Goodnight, Raleigh! - a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night

Wilmington, Hargett, and the Arrow

In addition to Wilmington and Hargett Streets, the Mysterious Arrow is visible in the photo above. I have no idea what its purpose is, but my long running guess is that at one point in time it was pointing to a green area for helicopters to land in should they experience trouble and need an emergency landing in the downtown area.

There is a tree in the center of the court yard when viewed from satellite imagery, so it doesn’t look like a helicopter could land there today.

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There are 2 Comments to this article

Mark Turner says:
09/15/2008

Its not likely to be for helicopters. The courtyard’s too cluttered for that. And why put an arrow on the roof when you could put on a landing pad instead?

I suppose the building’s owner might be able to shed some light on the Arrow.

Raleigh Boy says:
09/15/2008

I’ll go ahead and throw this out about helicopters>> there was a helipad on the flat roof of the old civic center (or, one was originally planned to be, I think. Never saw a helicopter on the roof, though.) Maybe this was a directional for that??

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