Paralleling the arrival of the railroad was the
growth of the cotton economy in the south central Piedmont. Cotton production
in Union County grew from 1,196 bales in 1870 to 24,441 bales in 1900 and
27,000 bales in 1923. Similar development occurred in the surrounding counties.
Formerly, planters provided seed and other materials for the production of
their tenants' and other local farmers' crops, marketed the tenant's cotton,
and often sold manufactured goods to the tenants from plantation stores. With
the arrival of the railroad and the growth of market towns like Monroe, tenants
and small farmers could sell their crops directly to specialized buyers.
Farmers could purchase goods from merchants in town, or from country stores
supplied by wholesalers in the city. Financing was provided by merchants or by
newly-developed banks. The expansion and specialization in agriculture and
trade increased production and the general level of prosperity.
Businessmen in Monroe were quick to exploit the
arrival of the railroad. Within a few years Monroe went from a town of wood
stores to one with a substantial number of brick commercial buildings. In 1874
H.M. Houston and others founded the People's Bank of Monroe, the town's first
bank. Their new bank building on N. Main Street, constructed in 1875, was
followed immediately by Houston's three-story brick store (demolished). John D.
Stewart, one of the town's early citizens, constructed a number of new brick
commercial buildings in the late 1870s, including three that survive, the English
Drug Company Building of 1876, and the two buildings which made up the Stewart
House (1875-76), parts of which remain in 102 N. Main, 106 N. Main and 108 N.
Main.
In 1884 the county Board of commissioners began what
is still the town's most impressive building, the second Empire style Union County Courthouse. Designed by Raleigh
architect Thomas Holt, it was among the finest courthouses built in the state
during the Post-Reconstruction period.
At the turn of the century, one family, prominent in
the commercial life of Monroe, was also instrumental in the construction of a
series of fine brick commercial buildings. This was the Shute family, led by
John Shute. With his three sons, J.R., H.A. and J.T., he built up a small empire
of cotton gins, brick yards, planing mills, dry goods and grocery outlets and
other ventures. The elder Shute died in 1896, but the firm continued as J.
Shute and Sons until 1911, when the brothers divided their property. Two of the
Shute's largest and most ornate early company warehouse on N. Main Street have
not survived. However, within the district are the yellow brick-faced Bank of
Union Building, 212 N. Hayne, 108 E. Franklin Street and 202 E. Franklin Street,
all built for the Shutes between 1902 and 1914 and all carefully composed and
well-proportioned examples of turn of the century commercial architecture.
Another family of considerable importance in the
physical and financial development of the downtown was the Belk brothers. W.H.
Belk, who started his retail career at age 14 as a clerk ·for B.D. Heath, began
his first store in a rented building at the corner of N. Main and Morgan Streets
(since demolished) in 1888. In the following year he opened another
"racket" store in Chester, S.C. in partnership with A.W. Kluttz. Dr. J.M.
Belk, W.H.'s brother, moved to Monroe in 1890 and purchased an interest in the
Monroe store. From that point the Belks opened another store almost yearly,
growing to one of the southeast's largest retailers. The Belk brothers had a
variety of other interests in Monroe. They were stockholders in the Monroe
Telephone Company and the W.J. Rudge Company, for which they erected the
building at 211 N. Main Street in 1901. They also built the double store at 209
N. Main Street, half of which survives. In the early 1920s these two buildings
became part of the Belk brothers' Monroe store. The Belks also merged a lot on
N. Main with the adjacent parcel owned by S.B. Bundy and constructed the
Belk/Bundy Building, at that time one of the town's largest office/commercial
buildings. W.H. Belk moved to Charlotte in the late 1890s to run the store
there, but his brother remained in Monroe until his death in 1928.
Another enterprise with which the Belks were involved
was the Monroe Hardware company. Begun in 1887 as the Heath Hardware company by
B.D. and A.W. Heath, it built its own business house on W. Franklin Street facing
the county courthouse. This building, 180 feet deep, had painted on its facade
the company slogan, "We handle everything under the sun, from a pin hook
to a Gatlin gun." (The building burned in 1927.) The company incorporated
in 1900 as the Heath-Lee Hardware Company. The Monroe Hardware company was
founded in 1901, with D.E. Allen as president and Dr. J.W. Belk as
vice-president. This company soon merged with the Heath-Lee Company, taking the
name Monroe Hardware Company, Incorporated.
