shelter commuters awaiting the streetcars. The three Myers Park Streetcar Waiting Stations are the only surviving elements of the Myers Park streetcar line that served the city for nearly fifty years, from 1891 to 1938. Two of those shelters also mark the original Myers Park subdivision gateway at the intersection of East Fourth Street and Queens Road. A large center trolley shed, since demolished, once stood at that intersection. Smaller sheds at each side of the divided street covered the paved walks. Those two flanking shelters still anchor semi-circular low stone walls that flare out further, giving a grand scale to this main Myers Park entrance. On the east side of the intersection at Queens and Hermitage Roads is the third extant shelter, also remarkably well-preserved with most of its original material intact. Fashioned of granite blocks, the Myers Park Streetcar Waiting Stations are indicative of the many carefully planned amenities that drove the early success of the Myers Park neighborhood.