Charlotte's Historic Excelsior Club evokes memories

PHOTOS BY TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

The Historic Excelsior Club, which was converted from an Art Moderne-designed home by entrepreneur Jimmie McKee in 1944, was a social and entertainment mainstay in west Charlotte until it was shuttered in 2016. The building was demolished on July 15.

The Historic Excelsior Club is no more, but the memories live on.

The original Excelsior Club, a social and entertainment mainstay in west Charlotte for more than seven decades, was torn down on July 15. The Art Moderne design house – a rarity in today’s Charlotte – was converted by entrepreneur Jimmie McKee into the Excelsior in 1944 during a time when segregation was enforced by law and custom in the South. The club was the epicenter of entertainment and community in Black Charlotte as well as political and social equity as Jim Crow-era barriers fell in the 1960s.

The Excelsior closed in 2016.

“The old Excelsior will always be in our hearts,” Patricia Anderson wrote on The Post’s Facebook page.

Charlotte developer Shawn Kennedy and partner Tim Sittema are leading an $8.3 million project to build a new Excelsior – as a two-story gathering space on the .84-acre site on Beatties Ford Road. 

The Kennedy-Sittema project includes event space for community meetings, outreach programs and job creation through free culinary certification training. It’ll also include a restaurant, live entertainment space and a museum.

Excelsior fans took to social media as news of the building’s demolition spread. Their experiences ranged from childhood birthday parties in the 1950s to wedding receptions, rubbing shoulders with famous entertainers and weekly staples like “Dirty 30 Thursday” parties for more mature adults and Tuesday fish fries.

A wooden fire escape is the lone remaining piece of the Historic Excelsior Club on Beatties Ford Road after its July 15 demolition.

“I have several great memories of the Excelsior Club,” James Gregory recalled. “On one occasion I was playing bass in a trio band there. Gary Mumford was on drums, and we had a keyboardist whose name I can’t remember. We had just finished playing a set, when a gentleman came to the microphone and announced that there was a special guest in the audience. Well, the special guest was Wilbert Harrison (a Charlotte-born singer who recorded several hits over a three-decade career). He made his way to the keyboard and started playing his hit song ‘Kansas City’ and he asked me and Gary to play along with him!”

Alison Montgomery’s Excelsior connection started in her mid-20s.

“I was actually 25 when I first experienced the Excelsior,” she wrote. “My best friend’s mom was having a 50th birthday party, and because of that we got in. … After that experience I couldn’t wait to turn 30 to get in there. I literally had 4 birthday parties upstairs. I met Ronnie [DeVoe], Bobby [Brown], Ricky [Bell] and Mike [Bivins], and had a lot of fun with Ralph [Tresvant] lol. 

“I’m 58 now, so I spent about 20 years of my life in the Excelsior.”

Wrote Brent McSwain: “I was very fortunate to be taken there and onto the dance floor by some of my DSS coworkers sometime in the mid 2000s. ... It was an awesome, cool place. I remember feeling the history.”

Nancy Sims wrote: “Every time we bought our daughter to JCSU for school we’d stop there and eat and drink. I loved that place. Glad to hear they will be rebuilding it.”

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