After countless stays of execution and pleas from Preservation North Carolina to save the Fabius Briggs House located at 1301 Hillsborough Street, it seems its day has come. Built in 1906 by a son of Thomas H. Briggs, founder of Briggs Hardware, it has stood witness to the evolution of one of Raleigh’s most attractive and well traveled streets.

An ominous precursor appeared late last week in the form of a chain-link fence circling the property, as if a white sheet had been laid over its lifeless body. This fencing is usually the first step in the abatement process many Raleigh residents have become accustomed to in recent months. With the loss of the NC State bookstore, the Ballentine’s Cafeteria building in Cameron Village, and The Brewery many downtown residents are starting to raise a few eyebrows.

The Briggs House is a typically-styled Queen Anne Transitional, an architectural style common to Raleigh in the early 1900s. Our ancestral residents would have seen these houses lining Hillsborough street from the campus of NC State all the way to the Capitol. Many have been lost over the years to development and neglect, but thankfully the city is still holding on to a precious handful. But by early next week, one more will be gone.

FMW, a Charlotte real estate company, has plans for a mixed-use development on much of the land that has been cleared. The Bolton complex and long-abandoned Staudt Bakery on West Morgan Street were razed last week and cleanup on those sites continues.  Cameron Park Apartments, the neighboring retail shops including Jade Garden and our iconic IHOP will remain — for now.

According to Mike Campbell, superintendent of demolition for all three sites, work began Monday and will continue through this week as the green asbestos siding that covers the exterior of the house is carefully removed to partially reveal its original wood clapboard siding.  It will be a sight no one has seen in nearly 60 years.

The inevitable end all started in late summer when some of what makes the Briggs House special was luckily salvaged from its interior. Mantels, mouldings, wainscoting, doors, door and window hardware and the entire staircase were removed. Word has it that the staircase has found a new home in a residence in North Raleigh.

Shortly thereafter, the windows were sealed with plywood and the doors nailed shut. Not even the birds could roost in the old gal.

Following a 2009 Goodnight Raleigh article written about 1301 Hillsborough Street, Preservation North Carolina, an organization devoted to preserving North Carolina’s historic and endangered properties, started efforts to save the house. Director of Urban Issues at PNC, Elizabeth Sappenfield, enthusiastically took on the project. Until very recently it was still listed on their website. The price? Free. If you could move the behemoth, you could sign the deed.  The glaring problem, among several others, was a spot to set the house down. Sappenfield worked to find a site, but there was really only one site suitable for the house in the immediate area; a gravel parking lot just across the street from Cameron Park apartments. The owners of the lot were contacted and they replied by swiftly snuffing any notions of a sale.  Another issue was the present condition of the house. City inspectors claimed that the house wasn’t structurally sound which leads one to wonder, if the house isn’t stable sitting still, how would it react if it were teetering down Hillsborough Street on wheels?

Many will claim good riddance to these neglected structures, but some see these changes as a loss of character and would much rather see them re-purposed — or even moved. This isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that our city will lose structures with history and character. Raleigh is constantly sloughing off its decaying, aging and even inconvenient structures. Sometimes, it seems as if planners and developers are irreverent about our history and the aesthetic that makes Raleigh so beautiful, and that may be partially true. However, it is also important to remember that as our city changes we learn to recognize good change from bad. Realistically speaking, 1301 Hillsborough is an eyesore that also poses a danger to the public. In this situation, assuming that moving the house is not possible, razing the house is, sadly, the most rational plan.

On a personal note, and barring any realistic notions of what should happen to the house, I will miss the element of mystery and grittiness it brings to my neighborhood. Passing by and imagining how regal the house once was, what stories it could tell, and pondering its ultimate fate have kept my imagination busy for years. I believe part of what makes losing any old structure, especially the Briggs House, so difficult is the thought of edging ever closer to a point where the Raleigh landscape would be unrecognizable to someone that lived a century earlier.  We are not only losing a historic house, we are losing a faint glimpse of our past.  A past that holds the foundation of our wonderful city.

All photos in this article are by Ian F.G. Dunn.

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Capital Coca Cola Bottling Company, 1941. From the Albert Barden Collection, North Carolina State Archives.

Right past the Morgan Street Bridge lies the foundation and structural artifacts of a long gone building. Looking much like the rest of the Warehouse District, the utilitarian building in the photo above was home to the Capital Coca-Cola Bottling Company. The space is now home to Men at Work Care Care Center.

Unfortunately, the only structural remains of this building are the steel support beams in the secret underground lair in the photo above.

A Small and Dark Place

These days, the only use that this hidden space sees is to provide refuge for passing travelers or the homeless.

The only object in the room was a perfectly flat and unrolled sleeping bag. I was surprised to see it in cleaner condition than when I visited it a few years ago. I’m not sure who would have spent the time to clean it up, but I’m glad they did.

The entrance to this underground lair is a small window on a briar-infested hill leading to the rail lines that cut through the Warehouse District.

the tracks that are visible from the hidden lair

Access is easy enough, but exercise caution if exploring for yourself. This is an area out of view and is likely sought out for that very purpose, in addition to its proximity to the tracks.

