Exhibits

Mecklenburg: Crossroads of Commerce

 

Combining favorite topics from the museum’s previous nineteenth and twentieth century galleries with some new material, Crossroads of Commerce is a major step in the ongoing reorganization of gallery space in the museum’s west wing. 

Crossroads of Commerce brings the story of Charlotte up to the present day, exploring how the sleepy little crossroads village in 1800 grew over the next two centuries into the economic hub we know today.

 

Visitors to the exhibit can learn about impact of the nation’s first gold rush on the hamlet of Charlotte and see artifacts of the town’s mining and minting heritage.  Cases developed in collaboration with a coalition of local Civil War history groups explore the importance of Charlotte as a manufacturing center for the Confederacy, as well as the experiences of typical Mecklenburg soldiers in camp and at the front.  Frequent visitor requests for information about Charlotte during World War II are answered in a section exploring both military and home front experiences. 

An adjacent mannequin featuring the uniform and story of a particular Charlotte serviceman or servicewoman is changed at regular intervals to bring new stories into the gallery.

To see photos of this exhibit, visit our Flickr page.

 

  For more information about the railroad in Charlotte, click on the image to the left

  and visit: From Trading Village to Cotton Boom Town: The Railroad Comes to

  Charlotte. The information provided has been developed and written by Dawn

  Funk.

 

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