Notice Biddle Memorial Hall, the historic centerpiece of the Johnson C. Smith University campus and one of the most significant surviving buildings in Charlotte's African-American history. The hall was constructed in 1883 and named for Major Henry Biddle, the Union Army officer whose widow's gift of $1,400 provided the seed money for the institution that would become JCSU. The building's Victorian brick architecture, with its towers and ornate detailing, gave the young university a physical presence that announced its ambitions to the world — and to a Southern city that in 1883 was actively constructing the architecture of racial segregation.
For Black Charlotteans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Biddle Memorial Hall was not just a building; it was evidence that their community had built an institution of permanence and quality at a time when most of American society was arrayed against that possibility. The hall has been restored and remains in use on the campus today. Look at the careful brickwork and the Victorian ornamentation and consider what it meant, in 1883, to build a building like this on this hill in this city.