Charlotte history lives on at Leluia Hall

Axios

01-05-2025

A new restaurant is situated within one of Dilworth's oldest structures, adjacent to one of Charlotte's most developed neighborhoods.
Why it matters: Leluia Hall, one of the city's most anticipated restaurants, is located inside a 1914 building that has housed another popular restaurant, a plant nursery-slash-Christmas store before that, and, originally, a church.
Driving the news: Leluia Hall opens the week of May 6, following several years of remodeling, renovations, and preservation of the historic building.
Before it was Leluia Hall, it housed Bonterra for 24 years, which moved to SouthPark but closed less than a year later.
"We hope the South End area will do what it's supposed to do...and this area will be like a little Buckhead one day," Bonterra's owner, John Duncan, who is from Atlanta, told the Charlotte Business Journal ahead of the restaurant's opening in 1999.
The big picture: Although Charlotte has a rich history dating back to 1768, it's often criticized for tearing down its historic buildings in exchange for the shiny and new developments that have sprung up exponentially over the last couple of decades.
South End and Dilworth aren't quite like Buckhead, dubbed the " Beverly Hills of Atlanta," but Duncan's prediction wasn't far off.
Zoom in: During the renovation process, Leluia Hall's owners and local restaurateurs, Jamie Brown and Jeff Tonidandel, began excavating pieces of Charlotte's history.
Construction workers found Hardee's coupons that expired in 1989, a vintage Mountain Dew bottle and snack wrappers in a wall that was demolished. They even found a Styrofoam cup from Price's Chicken Coop hidden in the walls.
They also unearthed the original checkered flooring from Marion Redd's Greenway Gardens and Nursery and the Redd Sled Christmas shop, which closed in March 1998. "We got a glimpse of that today as the half wall separating the bar from the main dining area was removed," the couple wrote on Instagram.
Flashback: Dilworth Methodist Church congregation originally built the church at 1829 Cleveland Ave. in 1914. They outgrew it and moved to East Boulevard years later, where they remain to this day.
The First Church of Nazareth occupied the site from 1925 to 1973, followed by the Greater Providence Baptist Church from 1973 to 1987, The Charlotte Observer reported.
"I think the few of us who remember the church (as it was) are glad that they didn't tear it down," Mary Hobbs, a Methodist church member, told the Observer in 1990.
There were only three things left from the original building, other than the building itself, Brown tells Axios.
Two original skyscraper lights (pictured above) now hang in Leluia Hall's bar area, and a curved prayer rail.
"That curved rail was on the mezzanine for a long while, but we donated it to Dilworth Methodist Church (the original congregation)," Brown said.
Between the lines: Brown and Tonidandel are no strangers to transforming former churches into hot restaurants. One of their most popular restaurants, Supperland, sits inside a historic Plaza Midwood church.
The couple has a passion for preserving Charlotte's history, even delaying the opening of Leluia Hall in order to save a 1903 building in the South End area that would have been demolished to make way for a high-rise.
What's next: The Leeper-Wyatt building, once a grocery store for more than 50 years, now sits on the lot next to Leluia Hall. The couple petitioned the city and moved it in order to preserve it.
When asked if they had a plan yet for the Leeper-Wyatt building, Brown said, "We do and we don't." But the property is already being worked on.