William Treloar House
(ca. 1887)
The Treloar House was built as a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of its owner William Treloar.
328 N Brevard St, Charlotte, NC 28202
William Treloar (1825-1894), a native of Cornwall, England, emigrated to the United States in 1844 at the age of nineteen. Arriving in Charleston, he soon moved to Stanly County and became involved in mining. Within a year, Treloar wed Julia Franklin Crowell (1829-1906), a Stanly County native born near New London. By that time, gold had been discovered in the Piedmont of North Carolina and gold mines had proliferated. Treloar eventually acquired interests in Gold Hill, Rowan County, Pioneer Mills in Cabarrus County, and the Ray Mine in Mecklenburg County. As a sideline, he also conducted a general merchandising business in Salisbury and later in Charlotte.
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After moving to Charlotte in the 1850s, the entrepreneur acquired one of Charlotte’s largest hotels, the Central Hotel, located on the first block of South Tryon Street. He also owned the row of store buildings just opposite, previously known as Granite Row but renamed Treloar’s Hall following his acquisition. When the Civil War broke out, Treloar sold the Central Hotel and Granite Row, packed up his family, and moved to Philadelphia, where he went into the boot and shoe business.
In 1881 or 1882, the Treloar family returned to North Carolina, where William again became interested in mining in Cabarrus County. Five years later, they moved back to Charlotte and decided to build a large home on land purchased in 1886 from the Charlotte Baptist Church (now First Baptist Church) at the southeast corner of Brevard and Seventh Streets. Completed in about 1887, the Treloars’ new house was large enough to accommodate any of their thirteen children and their spouses who cared to live with William and Julia. Apparently only four of the children and one husband shared the house with the elder Treloars, the rest having married and moved to other parts of the country. Accordingly, the Treloar family occupied the Seventh Street side of the house and leased out the remainder of the structure to tenants. In 1911, following the deaths of William and Julia, and a prolonged series of family transactions, the house became the property of daughter Julia (1861-1951) and her husband Samuel Lawson Smith (1867-1937), a cotton broker and secretary-treasurer of the Merchant and Farmer’s Bonded Warehouse.
Unfortunately, the Great Depression caused Julia and Samuel to lose the family home. W. O. and Ilse Potter acquired the house in a 1934 foreclosure sale. For the next thirteen years, the former Treloar House was rented to various tenants, many of them mill and warehouse workers, until it was bought in 1947 by Steve and Dora Dellinger, who leased it for several years to Charlotte Auto Parts Company. Since a brief stint in the 1980s as the office of a bail bonds service, the home has sat vacant as an unusual and stately presence in a part of town dominated by parking lots and warehouses.