Dr. William H. Huffman
January, 1985

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The Coddington House, one of the few stately homes remaining on the Dilworth section of Morehead Street, has more the appearance of a New England summer home than that of a formal residence one would expect to find on a major boulevard of a fashionable neighborhood. Nonetheless, the house, built by Charles Campbell and Marjorie Lyon Coddington in 1917 from the plans of Charlotte architect William Peeps, was well suited for a style of life that centered around frequent entertaining of guests.

Charles Campbell Coddington (1878-1928) was the epitome of an energetic, enterprising young man out to make his fortune in turn-of-the-century America. He had worked as a reporter for the New York Evening Journal in his early twenties, but the New Jersey native restlessly sought a commercial venture suitable for his energy and talents, and settled on the fledgling automobile industry as having the most potential. In 1907, the three-year-old Buick Motor Company granted him exclusive rights to be its distributor for the Carolinas, and the confident young man set out for Charlotte. While driving the first Buick south of the Mason- Dixon line, Coddington stopped in Greensboro at a drug store, where by chance he saw a young woman who had recently been voted the most beautiful in North Carolina. He was so taken with her that he decided on the spot to stay in Greensboro until he could meet this charming beauty, and plans to open his business were laid aside.

It took a month for him to manage an introduction, and his persistent courtship resulted in marriage a year later to Marjorie Lyon. 

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Although she was a native of Thomasville, N.C., Marjorie Lyon Coddington (1884-1925) had grown up in Greensboro in the home of her parents, Edward West and Minnie Rinehurt Lyon. Six months after her marriage to C.C. Coddington in 1908, the couple moved to Charlotte in January, 1909 2 and first took up residence on East Boulevard in Dilworth. By 1911, they had moved to a house at 603 South Tryon Street, just beyond Stonewall, and C.C. had set up a Buick distributorship, garage and automobile supply company at 209 S. Church Street. About 1913, they moved again, this time back out of town to the first block of West Morehead Street, and started their family. 3

C. C. Coddington's business instincts had served him brilliantly; not only had he chosen to enter a business that experienced explosive growth in the teens and twenties, he did so in a city whose growth matched that of the automobile industry. As a banking and distribution center which served the Piedmont Carolinas, Charlotte experienced a sustained boom from the 1880s to the end of the 1920s in playing a key role in the New South industrialization centering around the proliferation of cotton mills in the region.

The combination of his business skills and being in the right place at the right time proved to be fruitful indeed. Sometime about early 1917, the Coddingtons decided to build a new home on the extension of East Morehead Street in Dilworth, the city's first streetcar suburb, at the corner of what was first known as Coddington Avenue (now Berkeley Avenue). To design the new suburban residence, they hired one of Charlotte's most skilled architects, William Peeps. The basic H-pattern and general appearance were patterned after an old family home of Marjorie Coddington's forebearers in Carlile, Pa., the Eliot Farm house.

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William Peeps (1868-1950) was a native of London, England, who came to Charlotte in 1905 to begin a career in the Queen City which spanned forty-five years. During that time a number of the most impressive structures of the city were produced in his office. Among his admirable commercial designs were the Latta Arcade (1914, for Edward Dilworth Latta, the developer of Dilworth), the Court Arcade (1927-8), Ivey's Department Store (1920s), and Ratcliffe Flowers (1929). For many of the leading citizens of Charlotte and surrounding communities he created Colonial Revival, English Tudorand other styles which provided the area with a rich architectural heritage. The latter include the Lethco house on Roswell, the Wilson house at Providence and Queens Roads, and the residences of John Bass Brown (East Boulevard), William Porcher (Queens Road West), J.B. Ivey, Osmond Barringer (Sherwood) and Lee A. Folger (Coddington's business manager and next door neighbor on Morehead). 

The suburb they chose for their new residence, Dilworth, was being developed by the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company (known as the 4C's), which was formed by Edward Dilworth Latta in 1890. It was made possible by its lifeline to the center city, a new electric streetcar system that ran from the Square to Latta Park at the heart of the city's first suburb. In its heyday, the park which surrounded a large lake, was the site of sporting events and traveling shows in its pavillion, and it also served as an outdoor social center. From the beginning, Dilworth had a wide range of houses, from the large homes of the well-to-do on the main boulevards (East and South Boulevards, and Morehead Street), to the modest homes on the side streets, and even some mill houses on the south side which belonged to the Atherton Cotton Mill off South Boulevard. Latta himself built his own mansion on East Boulevard where the Greek Orthodox Church now stands. 

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When the house was finished in late 1917 or early 1918, the Coddingtons moved in and began to turn it into one of the city's best known centers of hospitality.  As the years progressed, C.C. Coddington's business prospered to the point where he became one of the area's wealthiest men. During World War I, he bought his own train of about 60 cars to ensure delivery of autos from Flint, Michigan, and was, as a consequence, the only distributor with a large stock of cars on hand to meet the demand at war's end.8 In 1925, C. C. Coddington experienced both tragedy and triumph. In February, Marjorie Coddington died suddenly of heart failure at the age of forty, leaving three young sons, C. C. Jr., 11, Dabney Minor, 9, and William, 7. The Observer described her as "a leader in social and civic activities, having had a reputation as being an exceptionally fine hostess." 

That same year he completed the Coddington Building on West Trade Street (now the site of the newly renovated State Office Building), and bought radio station WBT (the first to go on the air in the Carolinas, 1920). The station was moved from the Independence Building to Coddington's, the power boosted to 500 watts from 100 and an advertising slogan was invented for the call letters: "Watch Buick Travel." In addition to being one of the organizers of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, he also raised thoroughbred horses on his 5000-acre estate in Jacksonville, N.C. (where he hosted meetings of his Carolinas dealers), was a state boxing commissioner, and in 1928 was elected president of the National Association of Automobile Dealers. When C. C. Coddington died unexpectedly on his yacht in Pamlico Sound, the city and state lost one of its most colorful citizens. 

Following the death of Marjorie Coddington in 1925, C. C. swapped the Morehead Street house for the Duke mansion in Myers Park the following year, and the Dukes sold it in turn to Nash dealer Armistead Burwell. 11 After Burwell lost the house during the Depression, it had a series of owners who continued to use it as a well-designed place for entertaining. (Roy and Ethel Goode, 1939-1944; Jerry and Billie Huber, 1944-48; Lee and Loraine Kinney, 1948-76; 12 (the Kinney's annual April lawn party drew nearly 300 guests in its later years.) 13 The tradition of hospitality remains today, with the present owners, headed by Nancy Bergmann, who have turned it into a comfortable place which once again accommodates guests, but this time as a country inn, The Morehead.