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 Jacobethan 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 night skyline at zero hours. I used to jump out of airplanes for a living, but I never noticed a curved horizon. Of all the times I’ve been thousands of feet above sea level, looking at this picture was the first time I’ve noticed it.