Thompson-Anderson House
(ca. 1936)
The Thompson-Anderson House is Davidson’s best surviving example of a brick masonry Tudor Revival cottage.
858 Concord Rd, Davidson, NC 28036
The Thompson-Anderson House is historically significant for its association with several prominent members of Davidson’s middle-class community and architecturally significant for its Tudor Revival architecture. Wilburn A. “Wib” Thompson (1903-1984) built the home in 1936 when Concord Road was still just a rural route leading into town. A Davidson native, Wilburn and his ten siblings grew up in the family home at 532 North Main Street. His father Walter Henry Thompson (1868–1937) was a prominent banker who served as clerk and treasurer of the Town of Davidson. Walter married Cynthia Louisa Armour (1874-1912), whose family had lived in the area since the 1820s and owned much of the land along North Main Street above the cemetery.
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After attending Davidson College, Wilburn began his professional life in 1923 at the age of twenty as a cashier at Southern Cotton Oil Company. A civic-minded Davidsonian, he joined the town’s first volunteer firefighting department in 1927. Wilburn married Mildred Hartness of Mooresville in 1934, and the newlyweds lived in Mooresville until their Concord Road home was completed. At that time, Tudor Revival was among the most popular architectural styles. At least two other Tudor Revival homes stood in close proximity to the Thompson-Anderson House, the Arbuckle House at 838 Concord Road (circa 1926) and a second house at 850 Concord Road (circa 1945, no longer extant). The popularity of that style waned by the end of the 1930s, leaving the Thompson-Anderson House as the best surviving example of a brick masonry Tudor Revival cottage in Davidson.
Despite the Great Depression, Wilburn managed to succeed. In 1938 he was promoted to manager at Southern Cotton. He served the Board of Elections as one of several registrars in Davidson in 1940, a role he held for many years. During World War II, Wilburn was chairman of the Rationing Board of northern Mecklenburg County. Following the 1937 death of his father, Wilburn, Mildred, and their son William moved into the family home on North Main Street, selling the Concord Road house to John and Sadie Anderson. The Thompsons remained in Davidson, allowing Wilburn to participate in a variety of civic activities including as a director and member of the Executive Committee of Piedmont Bank and Trust Company (1945-1973) and treasurer of the Davidson College Presbyterian Church (approximately 1950 to 1984). Upon his 1959 retirement from Southern Cotton, Wilburn worked as an accountant for the Town of Davidson from 1960 to 1969.
The second owners of the Thompson-Anderson House, Sadie and John Anderson, owned and operated Anderson’s Food Store on Depot Street for approximately seventeen years. One of the small independent grocers common and necessary in towns such as Davidson before the post-WWII era of supermarkets, the Andersons’ store featured fresh produce locally grown on land south of their house in what is today the Cabin Creek neighborhood. Anderson’s Food Store continued in business until about 1975, the year John died.