J. A. Jones Construction Company records

The J.A. Jones Construction Company was founded in the 1890s by James Addison Jones in Charlotte, North Carolina. James A. Jones was born in 1869 in Farmer, North Carolina in Randolph County. After working for a construction company in the 1880s that was building some of the first cotton mills in Charlotte, Jones decided to go out on his own. He received his first job as an independent contractor from Southern Railways, building a dining car addition to the Southern Railways Station. This marked the beginning of the J.A. Jones Construction Company that would go on to become one of the largest and most respected construction firms in the Southeast. The first major project J.A. Jones undertook was the construction of the 12-story Independence Building in uptown Charlotte in 1909, which has been called "Charlotte's first skyscraper." A few years later, James Jones moved his office into the Independence Building and it became the headquarters for the company. This was just the beginning for the company's work in uptown Charlotte, in addition to the Independence Building, J.A. Jones has also constructed Belk's Department Store, Efird's Department Store, Ivey's Department Store, the Carolina Theater, the YMCA, the Selwyn Hotel, Hotel Charlotte, the Charlotte Observer Building and the Duke Power building.

J.A. Jones survived the Great Depression by receiving a contract to build a military airbase in the Canal Zone in Panama. The success of this job allowed the company to expand into military work during World War II, when they built Camp Shelby in Mississippi as well as hospitals, supply depots and air bases in South America. J.A. Jones also expanded into naval construction during the war, in which they constructed a shipyard and built 212 cargo ships and tankers over the course of the war. James A. Jones died in 1950 and the leadership of the company passed to his son, Edwin, who continued to grow the company during the '50s and '60s as they received ever larger projects, including missile bases, missile tracking stations, atomic energy plants and large highways. Edwin's son, Edwin Jones, Jr. took over the company in the 1970s and continued to grow revenue and sales as they received contracts for high-defense projects and large commercial buildings. In 1979, Edwin, Jr. decided to sell the company to A.G. Holzmann, an international construction conglomerate. Charles Tompkins Davidson then took over the company and focused on international markets, including Tokyo, where they built the Robot FA Center. One of the company's last and most well-known projects were the Petronas Towers in Kualu Lumpur that J.A. Jones Construction helped build in 1998. Subsequently, Holzmann got into financial difficulties and J.A. Jones was forced to declare bankruptcy and sell its subsidiaries. The company played a very important role in the development of uptown Charlotte's early skyline and grew to have a major influence on construction in the Southeast and eventually the world, leaving an important legacy.