Stop 38 — Frederick Apartments

Address: 515 North Church Street Year built: 1927 Style: Italian Renaissance Revival Historical resident: W. J. Cash, author of The Mind of the South

The Frederick Apartments at 515 North Church is a 1927 Italian Renaissance Revival apartment house. Per Friends of Fourth Ward, the building is representative of a wave of medium-sized apartment houses that went up in Charlotte in the late 1920s. Its most distinctive feature: the polychrome facade with three-dimensional clay-tile detailing, which FOFW describes as "unmatched in 1920s-era architecture in Charlotte."

W. J. Cash

The Frederick's most significant historical resident was W. J. Cash, the Charlotte newspaperman best known for his 1941 book The Mind of the South. Cash is a figure in 20th-century American intellectual history — The Mind of the South became one of the defining texts on Southern culture and identity, and Cash lived at the Frederick during at least part of his Charlotte years.

What Mercury Local has not yet verified

• The years of Cash's residency at the Frederick.
• The Italian Renaissance Revival architect.
• Current ownership and status (the Frederick has been referenced in Mercury Local's buildings directory as a launch-priority building with primary-source verification pending — the CMHLC records required for the full building profile have not been accessible in any Mercury Local research session to date).

A full Archivist-byline building profile of the Frederick Apartments is on the priority list and will ship when CMHLC access opens or an equivalent primary source surfaces.

← Stop 37 · Back to walking tour hub · Next: stop 39, Liddell-McNinch House →

Source: Friends of Fourth Ward, Self-Walking Tour (2016). Retrieved April 24, 2026.