Wadsworth House
(ca. 1911)
The Wadsworth House was the home of prominent local businessman George Pierce Wadsworth.
400 South Summit Ave., Charlotte, NC28208
The Wadsworth House was the home of prominent local businessman George Pierce Wadsworth (1879-1930). His father John W. Wadsworth (1835-1895) moved to Charlotte in 1857. Starting with a small drove of mules, John gradually built a large livestock, carriage, and harness business while also acquiring extensive land holdings throughout Mecklenburg County including, by 1892, much of the hillside between Tuckaseegee Road and Sugaw Creek. John’s livery stable, located at North Tryon and Sixth Streets, was the largest in Charlotte. He also helped run the city’s first horse drawn streetcar system. On the land where the Wadsworth House now stands, John operated the J.W. Wadsworth Model Farm, regionally renowned for its Holstein cattle herd. Upon John’s death in 1895, George and his siblings incorporated the livery and livestock business as Wadsworth Sons Company.
Property Quick Links
In 1902, after college in Virginia and Baltimore, George returned to Charlotte to assume the presidency of Wadsworth Sons Company. He began diversifying the family business interests, a wise move as automobile travel had begun to replace horse drawn conveyances. New family businesses included the Smith-Wadsworth Hardware Company, the Carolina Baking Company, and the Wadsworth-Seborn Company that sold Reo cars throughout the Carolinas. George also became a director of the Charlotte National Bank. Following the nearby extension of the West Trade Street trolley line, George and his siblings subdivided the family farm and formed the Wadsworth Land Company in about 1910, but construction on what would become the Wesley Heights suburb stalled until after World War I when the Charlotte Investment Company bought the land and began development in earnest.
Meanwhile, George hired Charlotte native Louis H. Asbury, Sr. to design what would be one of the first Wesley Heights homes. Asbury, North Carolina’s first native-born professionally trained architect to practice in his home state, studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to Charlotte to open his firm in 1908. As North Carolina’s first member of the American Institute of Architects and one of the region’s foremost building designers, Asbury earned hundreds of commissions in the region. His notable works include the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, Mayfair Manor (now Dunhill Hotel), the First National Bank skyscraper on South Tryon, Myers Park and Hawthorne Lane Methodist Churches, and numerous stately homes throughout Charlotte.
The Wadsworth House was sold after George’s death in 1930 and changed hands several times before becoming “Hairston’s House of Funerals” in 1969, a business venture by local carpenter and entrepreneur Worthy D. Hairston whose building projects included Murkland School, Charlotte’s first school for Black children constructed of stone. Hairston’s family continued to operate the funeral business in the Wadsworth House well into 1990s.