Julia Maulden taught in the Peace Corps in Zaire, then brought her former students to the United States and paid their way through schools like Columbia and Davidson College. Julia's Café & Books is named for her.
Before that, she'd worked her way through Greensboro Women's College during the Depression, helped build a Girl Scout camp in Kannapolis, and served on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board from 1966 to 1974. She was a founder of Habitat for Humanity of the Charlotte Region and its first volunteer executive director, and she helped bring President Jimmy Carter to Charlotte for a work project that built fourteen homes in a week. In 1991 she told the Charlotte Observer that "Are we better off?" is the question.
The café carries that on. It's inside Habitat's ReStore, a coffee shop and used bookstore with gently used children's books, fiction, and nonfiction, plus rare and collectible books, vinyl records, and a game shelf with finds under $10. The coffee is local and organic, and the monthly drink specials are ambitious. Recent ones have included a Cheerwine-and-espresso float. Book donors and volunteers keep the shelves full, and every purchase supports Habitat's work building affordable homes from Pineville to Gastonia to Statesville.
1133 N. Wendover Rd, Charlotte. Open seven days.
Sip. Read. Help build a home.
