The Barringer’s big, overlooked day

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In late August, while lots of people were focused on Hurricane Irene, something had just happened to the Barringer Hotel.

All of us in the local media had fallen down on the job — I blame it on furloughs and layoffs — because no one reported that the Barringer had just been put on the National Register of Historic Places.

If you’re new to Charlotte — meaning you’re one of the 99.2 percent of us — you’ve probably never heard of the Barringer, aka Hall House, aka that 12-story red-brick building just down the street from where GW Fins used to be.

Note to new residents: Fins shut down about three years ago.

The Barringer, at 426 N. Tryon St., was built in 1940. And, as the first high-rise to be built in the city after the Great Depression had halted construction in Charlotte, it must have been moving to watch it under construction.

Hmm … a construction slump. What’s that like?

Hotel magnate Laurence Barringer, who came from Columbia, S.C., was the man behind the project.

Architects Bobbie Dial and Albert Thomas, also of Columbia, designed the Barringer in the art deco style. Art deco’s popularity was waning by that time as newer styles were being introduced; I, personally, am partial to the “Googie” style that started around 1950, but only because of the name.

It’s a good thing that Bobbie and Al went the art deco route: Now the Barringer and the Southern Bell building, at 208 N. Caldwell St., are the only art deco-style buildings in uptown.

The Barringer was built at the end of what was considered Center City’s second phase of development. The hotel opened Dec. 14, 1940, the same day that plutonium was first being isolated in a California laboratory. So, it was a day of much significance everywhere.

Clarence “Booster” Kuester, head of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, attended the opening. Kuester flattered the Barringers in that effusive way that chamber presidents do so well, praising them for building “a magnificent hotel without asking for help from the people of Charlotte.”

This, of course, was during a time when companies could be lured to cities without incentives.

In its heyday, the Barringer was where Hollywood stars stayed when they came to Charlotte. Judy Garland is among the actresses who are said to have been guests there.

Dan Morrill, director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, tells me it was no hole in the wall in the ‘60s, when he came to the city.

“For a Sunday meal after church, with folded napkins and all the rest, that was a place that you went,” he said.

Although the main building survives, some parts of the Barringer are no longer with us.

In the 1950s, motels — this was before their stigma as refuges for fugitives and places to take a, ahem, lady of the evening — were popping up across America, thanks to more people driving long distances. Laurence had a motor court added to the building in the ‘50s. The court is no longer part of the property.

Also in the ‘50s, Laurence, during the start of Center City’s third redevelopment phase, when more office high-rises were being built, renovated the Barringer.

But it wasn’t enough to keep the hotel going strong as people fled to the suburbs.

In 1961, he checked out of the Barringer as owner. That same year, the Belk Hotel Corp. bought it and operated it as Barringer Inn before renaming it the Cavalier Inn in 1972.

The property struggled in the ‘70s as downtown Charlotte was so unpopular a place for entertainment, people wouldn’t be caught dead there after dark.

Now, the Charlotte Housing Authority, a nonprofit, owns the building. CHA, which calls it Hall House, is using it to house elderly and disabled residents as it rehabs other properties.

Around 2007, CHA decided to try and sell the building. The thinking was the uptown site could bring top dollar.

A sale never happened. But all the talk about selling it caught the attention of the nonprofit Historic Charlotte.

HC’s executive director, Diane Althouse — an awesome name for someone in the preservation business — said her agency called for a Section 106 review of the property. That involves studying a threatened historic building whose owner gets some federal funds.

But Chris Squier, chief development officer for the CHA, said his agency had also considered putting it on the register.

Regardless, the building’s now on the National Register, which means a developer could get some — you guessed it — incentives to redevelop it.

And, Squier says, once the market improves, the CHA will likely put that baby up for sale.

Roberts can be reached at [email protected].