Coca-cola Bottling Co. on S. Wilmington Street. Date/copyright holder unknown

A Look at Coca-Cola in Raleigh

One early reference to Coca-Cola in Raleigh that I found is the undated photo above of a bottling plant located on 115 South Wilmington Street. This address is now the entrance to a parking garage and is between the Prairie Building and the block with Gravy and Sitti.

A 1916 Raleigh City Directory lists the address of 216 S. West Street for the Raleigh Coca-Cola Bottling Works. It is unknown to me what relation any of these three Coca-Cola affiliates may have had with one another.

Today, you can see a vintage painted Coca-Cola ad on the Berkeley Cafe building on Nash Square.

The area where the bottling plant was once located

So What Happened to the Building?

Raleigh Firefighting historian Mike Legeros lists a fire at this plant in 1948 as one of Raleigh’s largest, and I can’t find any record of activity here after that date. The Capital Coca-Cola Bottling Company has operated out of a location at 2200 South Wilmington Street since 1956. It’s a safe bet that a catastrophic fire spelled the end of this structure, although I’d like to know where the company was operating from in the intervening 8 years.

There are some remnants of the building, including a few brick walls, imprints in the concrete flooring, and electrical boxes such as the one in the photo above.

a medianera

You can see the outline of the building in the form of a medianera on an adjacent building left standing. You can also discern outlines in the concrete that indicate an industrial past.

These days, there is no industrial use of the area and it’s pretty quiet. During the day, you can get your car detailed by the Men at Work guys. At night, you can work out at a secret weightlifting bench next to the small cinderblock building. The large open space is now home to a couple of benches and a bird bath.

Occasionally, passing drifters catch some sleep in the hidden lair underneath this picturesque space.

Related Articles

• Echoes of an Era Past
• Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: Raleigh’s Downtown Warehouse District
• The Warehouse District From Above

UPDATE March 29

Image courtesy News & Observer Publishing Company

The Raleigh Fire Department Historical Society has this breathtaking photo of the Coca-Cola plant fire in 1948. Interestingly, you can see the building where Men at Work Car Care Center is today (lower left).

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Disliked by many Raleigh residents, the long-vacant Audio Buys Building always seemed a bit odd in the Five Points neighborhood context. Detractors now get their wish as it appears the building is in the early stages of demolition or renovation.

Early Years

The early uses of the building at 1700 Glenwood Avenue were documented by architectural historian Ruth Little in her 2006 report, The Development of Modernism in Raleigh, 1945-1965:

The One Hour Martinizing plant at 1700 Glenwood Avenue, built in 1965, illustrates a freestanding retail building located on a traffic thoroughfare that attracts attention through its bold design. The International Style building features a cantilevered glazed upper level where the dry cleaning equipment and clean clothes were visible to passing cars.

Modern Gone Wrong

The overhangs (visible in the photo above) which may have served a purpose when built do not seem relevant to today’s tastes and needs.  They do not allow for additional parking or other uses, and the lower level is a windowless storage basement. The abundance of glass on the functioning upper level and lack of it on the ground level runs contrary to the consumer retail structures of recent history: retail or primary use is for street level, and the upper levels are for storage, offices, or living.

Breaking the Rule of Thirds

Beyond having primary use upstairs and nothing useful on the lower level, I think one reason this building is disliked by some is the manner in which the two contrasting levels represent parts of the whole: each at about 50%.

The rule of thirds is one of the first principles any designer, artist, photographer, or other visually-oriented creator learns. In short, it states that something looks better when the focal point is at 1/3 or 2/3 the width or height of the whole. In the case of the Audio Buys Building, the horizontal dividing line of the drastically different levels is nearly in the middle.

To be sure, there are examples of pretty two-story buildings with equal height levels. I think it doesn’t work here because the two levels look so different and serve different purposes.

Love for an Ugly Duckling

Despite loving the general style in which this building was modeled after, I can’t say I’ve been fond of this particular design. The tinted glass has long since faded and the lit fluorescent product/business names were very dated.  Additionally, it represents what so many dislike about modern architecture:

• it doesn’t blend in with surrounding buildings
• some of the functional characteristics don’t work well in practice
• it just plain looks weird

But perhaps because of these oddities, I’ve secretly loved it. It seems to be sticking a thumb in the eye of the buildings around it, particularly the very elegant and ornate traditionally-styled Hayes Barton Baptist Church across the street. This building gives Five Points a diverse palette of building types, representative of several eras.

What the Future Holds

I don’t know what will be going up on this spot if/when this building comes down. Wake County tax records do not indicate that ownership has recently changed hands, and the site does not bear the name of a contracting company.

Update

Sources indicate that this building is being renovated and not demolished.

