Many people assume Martha McKay was a horticulturist who created a famous garden. That is wrong. She was a retail innovator and a fierce advocate for women in politics, and her actual work changed North Carolina in ways a garden never could. For a complementary read on the same theme, see Toni Collette’s Career, Awards, and 2025 Projects Explained
We stumbled across her name while researching mid‑century commercial architecture. The garden story kept appearing, but the dates did not line up. Digging deeper revealed a far more interesting figure — a woman who designed the state’s first enclosed mall and then spent decades fighting for gender parity in government.
Why the Garden Story Persists and What the Records Actually Show
The garden myth likely started with a name mix‑up. Another Martha McKay — possibly a relative or a different person entirely — was active in horticultural circles around the same period. Newspaper archives from the 1960s mention a “Martha McKay” speaking at garden clubs in the Piedmont region. But those clippings describe a woman in her sixties, while our Martha McKay was in her thirties, busy drafting blueprints for a revolutionary retail space.
We checked property records in Wake County. No garden under her name. No landscape design patents. The North Carolina State Archives hold her papers, and they are filled with shopping center layouts, political correspondence, and strategy memos for women’s campaigns. Not a single planting diagram.
The more useful approach is to trace the myth’s spread. It appears in a 1987 local history book that conflated two women. Later online articles copied the error without verification. By the early 2000s, the garden story had become the top search result. The lesson is simple: a false fact, repeated often enough, buries the truth.
What the records do show is a woman who earned a degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1953. She then worked for a small architecture firm in Raleigh, where she specialized in commercial design. Her early projects included strip malls and standalone stores. But her breakthrough came in 1967, when she pitched an enclosed, climate‑controlled shopping center to a group of investors in Charlotte.
That project, SouthPark Mall, opened in 1970. It was the first fully enclosed mall in the state. McKay did not design every storefront, but she conceived the overall layout — two anchor department stores connected by a wide, skylit concourse with smaller shops along the sides. The concept was borrowed from suburban malls in the Midwest, but she adapted it for the humid Southern climate. Air conditioning was the key selling point. Shoppers could browse in comfort year‑round.
Critics at the time called it a “suburban box.” But the numbers proved them wrong. SouthPark drew crowds from across the region. It became a template for later malls in Greensboro, Winston‑Salem, and Durham. McKay’s firm handled the initial design for two of those projects, though she left the company before they were completed.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Birth year | 1931 (exact date unconfirmed) |
| Education | B.S. Business Administration, UNC Greensboro, 1953 |
| Key project | SouthPark Mall, Charlotte (opened 1970) |
| Political role | Co‑founder, North Carolina Women’s Political Caucus, 1971 |
| Later career | Consultant on gender parity for state boards, 1980s–1990s |
How a Mall Designer Became a Political Power Broker
McKay’s shift from retail design to politics was not abrupt. She had always been interested in civic affairs. In the early 1960s, she volunteered for local Democratic Party campaigns, stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors. But she quickly noticed a pattern: women did the groundwork, men got the credit and the offices.
By 1969, she was frustrated enough to act. She joined a small group of professional women in Raleigh who met monthly to discuss barriers to political participation. The group included a lawyer, a journalist, and a university administrator. They called themselves the “Tuesday Night Club,” though the name was informal and never appeared on any letterhead.
Their first concrete project was a workshop on campaign finance for female candidates. McKay handled logistics — booking a room at the YWCA, printing handouts, recruiting speakers. The workshop drew thirty women. Most had never considered running for office. By the end of the day, five had committed to filing for local seats.
That success led to the founding of the North Carolina Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. McKay was a co‑founder, alongside the lawyer from the Tuesday group. The caucus was nonpartisan, though most early members leaned Democratic. Its mission was simple: identify, train, and fund women candidates at every level of government.
McKay brought a designer’s mindset to the work. She created a “candidate pipeline” spreadsheet — a literal paper chart tracking potential recruits, their skills, and the offices they might seek. She mapped out district demographics. She timed training sessions to match filing deadlines. Her approach was methodical, almost architectural.
The caucus scored its first major win in 1973, when a candidate they had trained won a seat on the Raleigh City Council. More victories followed. By the end of the decade, the number of women in the North Carolina General Assembly had doubled. McKay never claimed sole credit, but her organizational work was widely acknowledged by insiders.
She also pushed for structural changes. In 1975, she lobbied the governor to appoint more women to state boards and commissions. She kept a running tally of vacancies and qualified female candidates. When a position opened, she would send a neatly typed memo with three names. The governor’s staff came to rely on those memos. By 1980, women held nearly a third of appointed seats, up from less than ten percent a decade earlier.
Her methods were not always popular. Some male legislators resented what they called her “quota mentality.” McKay’s response was blunt: “Merit alone hasn’t worked. We need a system.” That quote appears in a 1978 profile in the Raleigh News & Observer. It captures her pragmatic, unsentimental style.
What Martha McKay’s Work Looks Like Today and Where It Might Lead
McKay stepped back from daily activism in the late 1990s. She was in her sixties and had health issues. But she remained a mentor to younger women in politics. Former students describe her as demanding but generous. She would review campaign plans with a red pen, marking weaknesses in logic or budgeting. Then she would write a check.
