Charlotte Streetcar #85
(ca. 1910s)
A remnant from bygone days, Charlotte Streetcar No. 85 was rediscovered and repurposed in 1987.
No permanent address
Prior to 1890, Charlotte public transit consisted of horse-drawn trolley cars. Late that year, Edward Dilworth Latta (1851-1925) and his Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (locally as the Four Cs) purchased those trolley cars from the city and contracted with the Edison Electric Company in February 1891 to install new electric trolley lines. The Four Cs formed a subsidiary – the Charlotte Railway Company – to manage the new venture. At 3:00 p.m. on May 18, 1891, the first electric streetcar departed from Charlotte's Square at the intersection of Trade and Tryon Streets, heading toward the suburb of Dilworth. A new era of transportation had dawned in a New South city.
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In 1910, the Four Cs sold the Charlotte Railway Company to the Southern Power Company, the predecessor of the Duke Power Company. Hailed by the Southern Public Utilities Magazine as providing the essential “blood” of the expanding suburbs, Charlotte's streetcar system continued to operate successfully until technological advances rendered the system inefficient and obsolete. Duke Power Company and the City of Charlotte applied to the North Carolina Utilities Commission in 1937 for authority to substitute motor buses in place of electric streetcars in and around the city. The new motor buses were more flexible, safer, and quieter than the outmoded streetcars. On March 14, 1938, streetcar number 85 made its final run from Presbyterian Hospital through downtown – stopping at the Square for a special ceremony – and continued to its last stop at the South Boulevard car barn. The era of the electric streetcar in Charlotte was officially over.
Streetcar number 85 was constructed by the Perley Thomas Car Company of High Point, North Carolina, most likely in the late 1910s. The J. G. Brill Company of Philadelphia manufactured the mechanical systems. It is a doubletruck double-ended car, originally with flip-over wooden seats.
In 1987, streetcar number 85 was discovered on David Street on the southern edge of Huntersville. It had previously serviced – since at least the 1940s – as a diner and concession stand at Caldwell Station, North Carolina, approximately one-half mile north of the intersection of Highways 73 and 115. It is unclear how the streetcar got to Caldwell Station. But in or about 1951, the streetcar was purchased by Daisy Mae Trapp Moore, who moved the vehicle to David Street to be renovated for housing for some of her relatives and later as rental property. The streetcar was acquired by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission in 1988, renovated, and used in a variety of capacities.