Goodnight, Raleigh!

Every month on the first Friday most, if not all, of the galleries in the downtown area open up their new exhibits with really enjoyable receptions. Many people drive downtown and walk to as many of the galleries as they can with the night usually culminating in a few drinks at a local bar. For me, it’s probably one of my favorite times of any given month because it’s a great opportunity to see many of my friends as well as check out the artwork. Also happening every first Friday of the month is a downtown bike ride often hijacking at least one lane of traffic. Most are college aged or young professionals, although anyone and everyone is welcome. Usually we have a good distribution of ages. Typically we’re following our noses to the places with the free beer or wine as well as the places where our friends or colleagues have shows. The advantages are that A) you can visit many more galleries over a much broader area than you could by foot, and B) that there is no problem finding a parking place right in front of the galleries. This month was no exception, and due to the beautifully fall-tacular weather, we had a huge turnout! We had 35 riders when I took the picture above at RebusWorks.

The route we followed was from RebusWorks which had a neat political exhibit titled Pro/Con. RebusWorks is down by AntFarm right past the Boylan Bridge. They usually feature what they describe as compelling and innovative work and to their credit, it always is both compelling and innovative!

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From Treasure to Trash: The Demolition of the Wake County Courthouse

When I was a teenager back in the mid-1960s, Raleigh was fast losing all too many of its architecturally significant buildings to the wrecker’s ball. These included most of the grand Victorian homes on Blount Street, the magnificently turreted Chateauesque style Mansion Park Hotel, (which I referred to then as The Castle), the Jacobean style Hugh Morson High School, Sullivanesque Wachovia Bank building, Italian Renaissance Olivia Raney Library and Wake County’s Beaux Arts courthouse. Downtown Raleigh back then was a veritable treasure trove of late 19th and early 20th century American architecture.

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The view from Memorial Auditorium just got a bit nicer with the addition of a few new buildings, planters, and greenery.

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This is the Warehouse District as seen from the Top of the Tower Restaurant and Lounge, on the 20th floor of the Clarion Building. The intersection in the foreground is that of West Morgan and North Harrington Streets.