Marvin – The best source for old Raleigh photos of any era is the State Archives located downtown. Here is a site with a sampling of what they have to offer and with contact info. http://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/sets/72157604115767838/

Think your plan to raise money to restore the color wall of light is a good one.

I wonder if anyone suggested contacting Cree LED Lighting company in the Triangle area. They are most generous with their time and products and just may be willing to supply equipment which would be appropriate and long lasting.

Karen Havighurst

From one Raleigh Boy to another….Thank you for all of your posts and work (especially with the Color Wall). I was born at the Old Rex Hospital on Wade Avenue in the 60′s and I grew up in the Matsumoto House on Runnymeade Road (near Frances Lacey School). We should catch up and trade stories sometime. My wife and I live in Cameron Village now.

hey Cuz,

Yes, that map is the famous Bird’s Eye View of Raleigh, drawn by C.N. Drie in 1872. Actually, your house at the corner of Blount and Peace IS on that map. Look closely and you’ll see it in its original form. It had probably just been newly built in 1872. It has been greatly expanded over the decades, but the original house itself is still extant.

The oval race track with the flagpole is the N.C. fairgrounds. It was located at that site from 1853 until 1875, when it moved out Hillsboro St to where the Fairmont neighborhood is today. 50 years later it moved to its current site.

Thanks for reading Goodnight, Raleigh!

Hello. I just found your site. I am very interested to know more about two downtown buildings–Ravenscroft before it moved out to the Falls of the Neuse, and Devereaux Meadow.

Where, physically, were they originally located–I mean by today’s street locations–and are there any pictures of Devereaux Meadow?

I look forward to talking with you about what you can tell me about that part of Raleigh that has undergone such significant alteration.

Thank you very much.

Question: Tell me I’m not the only person I know who remembers the times that the ‘Historic Oakwood’ signs came down and ‘Hysteric Oakwood’ signs went up? Seems it was back in the 70s sometime.

Just wanna know :)

Wow! I’d been racking my brains lately trying to remember the names “Player’s Retreat” or as it was known “The P.R”, and to a slighter degree “Bert”! I did a search for The Pier and found all of this! Thanks so much for helping to refresh some really fond old memories of Raleigh from a span of time I lived there during ’60- ’71, and again around the Garner area from ’81-83. I can guarantee you that one band I walked into The Pier to hear in ’81 or ’82 was the Artimus Pyle Band, also called “APB”. I knew of them already from around Spartanburg, SC. I walked in to see their bass player Steve Brewington in his red satin parachute pants with his leg stepped up on Artimus’s drum riser while they were playing “Mabeline”- for sure “motivating over the hill” and then some! APB also played at the Silver Dollar Saloon in ’82 or ’83 (with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, it seems). Anyway, since Steve B. passed away at the age of 53 right before Mother’s Day this year that is an extremely fond memory! As for General Headquarters, yeah I hung out there and remember Tommy and Bitzy Honeycut, Dan Breezly, and “Weird Harold”!! As I recall Tommy changed the name to “The Bells of St Thomas” in ’71 I think, before they lost it to that dumb lot finally. My first (and only EX) husband knew Breezly as an electrician, but the last time I saw him was in Nov 1971, I believe, down on Peachtree Street in Atlanta going into some Head shop there on “The Strip”. He knew full well who I was but he acted like he was busy other than to say hello. No tellin’! Another act I know played the Pier back in ’70 was Mike Cross. As for Cameron Village, My now deceased mom used to take me there shopping back around ’61-62 and we’d always have lunch at the Sandwich Shop there where I’d always get a chicken salad sandwich- toasted, and some sort of ice cream bar for desert,regardless of how cold it may have been outside! Then it was on back to North Hills. I actually lived quite close to where they built North Hills Mall, which really started out as the drug store and some book store. Winn-Dixie was built sort of across the street along with Kwik Pik, then way later the P.O. for 27609. The Cardinal Theatre, Baskin-Robbins, some pizza place, and some other place were added, and so it grew and grew! If you ever gave me and my friends (usually girls) a ride from picking us up hitch-hiking around Raleigh in the late 60s I thank you for that too! Obviously I’ve survived!