Thies Automobile Building
(ca. 1921)
The Louis Asbury designed Thies Automobile Sales and Service Building remains as one of North Tryon Street’s last examples of 1920s commercial-style architecture.
500 N. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28202
The Oscar J. Thies Automobile Sales and Service Building is located on property that had been in continual use as residential property between 1865 and 1920. Thies purchased the property in 1920 and constructed the commercial structure that currently occupies the lot. The building illustrates the general shift in the spatial arrangement of Charlotte’s center city from residential to commercial in the early twentieth century, as economic expansion and technological innovation drove inner-city growth and prompted suburban residential development.
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Trained as a mining engineer, Oscar J. Thies (1870-1943) abandoned that profession after fifteen years and moved to Charlotte in 1906 to form his own real estate company, the Carolina Realty Company. As the company evolved, so too did its name, becoming the Thies-Smith Realty Company in 1912 and the Thies Realty and Mortgage Company in 1936. The company was responsible for the construction of numerous homes in Myers Park, Dilworth, and Elizabeth neighborhoods, as well as residences along Morehead Street, Selwyn Avenue, and Sharon Road. The multi-generational Thies Realty and Mortgage Company continued operations as a Charlotte family-owned business well into the 2020s.
Oscar J. Thies diversified his business holdings by investing in commercial property, including the automotive building located at 500 North Tryon Street. He commissioned Louis Humbert Asbury (1877-1975), one of North Carolina’s first professionally trained architects and one of the region’s foremost building designers of the early twentieth century, to design the building. Constructed at an estimated cost of $4,000, the building housed a series of automobile dealerships until the 1930s. A variety of retail operations have since occupied the premises, including Tillman's Groceteria, E.I. deNemours and Company, the Gold Stamps Premium Company, and the Jack Call Piano Company. With its unique design, combining elements of Italian Renaissance and Modernistic Art Deco styling, the Oscar J. Thies Automobile Sales and Service Building stands as one of the few remaining examples of 1920s commercial-style architecture on North Tryon Street.
Charlotte native Louis Asbury studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to his hometown to open his firm in 1908. As the first North Carolina member of the American Institute of Architects, Asbury earned hundreds of commissions in Charlotte and the surrounding counties. His notable body of work includes the 1926 Mecklenburg County Courthouse, the 1929 Mayfair Manor (renamed Dunhill Hotel), the 1927 First National Bank skyscraper on South Tryon Street, the 1918 Old Mount Carmel Baptist Church building, and the 1928 Myers Park Methodist Church building, as well as numerous stately homes throughout Charlotte.