North Charlotte Today

The James C. Dowd House would be historical on its own, with its roots dating to 1789, but World War I gave it an added element of importance.

During that war, when the U.S. was establishing extra military training camps, the Dowd House served as the headquarters for Camp Greene, in what today is Uptown Charlotte. Today, it’s one of the city’s last remaining ties to that era. It has even been the subject of a documentary called “City of Canvas.”

"The camp expanded from Wilkinson Boulevard all the way to Tuckaseegee, ultimately,” Jack Dillard, the film’s producer, said in a recent WCNC report. “There was a hospital and it just kept growing.”

Camp Greene was a large, temporary military training camp with thousands of tents for soldiers. With tents as far as one could see, the 6,000-acre camp became known as City of Canvas. It extended from what is now Wilkinson Boulevard, west to the Catawba River and Gaston County.

"Remount Road expands for a mile this way, there were stables on either side of the road for horses and mules,” Dillard said.

At its peak, its population of soldiers exceeded the total non-military population of Charlotte.

What was once a farmhouse amid 248 acres of orchards and cotton is now surrounded by homes, a church and a fire station. The state in 1985 awarded a $50,000 grant to fill the house with period pieces so people today can get a feel for what it might have looked like during the war, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Story says.