Hotel Carolina — Raleigh, N.C.
This week we present our first Flashback Friday follow-up. In last week’s bus station post we posed the question to identify the tall building seen looming in the background. Several readers correctly identified it as the Hotel Carolina.
Unfortunatly this postcard was never mailed, and there is no personal message on the back, but the printed description notes that:
The Hotel Carolina is located on the corner of S. McDowell and W. Hargett Streeets. It is a modern hotel and has 250 rooms.
It certainlty was a “modern hotel” when this Curt Teich “Art Colortone” linen postcard was printed in the early 1930s, but the publisher got the address wrong — the hotel was actually located at the corner of W. Hargett and S. Dawson.
The Hotel Carolina was built in in 1927 in the renaissance revival “commercial” style, and its enormous red neon sign on the roof was a familiar Raleigh landmark for more than a half century. It was demolished in 1980 and the Avery B. Upchurch Municipal Building now occupies the site. (The bus station on W. Morgan was also demolished, and a city parking deck stands there today.)
Seen below is a ‘real photo’ of the Hotel Carolina taken during its demolition 30 years ago. The view is from the bus station parking lot.
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05/07/2011
As a small child I like to visit the small soda fountain on the ground floor of the hotel.
08/22/2011
When cleaning out an old house in the Fisher Park neighborhood of Greensboro this spring, volunteers found a sturdy old brown key fob with a key to Hotel Carolina, Raleigh, NC. The fob is imprinted with “Hotel Carolina Raleigh NC”, room number 401 and the familiar old guarantee “If carried away, return. Unsealed. We guarantee postage.”
I’d return it if the hotel were still standing, but alas I read in this article that the hotel is gone. I may send it to a Raleigh historical museum instead. Quite a coincidence that the hotel’s postcard and a key fob surfaced the same spring!