NEWS

​One of the most interesting homes on South Main Street is an L-shaped house with a diagonal porch and green shutters.  Historian Mary Beaty refers to this as the James Alexander House, honoring a longtime 20^th century resident.  Other sources call it the Ptolemy Philadelphus Maxwell House after its first owner.

According to Beaty, the house was built around 1884 “by a Mister Johnson who spent so much time on its elaborate features that he had to sell it immediately.”  Among the elaborate features she refers to was a staircase, which “was bought intact from a house in the North, and shipped to Davidson by rail. John Jetton remembered seeing it hauled from the depot in a wagon.”

The Alexander/Maxwell House. (Photo from Mary Beaty’s book Davidson, a History of the Town)

The house has an interesting design in which perpendicular wings of the same size intersect in an L, with a gable and a one-story porch built diagonally across the junction.

This design is often referred to as a gabled-ell or corner-porch house. This basic design, characteristic of the 1880s, is embellished with Italianate elements, including double-leaf round arched doors, bay windows at the ends of the wings, scrolled brackets under the eaves, and an elaborate porch.

The first owner of the house was Ptolemy Philadelphus Maxwell (1834-1906). In 1850, at the age of 17, he was living in Mississippi with his parent's brother and working on his family’s farm. By 1860, at the age of 26, he was living in Mecklenburg County with his family and was a student at Davidson College. In 1861 he married Margaret Hunter.

They were to have 13 children before she died in 1884. At the time of the 1880 census, he was working as a mechanic. Soon after this, he moved to his new house on South Main Street. For much of the 1890s, Maxwell did not live in his home, as it was being used as the location of the fledgling Medical College, where his son and namesake was a teacher. In 1900, Maxwell remained in Davidson, now working as a gunsmith. He died in 1906 and was buried in the Davidson College Cemetery near his wife, parents, and eight of his children.

Summers-Potts House (photo found on Zillow)

Interestingly, another house of almost the same design is located just across the railroad tracks on Potts Street. Built around 1885 by Joseph Summers, it, too, had an L shape with a porch and cross gable at the junction. In this case, however, the porch had two stories, the second of which was surrounded by a cut-out balustrade.

The Summers house was less elaborate than the Alexander/Maxwell house, lacking the rounded doors and bay windows. The house was later occupied by prominent Davidson builder, Will Potts.  These homes, with their unique design, are the only such homes in Davidson.