The George Pierce Wadsworth House was designed by prominent North Carolina architect, Louis H. Asbury, in 1910, and construction was completed in 1911 (Louis H. Asbury, Book of Commissions, Job No. 71, July 1910). Local businessman, George Wadsworth commissioned Asbury to build his new house on property which the Wadsworth Land Company had recently subdivided into Wesley Heights, a middle class suburb located west of downtown between West Trade Street and W. Morehead Street. The George Pierce Wadsworth House was one of the first houses built in the new suburb which was called Wesley Park on early plans (C.G. Hubbel, Wesley Park Map, July 1910).
By 1892, much of the hillside between Tuckaseegee Road and Sugaw Creek had been acquired by George Wadsworth's father, John W. Wadsworth (1835-1895), who ran the largest livery stable in Charlotte. In addition to his livery at North Tryon Street and Sixth Street, Wadsworth also assisted in operating the first horsedrawn streetcar system in the city. Coming to Charlotte in 1857, John Wadsworth began with a small drove of mules and gradually built a large livestock, carriage, and harness business while acquiring extensive land holdings in the city and county (Hanchett, 1984: 14; Mull, 1985: 1). On the westside parcel, where the George Pierce Wadsworth House was later built, Wadsworth operated the "J.W. Wadsworth Model Farm", which was known for its Holstein cattle. At his death in 1895, Wadsworth's heirs incorporated the livery and livestock business as Wadsworth Sons Company and subdivided the farm. However, development was delayed after 1909, when the West Trade Street trolley began service north of the property. With streetcar service, the Wadsworths began plans for developing the former farm, but construction was again largely stalled until after World War I when the Charlotte Investment Company bought the land.
George Wadsworth was born in 1879 to John Wadsworth and Margaret Cannon Wadsworth, sister of J.W. Cannon, founder of Cannon Mills. After college in Virginia and Baltimore, George Wadsworth returned to Charlotte to assume the presidency of Wadsworth Sons Company in 1902. George Wadsworth soon began diversifying the family business interests, a necessary step as automobile travel began replacing horsedrawn conveyances. In 1912, he organized Smith-Wadsworth Hardware Company, and in 1914, he helped establish the Carolina Baking Company, which later was subsumed within the Southern Baking Company. Wadsworth was also associated with the Charlotte National Bank as a director. In 1925, Wadsworth Sons Company was liquidated, ending seventy years of local livery and livestock operations. Wadsworth continued his business interests with the Wadsworth Land Company and the Wadsworth-Seborn Company, a sales operation for Reo cars throughout the Carolinas. His other real estate operations included serving as an officer for the Pegram Land Company. The holdings of both Wadsworth and the Pegram Company were platted as North Charlotte (Mull, 1985: 2).
George Wadsworth commissioned Charlotte architect, Louis H. Asbury to design the house at 400 South Summit in 1910, two years after his marriage and the birth of two children. A Charlotte native, Asbury (1877-1975), had established his practice in the city only two years before the Wadsworth commission. Prior to returning to his hometown, Asbury had received his professional training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had worked for the nationally known firm of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson, in either its New York or Boston office. Later joined by his son, Asbury had an extensive regional practice until his retirement in 1956. A founding member of the North Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Asbury was among a group of early architects in the city who brought a degree of sophistication, urbanity, and professionalism to early twentieth century building in Charlotte. His clients, exemplified by George Wadsworth, tended to be the businessmen responsible for the growing importance of Charlotte as a regional center for the textile and banking industries (Farnsworth, 1975: 16).
The Wadsworth family continued to live in the house after the sudden death of George Wadsworth in 1930 at the age of 51. James Dallas Ramsey, an officer of the Textron-Southern Company, and his wife, Pearl Shelby Ramsey bought the house in 1936. The Ramseys converted a portion of the west side of the second floor to an apartment and adapted a small sleeping porch as a kitchen, probably during the late 1940s. The Ramseys moved in 1967, and the house stood vacant for two years. In 1969, Mrs. Ramsey sold the property to prominent businessman, Worthy D. Hairston (1902-1969) and his wife, Marie S. Hairston. Hairston, a funeral director who had established the Hairston's House of Funerals in 1930, moved his business from its Beatties Ford Road location to the Wadsworth House in 1969 (McClure Interview, 29 November 1993).
