-
Date of Construction: 2019
-
Historic Neighborhood Infill (Residential) - New residential building the integrates sensitively with its historic environment
Latta Park Lantern House
Latta Park Lantern House
About the Project
This new infill home in the heart of historic Latta Park returns the property to its original design intent and fits seamlessly into Dilworth’s front-porch culture. The newest owners took down the 1970s building and built a new residence that honored the historic neighborhood’s architecture. With its natural stone foundation, balanced asymmetry and trellised front patio, the new home borrows stylistically from the original cottages built in the area starting in the 1940s.
The structure was affectionately named the Lantern House because of the way light floods the space through the multitude of windows. Each room has natural light from at least two sides.
About the Neighborhood
Historic Latta Park, the centerpiece of the Olmstead 1890s Dilworth neighborhood design – while evolving over 130 years – has remained central to the cultural heritage of Charlotte’s first streetcar community, Dilworth. The edges of the park were later sold, reducing the size of the park and offering additional home sites on Romany Road and Park Avenue that were developed in the 1940s and later. The original 90-acre amusement park was a trolley line destination that included a lake, theatre, pavilion, ball fields, walking paths, wooded areas, and a creek and lily pond. Latta Park was used by the City of Charlotte as municipal fairgrounds and a race track, by professional baseball teams, and by the football teams of the University of North Carolina and Davidson College.
Between 1900 and 1911, local developer C.D. Spangler purchased the land along the north edge of Latta Park, Romany Road. (It should be noted that the Park Avenue side of Latta Park has a parallel history.) Beginning in the 1940s, Spangler developed this winding road with Picturesque and Colonial Revival cottages true to the other unique curvilinear areas of the Olmstead plan. As a result of the Romany Road and Park Avenue development, the park is somewhat smaller – with an early pavilion and some curvilinear walking paths and arched bridges preserved.