Crutchfield-Bomar-Brem House

Built in 1903, the Crutchfield-Bomar-Brem House is one of the oldest homes on East Boulevard and is an official Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmark. Located in the historic Dilworth Community, Charlotte’s first streetcar suburb, it is adjacent to the bustling South End district.

The home is featured on History South’s Self-Guided Walking Tour of SouthEnd/Dilworth: "This exuberant residence boasts a corner tower and asymmetrical massing characteristic of Queen Anne Victorian design. Its initial owner was a railroad agent, followed by Reverend Edward Bomar who led fledgling Pritchard Memorial Baptist a few blocks up South Boulevard. Walter Brem, one of the city’s leading real estate men, moved here with his family after tiring of their Colonial manse at 211 East Boulevard.”

Brem and his wife Hannah Caldwell (daughter of North Carolina Governor Tod Robinson Caldwell) was an early associate of George S. Stephens, developer of Myers Park, and moved to a new home on Harvard Place, then finding the new subdivision "too far out in the country,” they returned to Dilworth in 1918. Mr. Brem died at the residence on February 11, 1925,

The house next door, 311 East (now Copper Restaurant), which was built by Brem for his daughter around 1908, became a boarding house in the 1930s and was home to young author Carson McCullers while she wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her celebrated debut novel. Published when she was just 23, it is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century.

In 1977 the home was converted to offices, an adaptive reuse that left the architecture of the historic home intact. Original windows, doors, floors, and architectural details remain, including six fireplaces with Neo-classical mantle decoration. The charming home “is a well-preserved and robust example of the domestic Queen Anne style popular in American architecture at the turn-of-the-century.” (Mary Alice Dixon Hinson, UNCC College of Architecture, 1981) Sometime later, an L-shaped corridor porch entry at the rear of the house was enclosed to add a downstairs bath and interior hallway.

The home’s ten rooms are currently the working studios for the artists of StudioWorks Artist Collective, and the foyers and hallways serve as an art gallery. StudioWorks is open to the public each first Friday for the South End Gallery Crawl, when visitors can tour the spaces and shop directly with local artists.

The house will be featured as a point of interest on the Dilworth Home Tour, Sept 16-17, 2022.