King, picked Charlotte
as the location for a small Lutheran
college for women that opened in 1897.
Because Mr. Watts provided most of the money for the college, President
King named it Elizabeth College in honor of his mother-in-law.
J.A. Dempwolf, an architect from York, Pa., designed the buildings.
The campus was on the block where Presbyterian Hospital now stands,
but in 1897, this was outside Charlotte, because McDowell Street formed
the eastern edge of the city. Elizabeth Avenue, laid out in 1891,
and widened in October 1897, ran from McDowell Street, crossed Sugar
Creek and rose straight to the imposing entrance gates to the campus.
Elizabeth College stayed in Charlotte until 1915, when it moved to
Salem, Va. It is hard to imagine how serene and bucolic the campus
was in those days. Where ambulances now dash to the emergency room
entrance, elegant Victorian damsels once dabbled at tennis. Presbyterian
Hospital bought the block in 1917 and moved there from W. Trade Street.
The main building of Elizabeth College, which served Presbyterian
Hospital for many years, was demolished in 1980.
The Highland Park Land and Improvement Co. contributed $3600 to entice
Elizabeth College to Charlotte. The company reasoned that the college
would increase the value of a large tract of land which the company
owned nearby. They were right. The Elizabeth neighborhood, named for
the college, became one of the most fashionable areas in Charlotte.
Such important community leaders as William Henry Belk, founder of
the Belk Department Stores, lived there. Most of the earliest houses
were built on Elizabeth Avenue and on the streets that crossed it,
like Travis Avenue and Torrence Street. The pace of development quickened
after December 1902, when the Charlotte Consolidated Construction
Company completed a trolley line that ran from McDowell Street to
Elizabeth College.
Elizabeth became part of Charlotte in 1907. Independence Park, the
first public park in Charlotte, opened in the neighborhood at about
the same time. The streetcar line was extended along Hawthome Lane,
then Kingston Avenue, to the park entrance at Seventh Street. The
designer of Independence Park was John Nolen, who would fashion Myers
Park for the Stephens Company several years later.