Franks House
(ca. 1917)
The Franks House survives as a rare example of working-class Black homeownership in twentieth century Charlotte.
305 Dunbar St., Charlotte, NC 28203
The Franks House is historically relevant as a rare surviving artifact of the Black community that once existed in Charlotte’s Third Ward neighborhood. Most housing in Third Ward and other center city neighborhoods during that era was poorly maintained rental property owned by White property holders but intended for Black residents. Many of the houses on the 200-300 block of Dunbar Street were owner-occupied during the early twentieth century. As Black neighborhoods in Charlotte’s center city core were declared blighted and removed during Urban Renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, the Black community of Third Ward shrank until only a few Dunbar Street residents remained. Construction of the John Belk Freeway in the 1980s separated Dunbar Street and other traditional areas of Third Ward from the center city. The Franks House survived these changes that otherwise destroyed the Black community around it, making it an unusual extant example of working-class Black homeownership in twentieth century Charlotte.
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In the late nineteenth century, racially homogenous communities formed in Charlotte’s four center city wards. Black neighborhoods coalesced in First, Second, and Third Wards. Most Black residents in those neighborhoods lived in single-family or duplex “shotgun” tenant houses. Typically those houses were shoddily built, lacked basic amenities, and were owned by white absentee landlords. The Charlotte News reported in 1937 that only 10% of Black residences in Charlotte were Black owned. The Third Ward Black community was anchored by Good Samaritan Hospital and St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church but by 1930, Third Ward was more industrial than residential. The area included business operations for Duke Power Company, Southern Public Utilities Company, and the terminal for the Piedmont & Northern electric interurban railway.
Arthur and Bessie Franks (1906-1975 and 1908-1984, respectively), who previously had rented shotgun houses on South Graham and South Mint Streets, purchased the house at 305 Dunbar Street in 1949. The property remained in possession of the Franks family for three generations over more than sixty years. As homeowners, the Franks maintained and modernized their home over the years, adding an electric range in 1955 and a water heater in 1957. The Franks House survives as a rare reflection of a bygone past – the simple bungalows and cottages once common to Third Ward before their elimination by Urban Renewal in the 1960s and 1970s – as well as a singular representation of the Black working class Third Ward neighborhood, the rental housing constructed by White landlords in the early twentieth century, and the unique transition of the 200-300 block of Dunbar Street from tenant-occupied houses to Black-owner-occupied houses.