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Edna Metz Wells Park drain, image credit: John Morris

The Raleigh I grew up in was a small dusty, small southern capital where most everyone knew everyone. Part of the circle included the son of the taxidermist at the old Museum of Natural History who imparted to his son a knowledge and appreciation for the natural world. Carl’s decidedly New Orleanian, Charlestonesque flavored rental on North Street provided a locus for our detailed weekend explorations of that world frequently involving Raleigh’s numerous subterranean conduits, local manifestations of urban waterways buried in concrete coast to coast spawned by a now-contested gestalt that nature was an entity to be separated from. This segregation, while bad for the life of streams proved an irresistable benefit to us growing up near downtown Raleigh, illustrated by a chum I found in a storm drain down from Wiley before and after school.

Edna Metz Wells Park drain, image credit: John Morris

The cool, plashing waters of Pigeon House aka “Wolf” Branch, Rocky Branch, Crabtree, Beaverdam, House Creek and others provided respite from those blistering hot summer days BAC (before AC). The ignorant masses called them sewers but we knew a creek when we saw one, even those which required travel in complete darkness and a certain sort of faith to reach the daylight at the other end, a practice refined and mechanized by my elder brother Kurt and his late bud Greg Shriver with their “sewer cart.” These conduits are still available to the adventurer, specifically at both ends of the Edna Metz Wells park, under Western Boulevard by the prison and all through downtown. A detailed Raleigh map or Google Earth can get you as lost as you wish.

NC State Steam Tunnels, image credit: John Morris

One hazardous coming-of-age obligation was NCSU’s complex subterranean central-heating system, accessable via a pre-9/11 insouciance about locks. The “steam tunnels” presented multiple opportunities to go and get low, complete with truly dangerous pitfalls and blind tunnels.

NC State Steam Tunnels, image credit: John Morris

Not all of it was all fun and games. Utility workers performing routine maintenance once discovered the bed, drafting board and refrigerator of one of my father’s Design students trying to stretch his college budget. Sadly The “Little Washington” murders and the associated Dungeons and Dragons play made famous by that lurid case obliterated any lingering chance of adventure under ‘State. Don’t even try without first hiring a lawyer.

Slowly, inexorably, the press of employees operating under orders or else with time to kill and nothing else to do began to discover and seal our buried world. Still it is remarkable how much of it escaped notice. Such was the case of the “Grotto.” not Hugh Hefner’s joint, rather a post last-call, late-night possibility back in the mid-eighties when rock ruled Steve Guth’s appropriately named Fallout Shelter across from the Roast Grill. When conditions were right and the cat was away (sorry Steve), the sage soaked, black-clad tribe would rustle a keg, ice, a Rubbermaid and boom-boxes. Thump, thump, up the concrete stairs, out of the alley, around the corner, west on Morgan and under the bridge. Some distance down CSX’s tracks a sort of plank road fashioned from abandoned pallets led up the embankment to a gaping breach in a brick wall where “someone” had converted one of Dillon Supply Company‘s disused basements into a perfect party space stretching back into the gloom as far as one’s hallucinogenic state led one to believe it did. There we conducted ourselves in high-goth fashion, rolling and tumbling in the flickering, beer soaked gloom.

Inside one of the Dillon Buildings, but not the "Grotto". Image credit: John Morris

Our little local Hellfire club persisted literally for years until one blistering August afternoon after everyone had gone home the world fell in. The “parking lot” above, actually a ceiling, gave way under the mass of a maneuvering semi-truck and contents. The Grotto would be a mystery to this day save for some full-of-beans “satanic” grafitti which drew in the cops, made the paper and ignited a municipal theological spasm that led to the sealing of our nocturnal playground.

View of Capitol Building from the underground tunnels beneath it. Image credit: anapplesnail

I can’t/won’t say which from which Oakwood rental the tunnel to the governor’s mansion leads nor would I advise you try and find it. It is enough to quietly accept its practical exigencies and have a bit of fun speculating on its purposes. As with covert connections between Wilmington’s mansions and waterfront, I suppose one have to get the girls, gold and dope in and out without being detected somehow.

You can read more of Peter’s musings at his blog, petrblt.

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I started out with only a Facebook status update and the vague directions “across from the Carmax on Glenwood” to go on. An hour and a half later, I found the Water Garden.

Walking along Glenwood Avenue after it leaves downtown Raleigh, one feels beyond doubt that this is not a place intended for human traffic. Furniture warehouses and car lots sit in misanthropic isolation off of a busy road with no sidewalk. You’re not supposed to walk around here, and if you do, you feel small and lost in a blinding, concrete commercial desert. On foot, you realize how far apart everything is, how much space there is that possibly no one has walked in years.

When I finally found the entrance to the Water Garden, I was surprised I had missed it. It looks like a sign for some vintage funland. Walking down the gravel path from the treeless light on the road, the light gains compassion, becomes photosynthetic, happily leafy. It was surreal, walking off of the hell of Glenwood into a place with such spiritual resonance. I had no idea what any of it meant. It was only after poking around for a while that I discovered:

• It was the home base of Richard Bell for over 50 years
• Richard Bell is one of Raleigh’s iconic landscape architects

I was able to meet with Kim Weiss, Bell’s biographer and close personal friend, and later with Bell himself, and this is what I learned.