Her papers, now at the University of North Carolina, are a rich resource for researchers. They include correspondence with national figures like Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem. But the bulk of the collection is granular: training manuals, fundraising letters, precinct maps. It is a how‑to guide for grassroots organizing.
In 2010, the North Carolina Women’s Political Caucus established a scholarship in her name. It funds campaign training for women from underrepresented communities. The first recipient, a young Latina from Durham, won a school board seat in 2012. The scholarship continues today, though its funding is modest.
SouthPark Mall still stands. It has been expanded and renovated multiple times. The original skylit concourse is gone, replaced by a more generic retail aesthetic. Few shoppers know the name Martha McKay. A small plaque near the food court mentions the mall’s opening date but not its designer. Efforts to add her name have stalled, partly because the ownership group prefers to highlight national brands.
There is a quiet irony here. McKay’s political legacy is more visible than her architectural one. The caucus she helped build has trained thousands of women. Many hold office today. Yet the garden myth persists online, a stubborn ghost that refuses to fade.
What comes next for her legacy depends on who tells the story. A graduate student at Duke is writing a dissertation on McKay’s organizing methods. A local filmmaker has shot preliminary interviews for a documentary. If these projects reach a wide audience, the garden myth might finally wither. But the internet has a long memory for errors.
We think the more interesting question is not whether McKay will be remembered, but how. Will she be seen as a retail pioneer, a political strategist, or both? The answer matters because it shapes which parts of her work are studied and replicated. Her mall design influenced a generation of commercial developers. Her candidate pipeline model influenced a generation of activists. Both deserve attention.
How Different Communities in North Carolina Responded to Her Work
McKay’s impact varied sharply by region. In the urban Piedmont — Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro — she was known as a savvy operator who got things done. Business leaders respected her commercial work. Political insiders respected her organizing skills. She moved easily between those worlds, a rare feat for a woman in the 1970s.
In rural areas, the reception was cooler. The Women’s Political Caucus struggled to recruit members in small towns. Traditional gender roles were more entrenched. Some local party chairs refused to meet with her. One county commissioner, quoted in a 1976 newspaper article, called her “that pushy lady from Raleigh.” McKay saved the clipping. She said it proved she was making people uncomfortable, which she considered a sign of progress.
Among African American women, her record is mixed. The caucus was integrated from the start, but leadership roles went mostly to white women. McKay acknowledged this failing in a 1985 interview. She said the group had not done enough to share power. Later, she worked to recruit more Black candidates and to fund their campaigns. But the early years left a stain that some activists still discuss.
Younger generations have rediscovered her through social media. A TikTok video about “forgotten women of North Carolina” mentioned McKay and got over 200,000 views. The comments were split between people who knew the garden myth and people learning about her for the first time. A few commenters shared personal stories — a grandmother who attended a caucus training, a great‑aunt who worked at SouthPark when it opened.
These personal connections matter. They turn an abstract historical figure into someone real. One woman posted a photo of a campaign button from 1974 that read “McKay’s Army.” The button had belonged to her mother. It was a small, tangible link to a movement that changed the state’s politics.
Reception outside North Carolina has been limited. A few national publications mentioned her in roundups of women’s political history. But she never achieved the fame of Steinem or Abzug. That suits her legacy, in a way. She was always more interested in results than recognition. The weaker claim here is that she was a hidden figure waiting to be discovered. She was not hidden — she was simply focused on local work that did not translate easily to a national stage.
Her design work has fared even worse in public memory. Malls are not celebrated the way gardens are. They are seen as commercial, mundane, even destructive. But in the 1970s, an enclosed mall was a bold experiment. It reshaped how people shopped, socialized, and spent their leisure time. McKay understood that before most of her peers. That vision, as much as her politics, deserves a second look.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Martha McKay married to?
Public records indicate she was married briefly in the 1950s to a man named James Howard, but the marriage ended in divorce within a few years. She kept the surname McKay from a later relationship, though details about that partnership remain private. She had no children and rarely discussed her personal life in interviews, preferring to keep the focus on her professional and political work.
What is the Martha McKay garden myth?
The myth claims she designed a notable garden in North Carolina, but no evidence supports this. The confusion likely stems from another woman with the same name who was active in garden clubs. Archival research shows our Martha McKay’s work centered on shopping mall design and political organizing, with no connection to horticulture or landscape architecture.
Is it ethical to claim Martha McKay designed SouthPark Mall when others contributed?
Yes, because she was the lead designer on the original concept and layout. Acknowledging her contribution does not erase others; it corrects a historical oversight that left her name out of the official narrative for decades.
What is Martha McKay best known for in North Carolina politics?
She is best known for co‑founding the North Carolina Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 and creating a systematic candidate recruitment and training program. Her pipeline model helped double the number of women in the state legislature within a decade. She also pushed for gender parity on state boards, using detailed memos to influence gubernatorial appointments.
How much does it cost to access Martha McKay’s archives?
The archives are held at the University of North Carolina and are free to access in person. Some materials have been digitized and are available online at no cost. Researchers can request copies of specific documents for a small fee, typically a few cents per page, but the collection is publicly funded and intended for open use.
