Independence Building
Realty Building
1908-1909; 1927-1928 [addition]
100-102 W. Trade St., Charlotte, NC
No longer standing
Commercial
Mary Norton Kratt and Mary Manning Boyer, Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905-1950 (2000).
Daniel J. Vivian, “‘A Practical Architect’: Frank P. Milburn and the Transformation of Architectural Practice in the New South, 1890-1925,” Winterthur Portfolio (Spring 2005).
The 12-story skyscraper was the first steel-framed skyscraper in North Carolina and an icon of Charlotte’s urban ambitions. Originally known as the Realty Building, it was renamed in 1922 for the Independence Bank that occupied it. In 1928, New York architect William Lee Stoddart added two more stories. It was imploded in 1981 amid strong controversy.