South Union Street Courthouse and Commercial Historic District

Fourteen masonry buildings line South Union Street in downtown Concord, the seat of Cabarrus County, forming a compact commercial and governmental core. The oldest and most important is the county courthouse completed in 1876, a stuccoed brick building combining Italianate and Second Empire features, designed by Charlotte architect George S. H. Appleget and built by F. W. Ahrens. It served the county for nearly a century. Nearby, the Cabarrus Savings Bank of 1923-24 rises five stories with Corinthian pilasters and a marble-fitted banking room, the tallest commercial building erected in Concord up to that time. The P. M. Morris Building of 1903 and the Pythian Building of about 1903, with its rusticated granite facade in the Romanesque Revival style, show the commercial prosperity that followed the textile boom. Concord's town offices also occupied the district from 1892 onward. The district is valued for its concentration of well-preserved buildings from the period 1875 to 1947, and for the link between local commerce and government.