HISTORY OF 125 N. MAIN ST

125 North Main Street, Mooresville, North Carolina where EAST currently resides was once the Central Hotel, Mooresville’s first hotel, owned by Cyrus A. Johnston. Before Johnston opened the hotel, train passengers would stop by his house thinking it was a boarding house. Johnston added an eight-room brick building to the back of his house due to its popularity. It operated from the late 1880s to the late 1920s until it was torn down. The Central Hotel was Mooresville’s finest hotel and gathering spot for many years.

In 1904 Mr. Johnston retired from the business, closed the hotel, and rented the space for offices. The building was eventually torn down and in 1925 the current buildings were erected. The building on the left end was originally the Delk’s 5 and 10 store. The building in the middle was first used for offices and a barber shop, and in the 1940s became the Central Theater.

In 1903, the year before Mr. Johnston retired, John Mack came from Roum, Lebanon to North Carolina. Mr. Mack settled first in Charlotte selling goods from packs he carried from house to house. In 1907 he returned to Lebanon, and a year later in 1908 he brought his son Charles and his daughter Nora back to Charlotte with him. In 1909 his son Side also joined the family in North Carolina. In 1910 the Charlotte store burned and shortly thereafter Mr. Mack moved to Mooresville with his family. On December 24, 1912, he opened his new store, John Mack & Son (currently the home of Adams & Associates Architecture across the street). The store sold men’s and women’s clothing and operated until 1993 when it closed after 81 years.

In 1941, Side Mack, enlisting his sons Mitchell and Ed on the task, acquired the building so that John Mack & Sons could expand. In 2003, Ron Mack acquired his uncle’s stake in the building, and he and his father Mitchell Mack discussed renovations. Ultimately were unable to make them before Mitchell’s death in 2017. In 2020, Ron and his family began to transform the space into what Ron and Mitchell believed it could be.

Mitchell Mack – whose resume of service included Chamber of Commerce and municipal government leadership roles, 70 years in the choir along with Elder and Deacon duties at First Presbyterian Church, seven decades in Scouting, a 65-year run of perfect attendance at Rotary Club meetings and active roles in a decades-long list of community, business and church projects that led to recognition as Mooresville’s Citizen of the Year in 1986 and Order of the Long Leaf Pine status, North Carolina’s highest honor for citizen service and accomplishment – lived a lifetime of service to the Mooresville community. Mitchell’s legacy of quiet, selfless leadership by example inspired countless others to follow in service, continues to this day to make his hometown a better place.

Today, the careful preservation of this building by Ron Mack, as Ron says, “is not about a building but a man and the way he lived his life. He believed in honesty, integrity, family, faith, hard work and service to the community.”