Belk, downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Exterior entrance on Trade Street, circa 1950. (courtesy Pat Richardson)
Belk, downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Exterior entrance on Trade Street with lighted roof sign, circa 1974 (courtesy Pat Richardson)
Belk, Charlotte, North Carolina. Newspaper advertisement showing artist's rendering of skywalk from Overstreet Mall, circa 1980 (courtesy Pat Richardson)
Belk, downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Exterior entrance on Trade Street with skywalk from Overstreet Mall, circa 1980 (courtesy Pat Richardson)
site of former Belk, downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Skywalk that used to lead into the store from the Overstreet Mall and a commemorative plaque on Trade Street, 2008. (Pat Richardson)Previously on LiveMalls
The Belk Archive
Anybody know what that round thing is the guy is standing in front of?
ReplyDelete< sarcasm> Boy, that block's hasn't changed a bit. < /sarcasm>
This shot was a history lesson for me, because I was either not born or too young to remember uptown Charlotte this way.
ReplyDeleteWhat a gorgeous building!
ReplyDeleteBelk eventually occupied a whole block in uptown Charlotte, but for a time, they shared the block with a department store called Efird's, which Belk purchased in the mid '50s. I believe this was the Efird's building, which became the Belk men's store, and was connected to the main store by a tunnel of some sort.
ReplyDeleteWhen Belk purchased Efird's, it gave Belk the one thing they were desperate for--store presence on Tryon Street itself (the main road going through downtown). Prior to that, their store only had entrances on Trade and 5th Streets. This would prove crucial in their ongoing competition with Ivey's (who always had a Tryon St entrance).
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected! According to Pat, this is the Trade Street side of Belk, so that would make this photo (and the one I just added) the original part of Belk and not the expansion into Efird's.
ReplyDeleteStill is pretty, though.
Is it just me, or was the Overstreet Mall skywalk a horrendous addition to a beautiful building? Yikes!
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a train ran through the center of the building.
ReplyDeleteIs it just me, or was the Overstreet Mall skywalk a horrendous addition to a beautiful building? Yikes!
ReplyDeleteAnd, sadly, it's the only thing in any of these shots still standing!
Ivey's apparently had one too, and I'm sure it must have looked pretty much the same -- right through the middle -- but today you'd never know. I've never seen a picture of it, though, to verify that it did go through the front.
You know, I should take my camera to work one day and take some shots from these vantage points 30 years later...then again, it might just depress us all.
I think I could stomach a picture of the Belk site today. It'd be interesting to see.
ReplyDeleteThat plaque is a very nice touch. I gather that's not the original building attached to the skybridge, what is there presently?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've heard, the building on the site is part of the Bank of America Corporate Center, but I don't have positive proof.
ReplyDelete