Wedding DJ at Esquire Hotel Gastonia in Gastonia, NC

The Space

This building opened in 1916 as the First National Bank, and after the bank moved out, local attorneys leased the upper floors long enough that people started calling it the Lawyers Building, a name that stuck even after it sat vacant for nearly 30 years. A seven-year renovation turned the old bank into a 35-room hotel, keeping the original heart-of-pine floors, mail chutes and beaded glass doors from its banking days intact. For a couple who wants a wedding with real architectural history rather than a built-for-purpose event hall, those original details are the draw.

Barrister’s restaurant occupies part of the ground floor under a barrel-vaulted ceiling with arched windows, the kind of architectural detail that comes from the original 1916 construction rather than a modern build-out. The rooftop adds another distinct space, with 360-degree views reaching out roughly 90 miles, far enough to take in Crowders Mountain and the edge of the North Carolina mountains on a clear day.

Capacity & Layout

The hotel’s conference space holds up to 25 people, which sets this venue up for a smaller, more intimate wedding gathering rather than a large ballroom reception, a rehearsal dinner or an intimate ceremony rather than a 200-person dance floor. That size also means the room stays personal rather than needing to be dressed down to avoid feeling empty.

Between Barrister’s restaurant, the rooftop and the conference space, a wedding weekend here can move across three distinct settings inside one historic building: a formal dinner under the barrel-vaulted ceiling, drinks and views on the rooftop, and a smaller meeting or gathering space for a rehearsal or brunch, each with its own character drawn from the building’s original bones.

Amenities

All 35 guest rooms carry Hollywood-inspired furniture inside the Classic Revival building, giving guests somewhere to stay within the same historic structure as the event itself. Free on-site parking and free WiFi are included, and the property is ADA-compliant throughout, details that matter for older guests or family traveling in for the wedding.

The Notary, a basement-level coffee shop, and Barrister’s restaurant give guests food and drink options without leaving the building, and the hotel is part of the Ascend Hotel Collection through Choice Hotels, meaning it operates as a boutique property inside a larger, recognized reservation system. The building itself is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Location & Getting There

The Esquire sits in downtown Gastonia, about 14 miles from Charlotte and from Charlotte Douglas International Airport, close enough for out-of-town guests flying into Charlotte to reach without a long drive. It’s also less than a mile from an Amtrak stop on the Crescent line, which runs daily between New York and New Orleans, an option for guests traveling by rail.

Inside a nearly 110-year-old bank building, Barrister’s barrel-vaulted ceiling and arched windows are original architecture, not built for a modern PA system, so a DJ working an event there has to account for how sound moves under a vaulted stone-and-plaster ceiling instead of a flat, acoustically treated ballroom, while the rooftop offers an open-air alternative for cocktail hour music that doesn’t interact with the vaulted room at all.