A commemorative ceremony over the weekend in Charlotte paid tribute to a historic home and the community it represents.
City and county representatives gathered outside the United House of Prayer near Bank of America Stadium on Saturday. They pulled down a blue cover to reveal the Franks’ House Third Ward historical marker. The property is one of the few remaining Black homes around in the 1900s, at a time when the Third Ward area saw major changes.
County commissioner Mark Jerrell spoke as a band played nearby. He said the home stands as a reminder of a Black community that resided in the Third Ward area.
“Before you see all the bright and shiny objects, there was a thriving community here,” Jerrell said. "There were businesses, there were churches, and families that built this community.”
That Black community was mostly erased in the name of urban renewal in the late 20th century.
Wanda Doby's grandparents, Arthur and Bessie Franks, owned the home. Doby, 69, who lives in the Cherry Neighborhood, a historically African American community near uptown, walked about an hour from her home for the ceremony.
Doby says she's pleased to know that what Arthur Franks owned will continue to stand.
“Even when I'm gone, all was not erased," Doby said. "Not only can the kids in our family take the lesson, but other Black people and other people in general, all cultures, can take that lesson of where you can start and where you can go.
"He couldn't read or write or even write his name, and his legacy is still standing.”
Doby says her grandfather would often scribble down a random X to sign items like bank documents. The Franks family maintained ownership of the home for over 60 years. In 2022, it became a historic property.
A few years ago, Paul Kardous, an architect with Row Architecture and a developer, purchased the home located at 305 Dunbar Street.
“Being a native Charlottean, we don't have a lot of our historic buildings still around," Kardous said. "And to have found a residential historic building that has this much importance to history of Third Ward — and the history of Charlotte as a whole and the history of the Black community in Charlotte — we felt it was really important to to preserve it even amongst all the new development that's happening all around it.”
Kardous says he plans to renovate the home into how it would have looked when the Franks family lived there and use it as an office for architectural and development work.
