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The Junius T. Gardner House is an example of the traditional 19th-century house built in the towns and farms of the North Carolina Piedmont. The house was built sometime in the early 1880s, and appears on a map of Shelby from 1886. The Gardner House is one of the three oldest homes on West Marion Street, along with the houses at 409 and 514 West Marion Street. Although some Shelby residents constructed fashionable, high-style residences during the 19th century, houses like the Gardner House were far more prevalent. The Gardner House is a one-and-a-half-story frame cottage, with an asymmetrical L-shaped form. This type of house appeared in the North Carolina Piedmont in the 1880s, replacing an earlier vernacular form that was a full two stories high and symmetrical. The Gardner House, with its irregular massing, also exhibits the eclecticism of ornamental details applied to these vernacular houses--borrowing elements from the Italianate, Gothic Revival and Queen Anne styles.
Junius T. Gardner was a long-time Mayor of Shelby and the older brother of O. Max Gardner. An 1897 special edition of the Cleveland Star described Gardner, then in his sixth term as mayor, as one of the most popular citizens of Shelby and one of the finest political managers in the State. He was a respected merchant and commander of the Cleveland Guards. Like many other middle-class merchants, Gardner lived near uptown Shelby in a modest but ornamented cottage. The house was originally built on a large lot and was the focus of several dependencies--kitchen, storage sheds, servants' quarters, stables, carriage houses, barns and outhouses, none of which remain today. The turn of the 20th century marked the end of the predominance of these vernacular frame dwellings, which were replaced with new houses based on the Colonial Revival or Bungalow styles. The Junius T. Gardner House is located at 513 W. Marion St. in the Central Shelby Historic District. It is a private residence, not open to the public. |
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