The Relocation of the Seaboard Railroad Office Building
While watching the relocation of the Merrimon-Wynne House last weekend, a friend jokingly remarked: “What historic house in Raleigh has NOT been moved from its original site?” Indeed, in the last 30 years or so, Raleigh has seen more than its fair share of “a whole lotta movin’ and a-shakin’ goin’ on.”
The Relocation of Raleigh’s Merrimon-Wynne House
On Saturday movers will relocate the historic Merrimon-Wynne House to a site about two blocks from where it has rested for more than 130 years. This will be the largest structure in Raleigh to be moved since the 3-story, solid brick Raleigh and Gaston (later, Seaboard) Railroad office building made a similar trip in 1976. (The Seaboard building was relocated to accommodate construction of the Halifax Mall — but that is another story.)
There is an exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History titled A Thousand Words: Photographs by Vietnam Veterans that is one of the most moving I have ever witnessed. It was a project started in 2003 by Martin Tucker, a Photography instructor at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem.
Amid the bustling pubs, coffee houses, sushi bars and high-end restaurants downtown, a forgotten piece of Raleigh’s culinary history sits shuttered and forlorn on Wilmington Street. The long-closed Raleigh Sandwich Shop is a relic from an era when family-run grills, luncheonettes and diners were the mainstays of downtown eateries. These small, unpretentious lunch counters were commonplace downtown well into the 1960s. Nowadays only a handful (if that many) are still around.
The former Heilig-Levine furniture store has always caught my attention when in the area around Wilmington and Hargett Streets. This building truly is one of the gems of the downtown area. Visible in Mr. Drie’s famous 1872 aerial map of Raleigh, it dates back to around 1870.
Before It was Glenwood South
This is how Ravenscroft School looked in 1972, right after the seniors complex was built. It had remained virtually unchanged since my days there in the 1950s. The buildings were converted to office use shortly after this photo was taken. Below is the view today.
Last week I attended the Blogger Bash hosted by Ginny Skalski and Wayne Sutton at the Edge Office over on Glenwood Avenue. Afterwards, John Morris and I stopped in at a nondescript bar on Tucker Street around the corner from Solas. As we were sitting on the outdoor deck sipping our brew, engaged in heady conversation, John asked me if I remembered Glenwood South when it was primarily a commercial and industrial area. (He relocated to Raleigh just four years ago, so he knows the area only as the entertainment district it has become in recent years.)
The first NCSU library was located on the second floor of Holladay Hall, but this is the location of the first D.H. Hill Library. In 1926 this building was constructed and named in honor of one time librarian and later president of NCSU, Daniel Harvey Hill, Jr. The senior D.H. Hill was a Confederate general during the Civil War and brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson, considered by many to be one of the most talented military leaders in United States history.
Tucked away in the woods behind a nondescript building on Raleigh’s busy Oberlin Road is a long-forgotten chunk of inside the beltline real estate. I am speaking of the old Oberlin Village Cemetery. Few people are aware of its existence now, but this weedy three-acre graveyard entangled with ivy is the final resting place for many former residents of a once-thriving African-American Community known as Oberlin.
Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: Raleigh’s Downtown Warehouse District
The cast of “Openings Windows and Passages” peering up from the floor of Lot 13 in this promo shot by Mark Herdter in 1979.
Just as Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street is currently undergoing a Renaissance, likewise is the city’s old industrial warehouse district located between downtown and the railroad tracks. New housing units intermingle with nightclubs; lofts are filling long empty warehouse spaces; and it is emerging as a focus of downtown nightlife. The warehouse district is awaking from the long slumber it had fallen into after the hustle and bustle of its industrial glory days had faded.