A Biddleville resident and the son of a Presbyterian minister, Worthy D. Hairston, had attended Charlotte public schools, Harbison College, and Johnson C. Smith University. Prior to forming the funeral home, Hairston was a builder, having trained as a carpenter, and a teacher in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties. His local building projects included the Murkland School in Providence Township, the first school for blacks constructed of stone, and the Grand Theater. Mr. Hairston also served as the first agent for the Washington National Insurance Company in Charlotte. In 1930, Hairston and a partner formed Hairston's House of Funerals, but after his partner's death in 1933, Hairston became the sole owner. Worthy Hairston lived less than a year after moving the funeral home to the Wadsworth House, and the Hairstons' daughter, Marie H. Pettice, operated the business until her death in the mid-1970s. In 1977, Mrs. Hairston's nephew, Charles McClure, bought the Wadsworth House property. McClure, vho already had an extensive real estate business as well as other commercial operations, continued to operate Hairston's House of Funerals. McClure changed the name to Northwest Funerals Homes, Inc., and the business is still in operation at this site today (Mull, 1985: 4-5).
Unlike the other early streetcar suburbs in Charlotte, such as Myers Park, Dilworth, and Elizabeth, Wesley Heights was platted without the wide boulevards along which the streetcars ran and which were developed with large, impressive residences. Streetcar service, which was essential to the development of outlying locations prior to the widespread use of automobiles, was available nearby, but did not run through the Wesley Heights neighborhood. After World War I, the Charlotte Investment Company platted roughly half the land, including Summit Avenue, Grandin Road, and Walnut Avenue. The plat extended from West Trade Street and Tuckaseegee Road southwest of the interurban line of the Piedmont and Northern Railway which bisected the former farm parcel (Hanchett 1984: 15). (The Wadsworth House is located one block northeast of the railroad tracks.)
Wesley Heights was the work of Charlotte real estate developer, E.C. Griffith. Griffith, a Virginia native, was pivotal in the construction of many early twentieth century neighborhoods in Charlotte, and Wesley Heights was his first solo project in the city. Griffith had come to Charlotte to work in the real estate department of the American Trust Company, founded, with F.C. Abbott and Word Wood, by George Stephens. Stephens, who was responsible for subdividing the farm of his father-in-law, J.S. Myers, as Myers Park, employed Griffith to oversee the final construction of this streetcar suburb (Blythe, 1961: 306). From Myers Park, Griffith continued his real estate career with Wesley Heights in the early 1920s, but developed the Rosemont subdivision of Elizabeth and Eastover during the same period. By the 1930s, Griffith had been responsible, in some capacity, for the streetcar suburbs which encircled the city.
Development in Wesley Heights was slow initially, but as the population of Charlotte more than doubled between 1910 and 1930, real estate sales improved (Blythe, 1961: 173). In 1928, the second half of Wesley Heights was platted, extending Summit, Grandin, and Walnut Avenues across the railroad to West Morehead Street (Hanchett, 1984: 16). As part of the Wesley Heights project, Griffith focused on the development of West Morehead, which until 1927 had been a minor downtown street. By extending the street across Irwin Creek through the edge of Wesley Heights, Griffith made West Morehead an important link between downtown and Wilkinson Boulevard, the first highway in North Carolina, leading from Charlotte to Gastonia. Griffith encouraged industry to take advantage of these good transportation connections, and persuaded J.B. Duke's Piedmont and Northern Railway to extend a spurline south to parallel the new thoroughfare (Hanchett, 1984: 17).
Wesley Heights was platted with a grid street pattern, and the lots along the principal northeast-southwest streets were long and narrow, to maximize proximity to the street rail system. House construction was determined, in part, because of the limited streetcar service, and frame bungalows predominated in the area during the l910s and early 1920s. During the late 1920s and 1930s, construction included numerous examples of one story, brick, cross gable cottages, making Wesley Heights a homogeneous neighborhood of bungalows, restrained Tudor Revival cottages, small four unit apartment houses, as well as some earlier and later exceptions to this pattern. The George Pierce Wadsworth House is one of the earliest, and perhaps only architect designed houses in this middle class neighborhood of tree-lined streets.
The changes in ownership and function of the George Pierce Wadsworth House since 1969 illustrate changes in the composition of some older Charlotte neighborhoods. The extensive urban renewal programs of the l950s and 1960s displaced large segments of the black population and put many blacks onto the housing market. In inner city neighborhoods, such as Wesley Heights, housing pressures transformed the formerly white neighborhood. By the 1970s, virtually all residents of Wesley Heights were black. The conversion of the Wadsworth House to a funeral home, after purchase by a long-standing black business family, exemplifies the metamorphosis of this residential area.
It was developed around 1920 on the nineteenth-century farm of Charlotte livery stable owner John Wadsworth. The neighborhood on Charlotte’s northwest side was close to two trolley lines in the early days of streetcar neighborhoods and is an intact example of an early twentieth century community with pleasing architectural integrity and character.