Stop 43 — Ivey's Uptown

Address: 127 North Tryon Street Year built: 1924 Architect: William H. Peeps Original use: Ivey's Department Store Current use: Mixed-use — ground-floor retail + residential condominiums

The historic Ivey's Department Store at 127 North Tryon was designed by architect William H. Peeps and built in 1924. Per Friends of Fourth Ward, the building was converted to its current configuration in 1995.

The conversion

The first two floors of the former Ivey's retain commercial use — restaurants, shops, and offices. The top four floors are residential condominiums. Per FOFW, the condo units include 14-to-22-foot ceilings with 10-foot windows, exposed beams, hardwood floors, and fireplaces — features that trace directly back to the 1924 department-store construction. 14-to-22-foot ceilings in a residential condo are uncommon; they exist here because the building was built as retail and the conversion preserved the original interior volumes.

Historic department-store-to-residential conversion

The Ivey's was an early and successful example of Uptown Charlotte's adaptive-reuse residential wave — commercial structures from the 1920s converted to condominium or apartment living. Similar logic drove the 2012 conversion of The VUE Charlotte from failed-condo to rental-apartment, and the 19th-century cotton-mill adaptive reuse at Camden Cotton Mills. The Ivey's is earlier in the sequence and set the template.

← Stop 42 · Back to walking tour hub · Next: stop 44, First Presbyterian Church →

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