Brooklyn McCrorey Branch YMCA
(ca. 1951)
The Brooklyn McCrorey Branch YMCA is one of the last surviving structures of what was once Charlotte’s thriving African American community of Brooklyn.
334 South Caldwell St and 416 East 3rd St, Charlotte, NC 28202
The Brooklyn McCrorey Branch YMCA was once a thriving mainstay of Brooklyn, Charlotte’s historically African American community within the city’s Second Ward. Effectively a city within a city, the 230-acre Brooklyn contained approximately 1,500 buildings, including more than 1,000 homes, some 200 businesses, thirteen churches, and two schools. However, following the mass demolition resulting from Charlotte’s uptown Urban Renewal campaign in the 1960s and 1970s, the YMCA branch was one of only four Brooklyn structures left standing. Designed by the father-son architects Louis H. Asbury Sr. and Jr. as a rare example of the PWA Moderne or Federal Moderne architectural style, the building remains one of the earliest African American branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association in the Carolinas.
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The YMCA movement began in London, England in 1844. Seven years later, the first U.S. YMCA was established in Boston. Wilmington was the site of North Carolina’s first community YMCA in 1857, followed by Charlotte later that same year. The first African American-oriented YMCA was established in 1853 in Washington DC, but expansion of that initiative stalled until the early 1870s. When establishing community YMCAs, Black citizens could choose between organizing as a freestanding unit or as a branch of a larger, white-managed YMCA. An apparently autonomous YMCA was established for Black Charlotteans in 1883 but fundraising stalled. An 1890 national YMCA initiative to create Black “branches” within local white-controlled main YMCA boards city finally provided the seed money for a Charlotte branch to serve the city’s growing Black community. The first YMCA branch for Black Charlotteans opened in late 1936 in rented space within the former offices of the North Carolina State Employment Service on East Second Street.
Known as the Second Street YMCA, that first branch quickly became a community cornerstone, hosting a wide range of recreational, educational, social, and civic activities. Its success prompted the branch to make plans for a post-WWII fundraising drive for a second branch. In 1944, the main Charlotte YMCA purchased property on the corner of South Caldwell and East Third streets for a second Brooklyn-based branch facility. As fundraising efforts progressed slowly, the new branch was built in phases, starting with the administrative wing in 1950. Notably, the gymnasium was considered an add-on for later. The entire facility was ultimately funded primarily by contributions from local African American families, figures, and institutions. Opened in 1951, the new YMCA was named in honor of Dr. Henry Lawrence McCrorey (1863-1951), the president emeritus of Johnson C. Smith University (1907-1947) and YMCA building committee member who died less than three months after the branch’s opening.
The new McCrorey branch served the Brooklyn community in numerous ways beyond recreation, including for community meetings, public forums on social justice, and civil rights organizational activities for both men and women. When Brooklyn was lost due to urban renewal, so too was the McCrorey branch. Replaced by a new Beatties Ford Road branch in 1969, the McCrorey building was sold to United Community Services, which later became the United Way.