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[photo]
Dr. Victor McBrayer House
Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

Built in 1884 for a prominent young physician of Shelby, the Dr. Victor McBrayer House is one of the most important late 19th-century buildings of Shelby and a good example of a "working farm" with a full complement of outbuildings. The house was built at a time when Shelby was undergoing a period of significant growth. It is an important example of the eclecticism and elaborate architectural tastes of the middle class during the late19th century. Decorative details are drawn from the Gothic, Italianate Revival and Queen Anne styles. In addition to the complex massing of the 3,240 square-foot house, a variety of sawwork enhances the house with attic dormers faced with unusual fish-scale pattern louvers, gable ends of the house finished with board and batten sheathing scalloped on the lower end and a wrap-around porch supported by chamfered and molded posts connecting moulded handrails and turned balusters. Hardly anything is known about the builder or contractor, but the quality of workmanship is impressive.

Victor McBrayer was born in 1853 in Mooresboro, North Carolina, and attended medical school in New York, graduating in 1875. On April 28, 1880, he married Esther Suttle at the bride's home in Shelby. By this time, 26-year-old McBrayer was one of Cleveland County's few practicing physicians. McBrayer purchased the land the house sits on from the Suttles, and had his impressive home built shortly thereafter. McBrayer died in September of 1897 after which Ester McBrayer was given a life estate, with the property reverting to their five children, Alma, Pollen, Willis, Elizabeth and George upon her death. Esther McBrayer died on August 20, 1932. In 1950, Willis McBrayer and Pollen McBrayer Mull sold their interest to their remaining siblings, Alma McBrayer Webb and Elizabeth McBrayer Owen. The property was left solely to Elizabeth after Alma's death in the early 1960s.

[photo] Decorative details from the Gothic, Italianate Revival and Queen Anne styles adorn the Dr. Victor McBrayer House
Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

On the 100th anniversary of the home's construction, Elizabeth granted protective covenants for the house to the Historic Preservation Foundation of North Carolina because of its architectural significance. After Elizabeth died at the age of 90 in 1987, the house was used by the Junior Charity League as a Designer House. Later, the home was purchased by Dr. Frank Hannah and turned into Hannah's Ambulatory Eye Surgery Center during which the house was renovated with a minor addition on the back for an operating room. In 2000, Kurtis and Dana Ledford purchased the house which had grown to 4,000 square-feet, with four original outbuildings--an outhouse, pack house, potato house and milk house. The larger rooms had been divided into smaller ones, from the period when the house was a doctor's office, and the kitchen had been removed. The Ledford's are now restoring the house to its Victorian appearance.

Dr. Victor McBrayer House is located at 507 North Morgan St. It is a private residence, not normally open to the public. Occasional tours can be arranged through the Uptown Shelby Association at 704-484-3100.

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