About Charlotte North Carolina

Information Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina and the 20th largest in the United States, with a population of approximately 610,949 (2005 estimate). It is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, and is located in the south-central part of the state in the Piedmont region, near the South Carolina border. The city's economy has matured in the late 1900s and early 2000s to become dominated by financial services, as well as retail commerce.

Nicknamed The Queen City (which it shares with Cincinnati, Ohio and Buffalo, NY), Charlotte (as well as the county containing it) was named in honor of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg, wife of King George III of the United Kingdom. After being driven out by the opposition of the city's citizens to British occupation during the American Revolution, General Cornwallis wrote Charlotte was "a hornet's nest of rebellion", leading to another city nickname: The Hornet's Nest.

The Charlotte metropolitan area (MSA) had a census estimated population of 1,583,016 in 2006. As of 2006, the Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury combined statistical area (CSA) had a regional population of 2,191,604. The City of Charlotte estimates its population to be 664,342 as of January 1, 2007. A resident of Charlotte is referred to as a Charlottean

HISTORY

The area that is now Charlotte was first settled in 1755 when Thomas Polk (uncle of United States President James K. Polk), who was traveling with Thomas Spratt and his family, stopped and built his house of residence at the intersection of two Native American trading paths between the Yadkin and Catawba rivers. One of the paths ran north-south and was part of the Great Wagon Road; the second path ran east-west along what is now modern-day Trade Street. In the early part of the 18th century, the Great Wagon Road led settlers of Scots-Irish and German descent from Pennsylvania into the Carolina foothills. Within the decades following Polk's settling, the area grew to become the community of "Charlotte Town," which officially incorporated as a town in 1768. The crossroads, perched atop a long rise in the Piedmont landscape, became the heart of modern Uptown Charlotte.

In 1770, surveyors marked of the new town's streets in a grid pattern for future development. The east-west trading path became Trade Street, and the Great Wagon Road became Tryon Street, in honor of William Tryon, a royal governor of colonial North Carolina. The intersection of Trade and Tryon is known as "Trade & Tryon" or simply "The Square".

Both the town (now a city) and its county are named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German-born wife of British King George III. The town name was chosen in hopes of winning favor with the crown, but tensions between the United Kingdom and Charlotte Town began to grow as King George imposed unpopular laws on the citizens in response to the townspeople's desire for independence. On May 20, 1775, the townsmen allegedly signed a proclamation later known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, a copy of which was sent, though never officially presented, to the Continental Congress a year later. The date of the declaration appears on the North Carolina state flag. Eleven days later, the same townsmen met to create and endorse the Mecklenburg Resolves, a set of laws to govern the newly independent town.

Charlotte was a site of encampment for both American and British armies during the Revolutionary War, and during a series of skirmishes between British troops and Charlotteans the village earned the lasting nickname "Hornet's Nest" from frustrated Lord General Charles Cornwallis. An ideological hotbed of revolutionary sentiment during the Revolutionary War and for some time afterwards, the legacy endures today in the nomenclature of such landmarks as Independence Boulevard, Independence High School, Independence Center, Freedom Park, Freedom Drive, and the former NBA team Charlotte Hornets.

Churches, mainly of the Presbyterian faith, but also Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Catholics began to form in the early 1800s, eventually giving Charlotte its nickname "The City of Churches."

In 1799, 12 year-old Conrad Reed brought home a rock weighing about 17 pounds, which the family used as a bulky doorstop for three years before it was recognized by a jeweler as near solid gold and bought for a paltry $3.50. The first verified gold-find in the fledgling United States, young Reed's discovery became the genesis of the nation's first gold rush. Many veins of gold were found in the area throughout the 1800s and even in to the early 1900s, thus the founding of the Charlotte Mint in 1837 for minting local gold. The state of North Carolina "led the nation in gold production until the California Gold Rush of 1848", although the total volume of gold mined in the Charlotte area was dwarfed by subsequent rushes. Charlotte's city population at the 1880 Census grew to 7,084. Some locally based groups still pan for gold occasionally in local (mostly rural) streams and creeks. The Reed Gold Mine operated until 1912. The Charlotte Mint was active until 1861, when Confederate forces seized the mint at the outbreak of the Civil War. The mint was not reopened at the end of the war, but the building survives today, albeit in a different location, now housing the Mint Museum of Art.

The city's first boom came after the Civil War, as a cotton processing center and a railroad hub. Population leapt again during World War I, when the U.S. government established Camp Greene north of present-day Wilkinson Boulevard. Many soldiers and suppliers stayed after the war, launching an ascent that eventually overtook older and more established rivals along the arc of the Carolina Piedmont.

The city's modern-day banking industry achieved prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, largely under the leadership of financier Hugh McColl. McColl transformed North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) into a formidable national player that, through a series of aggressive acquisitions, eventually became Bank of America. Another bank, First Union, experienced similar growth, and is now known as Wachovia after a merger. Today, measured by control of assets, Charlotte is the second largest banking headquarters in the United States after New York City.

NEIGHBORHOODS IN TOWN

ECONOMY

Charlotte has become a major U.S. financial center, and, based on assets, both the nation's second largest and fourth largest financial institutions call the city home (Bank of America and Wachovia, respectively). Bank of America' headquarters, along with other regional banking and financial services companies, are located primarily in the uptown financial district. Thanks in large part to the expansion of the city's banking industry, the Charlotte skyline has mushroomed in the past two decades and boasts the Bank of America Corporate Center, the tallest skyscraper between Philadelphia and Atlanta. The 60-story postmodern gothic tower, designed by renowned architect Cesar Pelli, stands 871 feet tall and was completed in 1992. During the year 2006, Bank of America passed Citigroup to become the largest financial services company in the world, based on market capitalisation.

The following Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the Charlotte metropolitan area:

• Bank of America
• Duke Energy
• Family Dollar
• Goodrich Corporation
• Lowe's
• Nucor
• Sonic Automotive
• SPX Corporation
• Wachovia

Other major companies headquartered in the Metro Charlotte include Time Warner Cable (a business unit of Fortune 500 company Time Warner), Muzak, Belk, Harris Teeter, Meineke Car Care Centers, Lance, Inc, Bojangles' , Carlisle Companies, LendingTree, Compass Group USA and Royal+SunAlliance and Food Lion in suburban Salisbury. Also, neighboring Gastonia is home to Choice Beverage, Inc., makers of SunDrop and Cheerwine, and Parkdale Mills world headquarters.

Charlotte is also a major center in the US motorsports industry, with NASCAR having multiple offices in and around Charlotte. Approximately 75% of the industry's employees and drivers are based within two hours of downtown Charlotte. Charlotte is also the future home of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, expected to be completed in 2009. The center city/uptown area of Charlotte has seen remarkable growth over the last decade. Numerous residential units continue to be built uptown. Many new restaurants, bars and clubs now operate in the uptown area.

You can find great local Charlotte, NC real estate information on Localism.com Melissa Polce is a proud member of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network, a free online community to help real estate professionals grow their business.