Robert & Elizabeth Lassiter House

Following his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Charlotte native Robert Lassiter returned to his hometown with his new bride Elizabeth, and they purchased a house in south Charlotte. Elizabeth contracted polio soon thereafter, so the couple wanted a single-story house completely accessible to a wheelchair.  Around 1949 the Lassiters asked their friend Odell to design a new home that would suit their needs. Odell assisted in every phase of planning and construction for the new home, including urging the Lassiters to buy lot 726 because its rising topography would allow him to design a suitably private site. The house remained in the Lassiter family until 2011. 

A Cabarrus County native and a member of one of North Carolina’s most prominent textile families, Odell graduated from architecture school at Cornell University and then attended the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Odell was considered the best-trained architect in Charlotte. He opened an office in Charlotte in 1940, quickly establishing himself as Charlotte’s leading designer of commercial and institutional buildings.  By the mid-1950s, his work included the Main Branch of the Charlotte Public Library, the Charlottetown Mall (the city’s first enclosed shopping center), the Second Ward High School Gym, and Wachovia Tower, Charlotte’s first Modernist Style skyscraper. Yet Odell’s greatest achievement was arguably the design of the original Charlotte Coliseum (later known as Independence Arena and Bojangles Coliseum) and Ovens Auditorium complex. The buildings were hailed as architectural marvels when they first opened in 1955. North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges proclaimed the Coliseum “a perfect building.” Prominently featured in professional architecture journals and trade publications around the world, the Coliseum’s legendary claim to fame is that it was the largest free-span dome in the world at the time it was built.  

In 1966 Odell was honored as a recipient of the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts. Awarded by the General Assembly, it is the highest honor the state of North Carolina can bestow. Odell is also known for designing much of the original Research Triangle Institute campus in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. His firm also prepared the 1965 “Charlotte Central Area Plan.” Although the plan was never fully realized, it was utilized and the present landscape of the center city owes much to Odell’s design, including the Charlotte Civic Center that acted as a catalyst for more Modernist or International Style buildings in the center city. In 1965, Odell became the first national president of the American Institute of Architects to hail from North Carolina.