Vivace in North Hills

This weekend, you have two opportunities to dine out at fine local restaurants help the parents of Ashley Ramos-Hernandez, the 6 year old that died after being struck by a vehicle not long after exiting the school bus on her way home.

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Baristas from around the region are gathering at Café Helios tonight at 7PM to participate in the ‘Latte Art Throwdown’. Read more »

The gem on Hillsborough St. in 1962 — at night, the way Joe Cox intended it. (Photo courtesy the NC Office of  Archives and History, State Archives.)

Forty-seven years ago next month, Branch Banking and Trust Company  opened its  “State College Office” at the corner of Hillsborough St. and Oberlin Rd. The ribbon cutting ceremony was held with great fanfare, with the mayor of Raleigh, the chancellor of NC State and the president of BB&T in attendance.

Though the pick and shovel groundbreaking had occurred several months earlier, the bank’s opening “broke ground” in another, more significant way — it was the first Raleigh bank to feature a work of public art as an integral part of its design — a dazzling stained glass mural.

“The mural represents the growing cooperation between artist and architect that is rapidly spreading throughout the country,” the N&O reported in an article on the event in 1962.

The architect of the State College Office was F. Carter Williams; the artist who designed the stained glass mural was none other than the renowned Raleigh artist, color theorist and School of Design professor, Joe Cox.

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