Although these hardware companies conducted a retail
business in Monroe, the bulk of their operations were in wholesaling. Companies
like Monroe Hardware supplied small stores throughout North and South Carolina.
By 1919 Monroe Hardware company was the largest hardware jobber in the Carolinas,
doing an annual business of $1,000,000 In addition to the store on W. Franklin
street, they occupied a large brick warehouse on N. Main built by the Shutes
(demolished), as well as several large frame warehouses on N. Hayne street.
These warehouses were consolidated with the construction of a large,
three-story warehouse on N. Hayne in 1924. The new Monroe Hardware Company
warehouse was the largest and most expensive (at approximately $250,000)
building to have been erected in Monroe. A fire in 1927 led to the construction
of a new store on W. Franklin Street and to an additional building on N. Hayne
Street.
Monroe's status as a hub in the Seaboard Air Line
meant that it became home to a large transient population of railroad men.
Travelling salesmen, or "Knights of the Grip," were also drawn to the
city by its large wholesale business, and there were always travelers stopping
in their north-south journeys. As early as 1911, the Heath-Houston Realty Company
had plans for a large and modern hotel at the corner of N. Main and W. Franklin
Streets. However, work was not begun until 1917, and wartime shortages of
manpower and materials delayed its completion until 1919. The name Hotel Joffre
was given to the new building in honor of the French World War I General
Marshal Joffre. Although located in a town with a population of only about
9,000 persons, the new hotel had 100 guest rooms and a large dining room. It
was in this dining room that a large dinner was given on December 9, 1921 in
honor of Marshal Foch, the commander-in-chief of allied forces during World War
I. Also included in the new building was a corner banking facility for the First
National Bank, Monroe's premier financial institution and successor to the
People's Bank.
Another bank constructed during this period was the
stylized Classical Revival Monroe Bank & Trust company on N. Main. This
institution was a merger of the Savings Bank & Trust Company, founded in
1903 by R.B. Redwine and the Farmers Bank & Trust Company. Together with
the First National Bank and the Bank of Union on E. Franklin Street, they comprised
Monroe's banking community for the first quarter of the 20th century.
A large number of buildings constructed in the
downtown in the late nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century were
the work of two local contractors, G. Marion Tucker and E.C. Ingram. Positively
attributed to Tucker are the Monroe Hardware company warehouse, The Belk/Bundy
Building, the Secrest Building, and the 1926 expansion of the county
courthouse. Attributed to Ingram are the Hotel Joffre and the Monroe Bank &
Trust company Building. Although there are frequent general references to
architects in newspaper articles describing new buildings for the downtown, the
only documented attributions are Thomas Holt of Raleigh for the county
courthouse, Charles Christian Hook of Charlotte for the courthouse renovation,
and Victor W. Breeze and Associates of Asheville for the Monroe Hardware
company warehouse. Many of the 20th century buildings are sufficiently
sophisticated to indicate the hand of an architect and, given the proximity of
Charlotte, it is likely that Charlotte firms were involved in their
construction.
The deepening of the Depression in the early 1930s
brought the development of the downtown nearly to a halt. Whereas cotton was
the major crop in Union county and the south piedmont in the 1920s, it went
into a decline during the Depression from which it never recovered, eventually virtually
vanishing as a crop altogether. All three of Monroe's banks failed. Although
the establishment of Camp Sutton in Monroe during World War II brought large
numbers of soldiers and their families to the city, very little new
construction resulted in downtown. Increasingly, following the war, new
construction was centered on the periphery of the city and along U.S. Highways
601 and 74 that bypassed downtown by several miles. Government redevelopment
activities in the 1960s and early 1970s resulted in the destruction of a number
of significant structures, and others were substantially altered by
modernization. Construction of a new county courthouse in 1972 that physically
separated downtown from the railroad station was symbolic of the business district's
decline. While some rehabilitation has taken place, and more is in process,
many of the surviving buildings have been maintained at a nominal level and are
good candidates for preservation activity. The recent completion of the
restoration of the Old Union County Courthouse for county offices gives hope for the
revival of the historic downtown.
