Original Construction: 1948
Preservation Project Completed: 2020-2021
Individual or Group (an individual, community organization, or group of people who work to preserve the built environment or other pieces of our shared history)
Judges recognized the Catawba Cultural Center with an Excellence in Preservation award for the center’s exemplary efforts in preserving and promoting the cultural and material heritage of the Catawba people, who are indigenous to the Piedmont region of the Carolinas. Mecklenburg County is part of the Catawba’s historic homelands and remains a part of the modern Catawba Nation's federally recognized service area, making Catawba Nation history a fundamental part of Mecklenburg County history.
The building that houses the cultural center began its life as a two-room Catawba school in 1948, when the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constructed it to provide an education to Catawba children on the reservation during segregation. Starting in 2020, the Catawba Nation undertook a major interior modernization and renovation of the building so that it could continue serving the Catawba community into the 21st century. Today, three generations of Catawba have passed through the center's doors, where they have learned to dance, to weave, to make pottery and to carry on traditions that have endured for over 6,000 years.