From Pres NC: "Charles E. Barnhardt was a prominent business and civic leader in Charlotte. The Barnhart House was completed in 1938 as the centerpiece of a 15-acre estate in Plaza-Midwood, the house is a beautiful, sophisticated example of revivalist design. The home was designed by noted architect was Martin E. Boyer, Jr. During the 1920s and 1930s Boyer designed many of Charlotte’s most elegant homes— his drawings of the Charles E. and Edna Barnhardt House are on file in the North Carolina State University archives. Barnhardt was a well-known figure in the county’s textile industry, running first in 1914 Withers and Barnhardt, a cotton brokerage firm, before being listed as the owner of the Charles E. Barnhardt and Company: Cotton and Rayon Brokers in 1929 and forming Barnhardt Brothers, a cotton yarn brokerage company, in 1934. Other accomplishments included transforming Davidson’s Linden Cotton Mill into Kubar Manufacturing, acting as a trustee for Presbyterian Hospital and an active member of the Charlotte Country Club and the Masons. When he and his wife, Edna, commissioned Boyer to design the house, Boyer was one of the only architects that had a steady number of jobs throughout the Great Depression – 48 between 1929 and 1941, including both the Hamilton Jones and Charles W. and Gladys Avery Tillet houses and Harding High School. When designing the house, Boyer went for what the Charlotte Historic Landmark Commission calls a “stately” look in the Colonial Revival Style, complete with half-round bay windows and a porch, but mixed in “flamboyant architectural elements” on the back of the house. When it was completed in 1938, it was worth an estimated $50,000 – and sat empty until 1944. Barnhardt, during a routine trip to the house while it was under construction, was found dead in a pond on the property. It’s believed that he tripped on fishing net on the top of the dam. Edna never moved into the home, and by 1943, it was listed as vacant. In 1944, it was bought by the Hollingsworth family and in 1948, George B. Cramer and Elizabeth Crooks Cramer purchased the house, and members of the Cramer family lived there until 2016. George Cramer was the son of textile engineer and industrialist Stuart Cramer, for whom the Town of Cramerton is named. (Excerpted from the Charlotte Agenda, 2/26/18)"