Dick Bell in Pullen Park in the 1960s

Richard Bell is perhaps Raleigh’s most beloved landscape architect, although fewer and fewer people know who he is. Bell created landmarks like the Meredith Ampitheater, Pullen Park, and NCSU’s Brickyard, and the beautiful gardens surrounding the Legislative Building. In a real sense, Bell has shaped the ethos of Raleigh in a way all of its inhabitants experience. Bell, or Dick as he’s known to friends, left Manteo in the late 40′s to come to what was about to become Henry Kamphoefner‘s newly established School of Design. Kamphoefner’s vision was to not simply create a talented body of graduates versed in philosophy and the practice of design, but for those graduates to set up shop in North Carolina. Essentially, Kamphoefner dreamed of creating an infrastructure of modern design in North Carolina, not just a school of design in Raleigh. “We were orchestrated to work in North Carolina,” Bell told me. “Eighty-five percent of our graduates went on to work in North Carolina.” Bell told me that Kamphoefner insisted that his faculty not only lecture, but also practice their disciplines, and had distinguished individuals such as Frank Lloyd Wright come and talk to the students. Bell chuckled as he told me that Wright refused to lecture in the Design buildings because he thought they were so ugly. Bell met Wright under a tree near Holladay Hall. “It was an open ended school,” Bell reflected. “Kamphoefner had a master plan for development.”

Kamphoefner’s intense program of training worked, and in 1951, Bell won the Prix de Rome at the age of twenty. “It was- How would you say it?- totally weird,” remarked Bell. He was the youngest individual to ever receive the prize, and in a bold move, asked the committee to delay his acceptance of the prize until he was twenty-one. Surprisingly, they agreed, in part because they appreciated his desire to apprentice in a working landscape architecture office before going to Europe to study. He traveled to Italy and toured thirty countries in Europe, and remarkably for someone raised in the pre-civil rights South, often travelled on a Lambretta scooter with a black sculptor. He cited this experience as a major influence on all of his later work: “It gave me a broader perspective, and that was incredibly valuable.” He came home inspired, ready to start designing in North Carolina.

Image credit: Dick Bell

The Water Garden began when Dick stopped along a then-rural stretch of Highway 70, helped his new bride Mary Jo out of the car, and told her, “If we ever have a place, I want it to be like this.” He told me about showing the site to her that day: “It was so beautiful. The sky reflected in the water. It was way out in the boonies at that time… but there were wetlands, pines- It was a mini-environment of bog and plants.”

Image credit: Dick Bell

There was already a foundation for a building on the property, and with the help of architect John Evans of Florida, the Bells designed and built their modern home over it. The first building became known as the “Chicken Coop”. It was rough going. The Bells did much of the work themselves, and by that time the couple had two young children. “It was rough,” said Bell. “We had two kids, $7000, a plywood floor, and newspapers over the windows for insulation.” But gradually the buildings were completed. It took about 14 years to build the Water Garden, from their first house there to the ultimate office park, gallery, residence and gardens that spread over 11 acres. Finally, in 1963, the Bells held the first art show at their Garden Gallery. Even more than just being a breathtaking piece of modernist design, the Water Garden was crucial for Bells’ career and mission on two levels.

Image credit: Dick Bell

First, Bell used the Water Garden as a laboratory, constantly trying out new ideas and combinations of plants. “I didn’t feel like my clients ought to be guinea pigs,” Bell told me. Bell had inherited a love of plants from his father, Albert Bell, who helped design and build the Lost Colony Amphitheater. Bell grew up in his father’s and grandfather’s nurseries on Roanoke Island, and his green thumb combined with a creative mind produced some innovative ideas for gardening. It was Bell’s idea to create berms around pine trees up to eight feet high- previously, gardeners had assumed that a berm that high would kill pines. Nurseries would send Bell plants to experiment with, and Bell was the first person to take many local plants out of the forest and use them in residential design.

Image credit: Dick Bell

Secondly, and perhaps more crucially, Water Garden was critical in establishing the profession of landscape architecture in Raleigh. Bell built the Water Garden, not only as his home, but as a place that he could point to and say “There. That is landscape architecture.” In a real sense, the construction of the Water Garden was the foundation of Landscape Architecture in North Carolina as a whole. It was a showpiece that opened the door for Bell’s other projects, projects which have helped define Raleigh and the idea of landscape architecture.

It was so interesting to come as an unrecognized pracitioner of an unrecognized profession and say ‘This is what we should do for our city.’ It all came about as a kind of mystical relationship between me and my clients.

Bell’s goal in all of his projects was not simply to create beauty, but to establish landmarks to show what Landscape Architecture could do. ‘Water Garden’ was the first landmark.

Image credit: Dick Bell

Bell’s vision for the Water Garden was that it would be a mixed-use building, in which work, play, and the fabric of living were integrated through the beauty of its design. He saw it as a place not only for living, but in which living and art and design were side by side. The Coop housed a gallery, and the first art opening was held there in 1963. “Mary Jo was in charge of the gallery,” he told me. “We had a sculptor and a painter for the first exhibit.” The Water Garden soon became the cultural center of Raleigh. I work with an older lady who has lived in Raleigh for over fifty years, and she told me that she used to go out to the Water Garden on occasion. Kim Weiss told me how Raleigh’s arts scene in the 60′s and 70′s had its epicenter in Water Garden: “People would tramp out there in the rain. It didn’t matter- they just wore boots.”

As the decades passed, Bell remained prolific in his work but the arts scene moved downtown and development along Glenwood Avenue/Highway 70 West began  to encroach on his and his wife’s oasis. Water Garden was no longer the haven it had been before Raleigh began its spastic sprawl: Cookie-cutter housing developments were being slapped together around the property, and at night, you could see the neon signs of a car dealership through the trees.

Bell knew it was time to leave. He assumed that the property would be passed to his children. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. Although his daughter and son-in-law were able to take over the design firm, taking over the care of the 11-acre property was simply too much.

“It was rough leaving,” Bell told me, staring into his cup of coffee. “We hadn’t created the proper background for our family to take over. It wasn’t a happy time.” Bell had thought that perhaps the city would buy the property, but Water Garden wasn’t old enough to attain historic status, and Bell ended up selling the property and buildings to developers. “On one hand, he was glad to have [the hassle of taking care of the property] off of his back,” Kim told me. “On the other hand, he spent his life there. It was- and is- a huge loss.”

Unfulfilled Water Garden redevelopment plans, courtesy of Dick Bell

At the moment, no one is sure what will happen to Water Garden. Bell worked tirelessly, and on his own dime, to design beautiful building plans that would allow the developers to preserve the original buildings while incorporating them into larger development schemes, such as a shopping center and a senior care facility, to name a few.

Unfulfilled Water Garden redevelopment plans, courtesy of Dick Bell

“The senior living one was the best one,” said Bell. “I tried to present a plan of adaptive reuse.” The developers didn’t even thank him for his efforts.

Since the property was sold and vacated in 2007, the state of the buildings has grown steadily worse. The place looks like it’s been sacked by Vikings. Scrappers have gutted the walls, most of the windows have been shattered, and traces of paintball wars splatter the walls.

Since I began work on this article, gates have been put up to discourage local vandals from inflicting further damage, but much of the mutilation was a result of the sherriff’s office using the property for training. After a group of high-school students vandalized the property last year, Habitat for Humanity was allowed to salvage what they could.

No one is sure now what will happen to the property, but whether or not the buildings stand, Water Garden will remain a beautiful and central part of Raleigh’s history. “Dick always envisioned Water Garden as a place where people could live, work, play, and interact,” said Kim. “And for a while, it was. It does make me sad, but I know Dick has many monuments. They will live on.” On all of the occasions I talked with her, she didn’t seem to be at a point of resignation, but then neither am I. And perhaps for those who have experienced Water Garden, in any capacity, that resignation will be a long time coming. “OK, Water Garden will disappear. But all the other landmarks Dick designed… Those are still there.”

Many thanks to Kim Weiss for all of her help. Dick Bell’s first book “The Bridge Builders”, edited by Kim, comes out soon.

Unless otherwise noted, all images credit John Morris

More photos from the Water Garden

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For more than a century rain has been mulling over a way to make a home inside the once regal house on the corner of Ashe Avenue and Hillsborough Street.  The house, often referred to as the “Green House” or “The Jackpot House”, drops slate roof tiles as if it were inviting its wet foe inside for an extended stay.  The perimeter of the house is littered with malt liquor bottles, window glass, and broken slate.

A story accompanies every house that man inhabits.  Much like children, we give these organized piles of lumber and stone an identity of their own when they become the structural shadows of their past residents.  The Jackpot House wears its history in plain view.  Its weathered green asbestos siding, peeling paint, gray wood, and cinder block appendage tell a vague story of neglect and abuse.

During the late 1800s and crossing over into the first few years of the 1900s, residential development crept onto Hillsborough Street, and the tract along Ashe Avenue between the railroad tracks and Hillsborough Street was in the process of being sectioned off for development.  It was during this time the Jackpot House was constructed.

Wake County tax records indicate a build date of 1915.  However, city directories and deed research suggest an earlier date of around 1902.  The Queen Anne-style architectural details such as the hipped roof with lower cross gables and the gabled dormers also suggest this earlier build date.  Porches are very significant in dating a residential structure, but sadly only a small portion of the original porch still exists.  It is very likely that the original building had an asymmetrical porch that ran the width of the house and along half of the left side.  The portion that exists today is a good indicator of how the original appeared, but it is still difficult to imagine what this house looked like with a lawn and a front porch.

If the house had any dignity remaining before the Jackpot was built, it was lost when the porch was removed.  As journalist Michael Dolan once said, “a house without a porch is like a man without eyebrows”. Sifting through its catalog of structural scars reveals a more accurate picture of how this structure came into its own identity, and leads to more questions that beg deeper investigation and further speculation.

It is believed that the house was built for the family of Fabius Briggs, a son of Thomas H. Briggs, the founder of Briggs Hardware.  In 1874, the Briggs Hardware building on Fayetteville Street was Raleigh’s tallest building and remained so for three decades.  The Briggs family has deep seated roots in Raleigh and the family business continues to operate today.  The Fabius Briggs family lived at 1301 Hillsborough Street until around 1927.  By 1929, the Great Depression brooded over the city, and in 1932 the Raleigh Building and Loan Association acquired the house through foreclosure.  It likely spent a time unoccupied, and was eventually rented to a Raleigh lawyer, and then to the Sigma Nu fraternity for ten years.

By 1944, the once palatial residence had been humbled and abused by its tenants.  It had lost its innocence, status, and shine. It was around this time that a Greek family by the name of Kledaras bought the Briggs house, which they would own for the next 60 years. In 1949 an architect unwittingly drafted the fate of the old house alongside plans for three storefronts: a dry-cleaners, The Brite Spot Restaurant, and a contractor and building estimator.

Present day, store fronts

One might wonder why someone would destroy any outward aesthetic appeal of a turn of the century Queen Anne house by attaching an ugly cinder block building.  Simply put, in the mid 1950s this style of architecture was out-dated and all too common.  In the eyes of a 1950s Raleigh resident, 1301 Hillsborough Street was a throwback to a time that was becoming increasingly hard to identify with.  In recent years, the Garland Jones building in downtown Raleigh gained attention for its modernist exterior and was considered ugly and outdated by many Raleigh residents.  The revolving door of architectural trends had come full circle.  The Raleigh residents who designed and built Garland Jones were also razing and turning their collective noses up at gaudy, ornate turn of the century architecture.  We are simply mirroring the actions of our ancestors with a new aesthetic ideology.

By the 1960s, the three storefronts and a rooming house occupying the Briggs House itself had been open for more than a decade.  The 1970s proved to be a rough time for the house and its appendage.  The Brite Spot restaurant became an aptly named strip club bearing the same name.  The house, virtually abandoned at this time, naturally became a place for patrons of the strip club to get “privacy”.  The house had become a den of iniquity, and would remain so for some years to come.  When the city cracked down on strip clubs in the late 1970s The Brite Spot closed.  The cinderblock building was then home to a long list of bars and other establishments, while rooms in the house were rented out — or left abandoned.

Fireplace, main floor

A beautiful oak staircase runs along the left wall and turns up at a right angle to the second floor.  Walking up, dark wood surrounds you. Waist-high rail and stile paneling runs the length of the wall opposite the banister, worn smooth by thousands of hands.  The steps have become concave, and the walls seem to ache with age.

The future looks bleak for the Briggs House.  Recently condemned by the city of Raleigh, its days are numbered — unless it is either brought up to code, or moved.  Preservation North Carolina (PNC) is working to save it; however it seems the only way to preserve the house is to move it.  This option would require a tremendous amount of effort and money.  The gleaming question is whether it is worth all the trouble.  History buffs and architecture geeks would certainly chime in with a resounding “yes”, but sadly the majority of people would remain apathetic to its destruction.

Whatever the future holds for this old structure, one can confidently attest to its long life and steadfast nature.  Personally, I take comfort in knowing that I’ll be here in 30 years, telling a new generation of Raleigh residents — “There once was a wonderful old house that sat right there”  — the very words that I find so fascinating today.

[Post updated April 30, 2011]

Definitive plans for the Briggs house have been increasingly hard to come by.  What we do know is that the house is still on-site and is still racking up reprieves to its ultimate destruction or, optimistically speaking, its relocation.  A fourth 90-day extension was granted by City Council earlier this month, and it will probably be the last.  Following the demise of the Jackpot last Fall, the structure has fallen victim to increasing vandalism, specifically to the interior.  The exterior is gradually crumbling as well, and nearly all the windows have fallen out. Hopefully some sort of resolution will come soon, so the house can either be moved or carefully dismantled to save its valuable interior artifacts.

Recently, Goodnight Raleigh reader W.E Carter sent us a revealing photograph from 1941 picturing the brothers of Sigma Nu fraternity.  This photo is an amazing documentation of the Briggs House, to say the least. The photograph shows what we’ve all been hoping to see — the long-lost front porch. The paired double-columns and the buff-colored brick plinths are typical of the Queen Anne-Neo-Classical-Colonial Revival transition style house so popular in Raleigh at the turn of the 20th century. The porch details should be familiar to discerning eyes, as part of the original  wrap-around porch still remains on the left side of the house.

Goodnight Raleigh will keep our readers posted on any new information we may learn about the ultimate fate of the Fabius Briggs House.

Sigma Nu brothers pose in front of the Fabius Briggs House in 1941. Mr. Carter’s father, Wilton E. Carter, Sr., is the young man seen third from the left, top row.

Below are some parting shots I got of the interior a few days ago.

Detail of the incredibly beautiful stair hall paneling.

Doors to nowhere?

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If you’ve driven down Hillsborough Street towards downtown, then you’ve gone past the old Staudt Bakery at the Hillsborough/Morgan Street split.  This nondescript art moderne-styled building from the 1940s has sat vacant for around 50 years.

This sprawling yellow-brick structure is bounded by Ashe Avenue and Hillsborough, Morgan, and Whitley Streets. It once produced bread, cakes, and pastries and employed a fleet of delivery trucks to bring these baked goods to residential and commercial destinations around Raleigh.

Although the history of this building dates back almost 70 years, The Staudt Bakery started around the turn of the century at a still-standing residential structure at the corner of East Hargett and Haywood Streets.

F.G. Staudt, founder of the bakery

A 1910 publication from the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce gives more information on the bakery first started in 1895:

This bakery is owned and controlled by F.G. Staudt, an expert baker himself and a man who employs none but skillful and cleanly assistants in his work. His bakehouse is splendidly fitted with modern ovens, dough mixers, kneaders, etc., and everything turned out of this establishment is guaranteed clean, pure, and wholesome.

The bulk of the business consists in making and baking of bread which is delivered to all parts of the city daily by Mr. Staudt’s own delivery wagons, of which he has three. In addition to the home trade, Mr. Staudt  sells a great deal at wholesale, supplying the retail dealers throughout the city, and shipping to outside points. Purity of ingredients, accurateness in making and baking, and prompt and courteous attention to customers are the main points on which Mr. Staudt’s success is based, and his business is steadily and rapidly increasing.

He is a native of Germany, coming to this country twenty-six years ago. He learned his trade in Baltimore, moving to Raleigh twenty-two years ago, the last fifteen of which have been devoted to the bakery business. Fraternal life knows him well, as he is an active member of the Royal Arcanum and a number of local organizations. He is a member of the Merchants Association and a keen supporter of Raleigh’s best interests.

– 1910 Raleigh Illustrated, Raleigh Chamber of Commerce

Although the exact date of the end of Staudt’s Bakery is unclear, it’s clear from the photos here that the building has sat derelict for a very long time. I’ve often walked by and wondered how such a structure can sit in such a valuable piece of real estate unused, for so long.

Turns out that this sprawling complex of a building was part of a deal between bankrupt Bolton Corp. and a Charlotte real estate company in 2007:

The three Bolton brothers with an interest in the former mechanical, electrical and plumbing concern are selling 18 parcels of about five acres that front Morgan and several neighboring streets near Hillsborough Street. The properties are being sold by Bolton Properties and Harrison Avenue Partnership, two entities created by brothers Michael, Douglas and William Bolton.

The properties, a collection of light-industrial sites and vacant buildings, were put on the market in early 2004. Though coveted by apartment developers, the properties failed to fetch a buyer at the original $8 million price.

– Jack Hagel, N&O

For two and a half years this Charlotte-based company has sat on this tract of land and quietly accumulated other nearby parcels. This is the same company that assembled the land used for the stadiums where the Charlotte Bobcats and Carolina Panthers play.

They also own the old Esso Station on the corner of Boylan Avenue and Hillsborough Street.

This property occupies a very unique space – almost exactly halfway between Downtown Raleigh and NC State University. The latter consisting of around 40,000 people, including faculty and staff.

While it’s almost certain that this vacant structure and those around it will be coming down in the not too distant future, what will replace them is still a source of speculation amongst Cameron Park and West Morgan St. residents.

Stay tuned for more commentary on the West Morgan Street community area.

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The local graffiti artists have taken over the exterior with their spray cans.

Among Raleigh’s commercial development areas, along well travelled highways, behind overgrown rows of southern pines, lie left-behind abandonments that most drivers and pedestrians overlook. The haste to arrive at the ‘next place’ has consumed so many that they have forgotten to stop and look around.

An empty guard station, sits in wait, for the crew that will never again report to work.

To the neighborhood kids, these are “known” spots. To the homeless, these are a dry place to rest the head for a night. To the city planners, these are eyesores in need of gentrification.

Vandals have smashed nearly every window.

In North Raleigh, sits a vacant building. Once a 23-acre research and development facility, now a crumbling pile of rain-soaked, drop-ceiling tiles and moldy drywall. While viewing what this building has become, one would never know that this property is valued at over 10 million.

This rusted satellite stands watch over every sunrise and sunset that comes to the city.

Still a vision of beauty in the night.

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Earlier this year, uliveandyouburn beautifully documented the underbelly of the Boylan Avenue Bridge. Hidden from street-level view, the area serves as a transit point and temporary shelter for freight riders, hobos, and taggers. A few hundred feet away at the intersection of Mountford Avenue and Cutler Street is a smaller bridge, which tells many of the same stories.

Graffiti under the bridge in early 2004

I’ve found myself near or under this bridge on several occasions  (mostly when train spotting) since first discovering it early in 2004 . Each visit provides something new to look at — mostly graffiti, but artifacts of hobo life too.

Graffiti under the bridge in early mid 2009

The scenery changes, but the story remains the same –  discarded food containers, piles of clothes, blankets, car parts, remnants of campfires, and shoes — there are always piles and piles of shoes.

One likely reason it remains so popular for those seeking shelter (despite being almost within eyesight of a guard tower at the State Prison) is because of its proximity to the Wye, where passing freight trains provide an exit to far off places. It is central yet almost completely hidden and away from any sort of pedestrian traffic, except for the occasional curious explorer.

Each of the items tells a story, and often the gaps must be filled in with your own imagination. Some defy all, however, such as the 2009 Pug Calendar pictured above.

I refer to it as a “bridge to nowhere,” as it no longer serves as a path to anywhere. The bridge once led to the old prison’s main  entrance and the prison youth facility, both now demolished. The youth compound had been abandoned for many years prior to the compilation of this video I made from still images I took in 2006. About a year ago, to the annoyance of many area residents, the state began work on a $160 million hospital project on the site.

Now the bridge sits blocked with a simple “Road Closed” sign.

Construction on the hospital continues today, and two large tower cranes sit not far from the disused bridge.

The Bloomsbury Estates condos are within sight, passing motorists over the Boylan Bridge can be heard, and prison construction audible in the distance. Meanwhile, the quiet hobo camp continues on in the same way it has for decades–providing shelter and protection from the elements for those without any other place to sleep or rest.

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In terms of a manufacturing past, Raleigh pales in comparison to the gritty, once bustling tobacco town of Durham to the west. Nonetheless, an entire area abutting the railroad tracks on the western fringe of downtown Raleigh remains as a towering testament to our own city’s industrial past. The landmarks are everywhere throughout this area known as Raleigh’s Warehouse District — from a former Cotton Oil Mill, an abandoned coal yard, a defunct concrete plant, the old Southern Railway freight depot, to the most ubiquitous example: The Dillon Supply Co. buildings.”

There are a number of nightclubs and bars interspersed through the area: Buckhead Saloon, White Collar Crime, Club Mosquito, Five Star, among others. If you’ve traveled to any of these, then you have navigated through the nondescript giant brick structures that for the most part sit vacant. There’s one in particular that has always puzzled me though, and it’s also the least visible.

A cropped version of the Viaduct image from the post: “Why the Wye?“

The same side today, in a much more worn and aged state

I first took a photo of this building in late 2007, knowing nothing about it. In the past year and a half, I really haven’t learned anything else about it. By examining some minor details, however, a few clues emerge that give hints to its former purpose.

It sits vacant with every entrance sealed shut with concrete block. There is almost no circulation whatsoever, and the warm humid air sits thick and carries the dust unsettled with each step taken. There are few artifacts left behind to tell any sort of story. It’s one wide open area, a small office area (second image from the top), a swing arm and control module for loading cargo aboard freight cars, and a barely noticeable set of tracks that run through the center (lower right corner of above image). My guess is that this set of tracks once connected to the Wye, under the Boylan Bridge, to carry steel products to other parts of the region. But when looking at a satellite map of the area, there is little other evidence to support this theory.

One of the other puzzling pieces is this ramshackle lean-to near a corner in the center of the building. It houses a light fixture above, but not much else. Pieces of refuse and scrawled graffiti on the rotting wood perhaps tell the tale of passing travelers that may be seeking out an area less conspicuous than under the Boylan bridge only a few feet away.

With each passing gust of wind, the corrugated metal exterior would bend and sway, creating eerie tapping sounds and groans. It’s not unlike the sound a tall and well worn roller coaster makes as it ascends to its peak, coupled the sound effects heard in a movie when a metal bridge collapses. Being in dark and unfamiliar areas certainly isn’t anything new for me, but I was spooked on more than one occasion on this particularly windy night. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from and what caused it, yet the sound was so imposing I couldn’t help but be a bit on edge.

Just outside of these windows lie a set of tracks that connects to the Raleigh Amtrak Station. While lingering about inside, what I assume to be a freight train passed on the set of tracks on the side closest to the former coal yard (near where Five Star is now). The sound echoed about inside, which for a brief moment gave the impression that the void space contained more life than it really did.

But rather than the hustle and bustle of industrial work taking place, the sound of the passing freighter was simply a reminder of an era long passed. The time of downtown Raleigh’s industrial past has long since come and gone.

View of the Raleigh Skyline from the roof of the old Dillon Supply building

From the roof, you can see some of the other former warehouses in the area. In the foreground is one such example that sits directly across from a set of railroad tracks that cross West Martin Street. Today, the place with the two large garage doors and concertina wire on one side houses an limo service and garage.

Today the building sits quiet and stagnant. No viaduct, no loading freights, no workers sending steel and products to various parts of the country. While Dillon Supply remains a viable company headquartered in Raleigh, the last of their operations left downtown a couple of years ago. The dull, quiet, and plain buildings they left behind sit in the shadows of the growing skyline to the East and a thriving residential neighborhood to the West.

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