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!

With all the Dix HIll plans, has any one considered the Union Army site as a possible dig? They must have left a few jewels here and there. I guess there were several Union occupancy sites, but Dix is the only one I know of.

You mean they didnt find the rest of Briggs loot?
I will bet its there somewhere, probably near the former shore of the pond. Of course,, MLk blvd may have sealed its fate.

Hi Cole,

I’m guessing you read my post on Oberlin Cemetery —
http://goodnightraleigh.com/2008/07/forgotten-oberlin-village-cemetery/ There was a volunteer clean up effort back in the 1990s, but as you can see, today the cemetery is once again in dire need of some major TLC. If your son is in the scouts, a cleanup of the cemetery could be an excellent merit badge project! You might try connecting with the Wilson Temple Methodist Church down the street, as I think they are the administrators of Oberlin Cemetery

Here is a link you also might find helpful–
http://cemeterycensus.com/nc/wake/cem252.htm

Good luck in your endeavor!

Thank you Rut. I appreciate your kind words. Yes, you are right — I had no idea at the time the effect my photos would have on people with a Morson connection these many years hence. Even though I was only 14 at the time, I knew intuitively back then that I was recording something important, and my simple black and white Kodak Instamatic was my tool. I just wanted to take pictures of everything back then. I was drawn to photograph the passing of my school for some reason — on account of my teachers, my fellow students, I guess, and that incredible building itself, and of course the era in which all that occurred. So long ago.

Thanks man.

Karl

Reply to John Sharpe post 02/13/2010

Old Ravenscroft School was located on the block bordered by Glenwood Ave. Tucker St. Boylan Ave. and Johnson St. It is now Glenwood Towers and the Chapel is still there. As far as I know that is where it has always been. I know it was there in the 1940’s.
Devereaux Meadow was the home of the Raleigh Caps Baseball team. It was where the City Garbage Trucks now park. Peace St. Across the street and down a bit from Finch’s. Used to be Finch’s drive in, car hops and all.
In the late 1950’s we would walk down Peace St. and go sit on the hill behind Devereaux Meadow and watch the baseball games for free. Capital Blvd is there now.
There was an old hosiery mill that I think was on West St. I think it was abandoned but do not remember much about it except it burned down. I was about ten or eleven and we could see the flames from our house on Wilmington St. My mom and I and another kid drove out to see what was happening. I know it was nighttime and I am pretty sure it was summertime.

love this site to was born in 1945 old rex hospital family still there would love to hear from some of the old gang was there from 1959 to 1961 mr kathy was there with proctor

Karl, did you attend Enloe High School?

Raleigh Girl: I did! Class of ’69.

Hello RaleighNative 51
I enjoyed being outside also, since it was a disruption of class! I remember the cafeteria being very small and there was almost a groove or slight indention down the middle of the hallways-how many feet had worn that groove.

I do remember the stairwells being damp and cool and it was a mad rush to change classes.

In the mornings if we were early, several of us would cut thru the Church across the street and go to McClellens for a drink or snack before school. Of course, praying we did not get caught.

Not to mention the “girl fights” at the Bryco in the afternoon! I never realized until then that girls would fight like that even though I had 3 sisters. I was amazed!

Hollywoodgirl,

Wow, your comments awakened even more memories of that great school, and the magic three years I spent there. When you went to Oakwood Cemetery, assuming you used the main entrance, you were right at my house. We lived at 608 Oakwood, the white house on the corner of Oakwood and Linden Ave, from 1962 until the summer (two months after 9th Grade graduation) of 1964. I know that gate is still there, at least up until 2003. My sister Bonnie, who was at Murphy Elementary then, re-visited the old neighborhood and took some pictures – of the house, that gate, the House of Memory, and the humongous ditch that paralleled the first 60 or so feet of the roadway heading up toward the main office. We used to swim there when the water was deep enough, which was not smart at all – the water would be rushing like crazy and we were lucky we didn’t bang our heads on those rocks and exposed roots, and drown.
Speaking of the gate – from the time we moved into the house there ($60.00 per month; can you believe it?:) until late in 1963, all of us kids in the neighborhood were continually challenging one another to climb to the top, and stand on one of the huge stone spheres up there. Well, one day a kid named Bobby Smith – from another part of town – did it! And that shamed the rest of us. So Johnny Bryant, Johnny Bell, Tommy Parish, and Charlie Honeycutt, and I, decided to defend the honor of our neighborhood. No one made it. But three of us returned that night, by ourselves, and two of us made it (it was well lighted). If you’re curious, I’ll tell you which two :) The manager of the cemetery found out about it. He was a nice guy, but he promised to call the police if anyone tried that again. We didn’t, at least during the remaining time my family lived there.

Rut, sounds like you had a great childhood. I certainly would have loved living in that house.

And, being the boy you were, sounds like you are lucky to have survived. Put a half dozen boys together, they will make their own trouble. Fortunately, those were innocent days.

Hey, beauty is hard work, and can have an element of danger. Hmmm…glitter and zits??? Teenage angst.

Is Mr. Caty, Mr. Kahdy?

Raleigh Boy,

This is a great site. I was born at the old Rex at Wade and St. Mary’s and grew up in Chestnut Hills. Thanks for bringing back memories!

Maggi,

i too remember Hysterical Oakwood and still refer to it as that.
It would have been in the 60’s. We moved to the Five Points area in ’69 it was before that.

Gladys Perry’s photo is on page 67 of the 1927 yearbook her name is listed on page 66 under Commercial class 2nd year student, she is also listed as one of the typists for the yearbook. Thanks for the article I’m not from Raleigh but have been around since 81, I remember the garbage Shute that ran into the dumpster and I now work at William Peace University John

Enjoyed your story on the Bland Hotel
I looked it up as I found a letter from 1919
With The Bland Hotel (Raleighs only fire proof hotel)
Fancy letter head.
It was a letter to my grandfather from JC Benjamin.
I looked him up and found him under road equipment using
The Bland as an address in the advertisement.
Also he was under Taps and a NC commander
He was writing grandfather as to going to NC to work.
They’d not been home long from WW1 .