Goodnight Raleigh - a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night
For the next three months, the Gregg Museum on NC State’s campus will host the Southern Roots of Mid-Century Modern exhibit. Featuring examples of modern design in furniture, art, architecture, and clothing, visiting the exhibit is a bit like stepping back in time a few decades.
The Bath Building
Two years ago, I declared the structure above, the Bath Building, as the Ugliest in Raleigh. While I had a change of heart not long after writing the article, it’s still pretty high on the ‘ugly’ list. It is the perhaps the most striking and textbook example of the Brutalist style of architecture. Brutalism is characterized by an imposing rectilinear shape, poured concrete, and sparse use of glass and steel as exterior features.
Raleigh has a plethora of these buildings. Most are in the dead zone, the strip of state government buildings around Blount and Salisbury Streets.
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.
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