Stratton House
(ca. 1930)
Prominent Charlotte architect William Peeps designed the home of Armature Winding Company partner George F. Stratton.
911 W 4th Street Ext, Charlotte, NC 28202
George and Mary Stratton’s family was typical of the original white middle-class profile of the Woodlawn neighborhood. George Frederick Stratton (1897-1971) and his brother Wilson Levi Stratton (1899-1971) were partners in the Armature Winding and Ferrofix Brazing Company with their father Louis Franklin Stratton (1860-1930), who started the company in 1907. The company repaired electric components for looms and textile equipment just as Charlotte’s textile mills were transitioning from coal-generated steam to electric power, making the company an essential service provider for textile mill operations throughout the Carolinas. The company also repaired transformers for Duke Power, manufactured transformer-cooling fans, and distributed electric motors for General Electric Company, along with a variety of other electrical items. The Armature Company grew quickly, requiring the construction of a new business complex. Completed in 1924 at 1001 West 1st and 520 McNinch Streets, the company’s complex is also a local designated historic landmark.
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Born in Kershaw, South Carolina, and a graduate of King’s Business College in Charlotte, George married Cabarrus County native Mary Jane Harris (1900-2000) in 1931, and the couple had two children. As the family business prospered, the two brothers contemplated building adjacent houses in Woodlawn, just three blocks from their offices. Wilson ultimately decided to move his family to Dilworth, but the two brothers did choose the same architect for their respective homes, William Henry Peeps (1868-1950).
Born in London, England, Peeps was four years old when his family immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like his father, Peeps started as a furniture designer. He also worked extensively as an interior designer. It remains unclear whether Peeps ever received formal training in architecture, but once he arrived in Charlotte (between 1905 and 1910), his reputation-making design of the Latta Arcade and Brevard Court, built in 1914 for Edward Dilworth Latta, captured local attention. After all, it was Latta’s Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company that developed the popular Dilworth suburb that spurred Charlotte’s growth in the 1910s.
Peeps was also known for designing homes in the English Tudor style, but the Stratton House only incorporates trace elements of that style. Other prominent Charlotte structures designed by Peeps include the Ratcliffe Florist Shop, the Hovis Funeral Home building, and two skyscrapers (the Johnston Building and the First National Bank Building). Peeps designed several fashionable residences in and around the city, including the G. G. Galloway House on East Morehead Street, the Lethco House on the Queens University campus, the E. T. Cannon House in Concord, and Salisbury’s Hanford House. In 1915, Peeps became one of the first men certified by the State of North Carolina to practice architecture professionally, and he subsequently served as president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects.