On Death Row (An Unsettled Future)
The 1870s era storefronts (including Isaac’s Menswear) on Wilmington Street that are slated for destruction to make way for The Edison.
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01/15/2009
This is a GREAT shot! The ambient lighting and lack of vehicular and pedestrian traffic make the storefronts look almost like a western town main street movie set.
01/15/2009
Great picture. WTVD used to have a link on their website to a documentary they did back in the ’70′s on the Fayetteville St. Mall as it was nearing completion. It included video footage of this section of Wilmington St. Very different back then as there were more buildings and businesses occupying them.
01/15/2009
This current economic crisis calls all of this development into question and postponement. I know that JDavis Architects has let go some of it’s staff because of project cancellations. I assume this could be one of them.
01/15/2009
Yep, I wouldn’t count on any projects that have not yet broken ground getting under way anytime soon at this point.
01/15/2009
Yes, I had figured that the Edison project was currently in limbo, but I suppose the parenthetical “An Unsettled Future” was a bit too subtle.
Despite my love of historic preservation (especially that of the 19th century), I want to see our skyline grow. I just think it can be achieved without erasing the unique and beautiful parts of Raleigh’s past, which includes the storefronts above.
01/18/2009
It’s to bad they didn’t hire someone like Lot/ek (New York), Morphosis (LA) or the guys I know at El Dorado (Kansas City).
They would use their expert skills to construct something post-modern that worked the existing buildings into the design.
It is strange that in the year 2009, and with the ugly legacy of recent gentrification in this country, that any architecture firm would design anything so poorly.
I, for one, would hope that JDavis Architects would relize that The International Style, which the proposed design is, was one of the biggest mistakes of the last century.I would challenge the architects to challenge themselves to “push their skills” and figure out a way to preserve history.
The proposed design is nothing but a vertical strip mall, modeled after corporate builders who plow habitat and history into the ground in the name of efficiency. That’s easy, any one with a bulldozer and a hamer can do that.
01/19/2009
yes, it would be so cool – to leave the front of these building as part of the new buildings…but I wish too much.